The ICT4Peace Foundation, infoDev, a global partnership of the World Bank, and ITU are organising a High-Level Dialogue and Thematic Workshop focusing on “ICT for post-conflict reconstruction” during the forthcoming World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva on 16 May 2012.
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis on 18 November 2005, acknowledged the “potential of ICTs to promote peace and to prevent conflict” as well as their use in “post-conflict peace-building and reconstruction”.
ICTs are critical tools for fueling post-conflict reconstruction: they can attract private investment, strengthen government operations, help civil society to re-build / build community networks a...
Continue »
Daniel Stauffacher, ICT4Peace's President, participated in a live seminar on Social Media as a Tool for Humanitarian Protection organised by Harvards Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HCPR) (see link: http://www.hpcrresearch.org/events/live-seminar-44-social-media-tool-humanitarian-protection).
The recent increase in social media use across the world has enabled individuals to connect with one another through new and dynamic communication pathways. These platforms — including Twitter, Facebook, and other media-sharing networks — are also significantly affecting crisis response and humanitarian policy. The particularly acute rise in social media use in disaster-affected areas underscor...
Continue »
Daniel Stauffacher, Chairman of the ICT4Peace Foundation, along with Lars Peter Nissen, Director, Assessment Capacities Project participated in a panel on "Information and Communication Technology – Sustainable Solutions", organized by Prof. Jarrod Goentzel, Founder and Director, MIT Humanitarian Response Lab at the 2012 Conference on Health and Humanitarian Logistics (http://humlog2012.the-klu.org/program/), organized by INSEAD, KLU and Georgiatech.
The panel discussed the increasing role of technology for humanitarian crisis management and addressed in particular the following points:
Examples where technology (e.g. mobile phones, satellite imagery) enables useful data gathering in a crisis.
Analyt...
Continue »
Representing the ICT4Peace Foundation, Sanjana Hattotuwa participated and lectured in Information and Intelligence Cooperation in Multifunctional International Operations, a course run by the Folke Bernadotte Academy in Sandö - Stockholm. Participants included high ranking officials from government, NGOs, UN and EU peacekeeping operations and MACs, analysts and information managers. As FBA notes,
The aim of this course is to develop and improve cooperation and sharing of information and intelligence in multifunctional missions by giving senior officers and professionals involved in or designated to work in multifunctional operations the ability to build functional networks and systems for collection, analysis and...
Continue »
Along with Delilah H.A. Al Khudhairy from the EU's JRC, Sanjana Hattotuwa, Special Advisor at the ICT4Peace Foundation delivered the keynote address at the 2011 International Network of Crisis Mappers, held in Geneva from 14-15 November, 2011.
The ICCM network now features the video of this keynote on YouTube.
Continue »
23 November, Geneva, Switzerland – The ICT4Peace Foundation and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), in collaboration with the International Network of Crisis Mappers successfully organised and co-hosted the 3rd International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM).
ICCM 2011, held at the International Conference Centre Geneva, CICG, Switzerland from 14 - 15 November, was the first to be held outside the US and also the largest so far, with over 400 participants in attendance. The conference brought together the most engaged practitioners, scholars, software developers and policymakers at the cutting edge of crisis mapping to address and assess the role of crisis mapping and humanitarian technolo...
Continue »
The ICT4Peace Foundation once again taught at the first of its kind Master of Advanced Studies in Humanitarian Logistics and Management Programme (MAS HLM) at the University of Lugano, Switzerland. Sanjana Hattotuwa was the lead trainer from the Foundation, and collaborated with Andrew Alspach from UN OCHA who taught the fundamentals of crisis information management.
In addition to UN OCHA's content, the Foundation did three sessions on the use, dangers and role of web, Internet and mobile technologies, tools and platforms in crisis information management. This included a comprehensive overnight simulation exercise that involved using around 35 of the leading crisis information management platforms in use today.
...
Continue »
The ICT4Peace Foundation is pleased to announce that Mr. Alain Modoux, former Assistant Director General of UNESCO and founding member of the ICT4Peace Foundation Board has been honoured for his lifelong support to free, independent and pluralistic journalism at the "Pan African Conference on Access to Information" held at Rhodes University in Cape Town. Mr. Modoux also played a seminal role in initiating and for championing the Windhoek Declaration of 9 May 1991 on free, independent and pluralistic journalism through the United Nations General Assembly and UNESCO.
The Windhoek Declaration was also an important building block for the adoption of, inter alia, the paragraph 4 and 55 regarding freedom of opinion and...
Continue »
On 15th June 2011, the Foundation was invited to an OCHA sponsored washup meeting to reflect on the lessons identified and learnt as part of the unprecedented collaboration between the volunteer task force and UNOCHA, also during the Japan earthquake. The goals of the closed door brainstorming as noted by UNOCHA were,
To review actions taken during the two responses;
To define how our engagement can be improved during the next emergency;
To discuss possible formation of focused discussion groups (e.g. data licensing, definition of use-cases for volunteer usage, engagement by for-profit entities, transition, trainings, etc);
To determine how to feed the lessons learned from Libya and Japan into upcoming events...
Continue »
On 8 March 2011, Sanjana Hattotuwa, Special Advisor at the ICT4Peace Foundation, delivered a webinar analysing the state of the field in crisis mapping, and asked some critical questions around its evolution and future. Participants at the webinar came from a range of countries, and a lively question and answer session ensued after the presentation. The Crisis Mappers Network has now made a video of the webinar available on their site, which can also be seen below.
The presentation the webinar was based on can be viewed below.
ICT4Peace: Going beyond Crisis Mapping View more presentations from Sanjana Hattotuwa
Continue »
Published under Events, Foundation in the media, Updates 
No Comments 
