Seminar on resolution of international conflicts held in Moscow

A seminar on peacemaking and human rights defense was held at the Sakharov Public Center in Moscow on March 11 and 12. The action was arranged by the Center for Conflict Management (CCM), Norway, and the Russian-British Center for Peacemaking and Community Development. The seminar was conducted by CCM Director Graham Dyson. Activists of such NGOs as the Chechen Mothers for Peace association, the Society for Russian-Chechen Friendship, the Victor Popkov Center, and the Committee for Antiwar Actions took part in the seminar.

Participants touched upon the issues of difference between approaches of human rights defenders and peacemakers to the resolution of conflicts, interaction between these approaches, as well as the search for new ways of settling the situations. But the main goal of the seminar was to make an attempt to teach people to realize their rights, not to be indifferent and inert in the face of urgent problems, and to search for new, non-standard solutions. Graham Dyson preferred to apply interactive ways of training, which were based on experience and knowledge of participants themselves.

Such a seminar was conducted in our country for the first time.