This is an excerpt from Interim Report: Stocktaking of UN Crisis Information Management Capabilities that can be downloaded in full from here. The authors strongly feel it is timely for the UN System as a whole to address, at a strategic level, issues of crisis information management and technology best practice and interoperability – to […]
Tag Archives: ICT for Peacebuilding
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Martti Ahtisaari on ICT4Peace
Statement of Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2008 delivered at High-level meeting to discuss the Interim Report of the stocktaking of UN Crisis Information Management Capabilities, held on 7th November 2008 at the United Nations in New York. For more information on the stocktaking process with the UN, click here. […]
The rise of Big Brother in the UK: The problems for the rest of us
Reading an article on mobile phone surveillance in England, I remembered a scene from the film the Bourne Ultimatum where the character Jason Bourne, played by Matt Damon, buys a phone off the counter in London and uses it to communicate securely with a reporter. The reporter eventually gets killed and that sadly seems to […]
Capturing violent conflict in Kashmir with mobile phones
The BBC runs a fascinating story today on how young people (who in the story are mostly male) are capturing violent events and processes in Kashmir using their mobile phones. The example of Kashmir suggests that the prevalence of mobile phones leads to a situation on the ground that mainstream news agencies could not have imagined even […]
In the company of giants: International Mediation Institute (IMI) and ICT4Peace
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 […]
Net Neutrality: Economics and implications for ICT4Peace and ODR
A post on Lirneasia prompted some thought on the linkages between Net Neutrality and peacebuilding, especially the use of the web and Internet for conflict transformation. Lirneasia’s post deals with Obama’s and McCain’s stance on the issue of Net Neutrality, with Chanuka making the point that while theoretically desirable, Net Neutrality has its own significant […]
Deciding which mobile phone to bug and how: The incredible flip side of the growth of mobiles
I use the word incredible in the sense of difficult to believe or extraordinary. In one of the most revealing and interesting articles I’ve read in a while, the London Review of Books looks into the world of mobile phone surveillance. It begins with the example of http://www.mapamobile.com in the UK, a freely available service […]
Some thoughts on mobile phones and the digital divide
Ken Banks has a super article up on PC World on using mobile phones to address the digital divide. In it Ken points to two aspects of mobile phones and their usage that not everyone even in developing countries quite understands. “They can make and receive calls, they have an address book, they can send […]
NAE report on ICT and Peacebuilding gets it right. And also very wrong.
The National Academy of Engineering organised a workshop on Technology and Peacebuilding on 14th December 2007, the report of which I was sent last week. Through a rather tedious rigmarole, it is possible to download this report from their website. Do it. It’s worth it. I joined the workshop over Skype Video and was introduced […]
ASEAN Ministers call for greater civ-mil coordination and information sharing in disasters but not for interoperability
The Chairman’s statement at the recently concluded 41st ASEAN Ministers Meeting notes quite strongly the need for greater civilian – military cooperation and information sharing in disaster preparedness and response. “The Ministers called for in greater civil-military coordination for major, multinational disaster responses through training, information sharing, and multinational exercises. They recognised that military assets and personnel, […]
