In the company of giants: International Mediation Institute (IMI) and ICT4Peace

ICT for Peacebuilding, ICTs in general 1 Minute

Diane Levin’s blog gives a pointer to the International Mediation Institute (IMI) and a special section on its web site to recognize the work of bloggers writing on ADR and ODR.

Diane Levin aside, there are giants in the field of ADR / ODR featured here. It’s humbling to be in the company of these blogs and bloggers, though I am perhaps the only person without any legal background or training to be featured here!

A little over two years ago, when I started this blog, it was the first and only one on the web to deal with ICT for peacebuilding. Today, it’s praxis and theory is no longer embryonic and there are hundreds of examples of the use of ICTs in everything from conflict early warning to mitigation and transformation.

My interest in ODR was piqued when I realised that the principles behind ADR and especially when technology was introduced as a fourth party shared many similarities with my approach to and understanding of ICTs in peacebuilding.

That’s an interest that will only continue to grow, nourished in large part by the inspiration found in the content of the blogs featured on IMI’s catalogue.

Published by Sanjana

An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance. I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002. I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents. Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs. Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts. I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

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One thought on “In the company of giants: International Mediation Institute (IMI) and ICT4Peace”

  1. Sanjana, you are counted among those giants, and stand head and shoulders above them all. Your writing sets the bar high — every post brings a revolution in ideas. Yours is one of my very favorite blogs, ADR and otherwise, because of the originality of your thinking.

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