Daniel Stauffacher, President of ICT4Peace and Ambassador Paul Meyer have published an Op-ed on 23 July in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung called "Disarmament Negotiations for the Cyberspace are needed". The English translation of the text can be found here. The original article in German can be downloaded as a PDF from here. The world is facing a new challenge - a modern arms race with no visible weapons and identifiable actors, which is characterized by a growing number of known and hidden attacks on websites of government agencies or infrastructures. It often remains unknown, who ran these attacks, whether by governments or non-state actors. The fact is that new technologies provide in cyberspace a new genera...

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The ICT4Peace Foundation is proud to announce the signing of an MOU with the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) of Sweden. The parties have agreed to cooperate in the furtherance of training and capacity building in the field of crisis information management for peace support operations. One of the priority projects is the development and testing of a JMAC - CiM training course at African Training Institutions including using ICTs and new media as tools for information collection, analysis and dissemination. This project is part of the work of a consortium lead by ICT4Peace together with the The Cairo Regional Center for Training on Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping in Africa (CCCPA), Zentrum für Internationale Friedense...

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The ICT4Peace Foundation and its partners conduct a first of its kind training course on Crisis Information Management for African Peacekeeping and Peace-building Missions using ICTs and New Media (Cairo 9 to 13 October 2011)

Image courtesy The Lede, New York Times

Together with its partners, the Cairo Regional Center for Training  on Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping in Africa (CCCPA), the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) Sweden, Zentrum für Internationalen Friedensdienst (ZIF), Germany, The Center for Crisis Management (CMC), F...

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The tragic events in Haiti, Chile, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan etc, the breakthrough and high visibility of new ICTs and social media as tools in crisis management, which the Foundation has predicted and promoted since several years, the Foundations close working relationship with the UN ASG CITO, OCHA, DPKO, WFP, UNFP, UNHCR, etc. regarding the development of the UN Crisis Information Management Strategy (CiMS) through the Crisis Information Management Advisory Group (CiMAG), with Governments and important actors in this new space such as Ushahidi, Crisismappers etc., International Training Institutions and Academia: Harvard, Georgiatech, Lugano, European Joint Research Centre (JRC), have further helped establish the Foundatio...

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As noted in the Foreword by Dr. Choi Soon-hong, Assistant Secretary-General & Chief Information Technology Officer, The goal of the ICT strategy, described in this publication, is to maximize the value of ICT in improving the Secretariat’s overall effectiveness and efficiency at delivering its services to the global community. The main thrusts of the ICT strategy are to overcome the difficulties attributable to what has become a highly fragmented ICT environment and to build strategic, integrated ICT capabilities through the introduction of improved systems, tools and methods to the Organization. Page 30 of the report notes the Foundation's on-going work with the United Nations to support the design and devel...

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The ICT4Peace Foundation presented at the 16th Annual Conference of the International Association of Peacekeeping Training Centers which took place in Dacca, Bangladesh from 27 November to 3 December. The overarching theme of this years IAPTC Conference was "Training for peacekeeping missions with complex mandates". Daniel Stauffacher was invited to make a presentation on the UN Crisis Information Management Strategy, endorsed by the ongoing UN General Assembly and its relevance for effective peacekeeping and peace-building operations with complex mandates. He chaired and presented at a workshop on the use of and experiences with modern ICTs, including social media in crisis such as Haiti. The discussions confi...

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Dag Nielsen, Senior Advisor, ICT4Peace was 4 November invited to be keynote speaker on Mobile Technology at a web seminar organized by the InterAmerican Development Bank. Nowadays almost every single project in the ICT Cluster for the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) is using or considering to use mobile technology because of the high level of penetration of cell phone in the Region. The Mobile Technology webinar is an effort to keep the members informed about the latest technological trends, best practices and interesting applications of technology. Download the Powerpoint presentation here.

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In a letter dated  11 October 2010 to the Chairman of the ICT4Peace Foundation, Pat Banks, Chief  Communication and Services Branch, OCHA congratulated the ICT4Peace Foundation for the creation of the ICT4Peace Crisis Information Management Wikis in support of the crises in Haiti, Chile, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. UN OCHA commended the Wiki’s clean and clear format, that allows visitors to quickly find tools, informative websites, and relevant news articles in a given crisis. “Having such a wiki in the very early phases of a given crisis, when chaos on the ground usually prevents compiling such a resource, is a useful resource for humanitarian organisations. By using a ...

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October 2010: In view of the increasing need to qualify and verify crowdsourced information, the ICT4Peace Foundation helped the development of the Matrix plugin for the Ushahidi platform. Used in the Ushahidi instance set up to monitor the Tanzanian national elections on 31st October 2010, this plugin essentially requires pre-trained reporters in the field tagging reports with the following for reports they enter into the system: Source Reliability Information Probability When the reports are filtered into the back-end, administrators via the analysis plugin would then see the attached matrix on tagged reports, which helps with making analyses', finding related reports and/or possibly creating new reports t...

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The crisis information management wiki set up by the Foundation to respond to the Pakistan flooding, is now indexed on Google's Crisis Response page for Pakistan.

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