UAVs and peacebuilding: Some thoughts

My work with UAVs is largely conceptual, framed by growing up in a context of war, deeply informed by having to deal with the enduring legacy of violent conflict even post-war and anchored to the inalienable yet often callously erased rights of communities and individuals around safety, security and privacy. My interest in UAVs results …

Oil slick reporting through mobiles

The potential of Oil Reporter, a new mobile application from Crisis Commons, goes far beyond its intended application to monitor the fallout of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on the Gulf Coast. In a blog post written four years ago (Content without wires), I hinted at the potential for meaningful peacebuilding through similar applications, running on smartphones …

Unique perspectives on the end of war in Sri Lanka

"I am an Indian pediatrician who served with the Indian Medical Team at Menik Farm IDP center. The point I am trying to raise is this – we were managing scores of infants with bullet / shell blast injuries (some festering, mostly healed). It gives an idea of the extent of collateral damage suffered by …

South Asian Media Cultures: Audiences, Representations, Contexts

South Asian Media Cultures: Audiences, Representations, Contexts is finally out. Edited by Shakuntala Banaji, the book features a chapter written by me titled Expanding the Art of the Possible: Leveraging Citizen Journalism and User Generated Content (USG) for Peace in Sri Lanka. It is one of two essays in the tome dealing with media in …

Peace Building in the Digital Era: 9th Forum on New Technologies of Information & Communication applied to Conflict

Since 2004, I have worked on and been involved in the interesting evolution of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), in large part as a Fellow at The National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution, based at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. From once a strictly legal/commercial dispute resolution domain, ODR has now more fully embraced peacebuilding …

Negotiating ethnic hatred in Sri Lanka

Can we End this Cycle of Hatred? an article published on Groundviews, a citizen journalism site I edit in Sri Lanka, elicited this comment from someone called Ramanan: Nice article. I see a lot of parents infesting the young minds in western world. I am a Tamil, living in the US for a long time. …

ICT: Peace 2.0

The Chairman of the ICT4Peace Foundation has a great interview with the International Relations and Security Network on the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in peacebuilding. The podcast is available here.

Make your peace. Virtually.

We all experience conflict - at work, in the family, the playground, our relationships. We've all over-reacted, or behaved in a way we later regretted and wished we could make redress for. Make Your Peace is your chance to do just that. It's a special campaign from Peace Direct marking the UN's International Day of …

Map of local peacebuilding initiatives in Sri Lanka from Insight on Conflict

Peace Direct's Insight on Conflict has a great Google Map with details of peacebuilding initiatives at the grassroots in Sri Lanka. I first wrote about Insight on Conflict around two years ago (Introducing Buddhist monks to non-violence…) and it's great to see how their web presence has evolved to now embrace tools like Google Maps to …

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 …