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This morning the "final draft" of the declaration we are now discussing it - on the floor but there has been no Spanish or French versions presented and some delegates are a bit annoyed at this. The governments are demanding 30 minutes to read the document so that we can approve it but the chair...

Well the time has come for the final push - so I went along to the Western European Governments meeting to see how we can move along. The final draft (still to be agreed with minor amendments) was presented and we went line by line. What is clear is that the governments are as pissed off at the...

The scandal of the NGO statement and young people voice being repressed unravelled further today at the World Youth Congress. The Organisation of Ibero-American government had agreed to sponsor and pay for the travel and accommodation of a delegation of young people to travel to Mexico city to...

Well what a cock up - when presenting the final NGO deceleration they have forgot to add all the amendments that were agreed! Instead they presented a mix of the old and new one. When this was realised, and after another night re-drafting the final documents are finally available and can be...

Well after the first day of the Governmental Forum things have been a bit rocky but with some successes. The Government forum opened up with a fan fare of video and media - very inexpressive a good looking TV presenter introduced this in an over excited way and the forum was started. While...

Say it Aloud! Day:3 // Turn up Youth Rights. from European Youth Forum on...

Say it Aloud! Day:2 // (Youth) MDGs? from European Youth Forum on

Well Mexico continues to surprise! Today we have had shouting, filibustering, pro-life campaigners the Mexican government threatening the pull the youth conference and a 6 hour plenary meeting to tray and agree everything! It started off with a plenary where we presented what we had so far from...

Say It Aloud! Day:1 from European Youth Forum on

Well what an interesting day. I haven't got long, but for those who are following me on twitter I hope that you have a bit of a feeling of what is happening here. We have had a pro-life protest at the gates of the conference in the morning and then at the opening ceremony a jerry springer style...

Well the World Youth Conference starts tomorrow and things haven't been looking so good today. Out of 400 youth participants that were meant to attend it looks like less than 200 will be able to get here. This is not to say that the other 200 didn't try, many of them got Visas, travelled and are...

5pm Well at last I got my tickets (only two days before I had to leave), my visa was sorted out the night before and then I boarded, what a mess. Well putting that a side I jetted off to Mexico City to start thinking about what we were going to work on. So what is this conference – good...

For each of the areas that come up on the course, I intend to write a short piece of work. I hope that while some reflections will be personal to me, I will be able to underpin much of my ideas about sustainability and learning though validating them with theories and academic writing thought the...

Concepts and Practice of Peacemaking 2009Reflective Statement and Individual Audit by Lloyd Russell-Moyle ContentsAttendance 2Word Count 2Reflective Statement 3Defining moment and the group process 4Justice and/or to get peace? 11Education and Oppression 16Conclusion 22Individual Audit...

In this week we looked at School strike that took place in south Africa and a mediation between the elders and the younger in a village. This I found was really difficult - was strike actually a positive thing. Young people who were able and willing to be more radical were fighting and making as...

Well The idea which was introduced in week 8 and also is outlined in the Conflict resolution toolbox (GT Furlong, P 76) shows how we see conflicts at the surface level but underneath the water line ( the line of sight and ease of passage in the mediation process) there is larger hurdles and things...

Thinking about the effectiveness of different tactics of mediation is an important skills for the conflict resolution practitioner. This week we looked at non-directive mediation, there is some dispute about the effectiveness compared to more directive techniques, but the facilitator outlined that...

Today in CR, we had an an interesting session, we talked about what kind of learning we were getting and were we happy with it.Some of the comments showed the inherent concern that many of the members had with the process of assessment (much of which I have but also expect to have). The idea of...

At that last session we looked and talked about active listing.The two exercises were basic and very similar. One was to divide in to pairs and we talked about a dilemma. Each of us had to listen and refrain from judging and giving advice.We asked ourselves questions such as: How was it? How was...

Just a quick note about the Nobel Peace Prize. Today they announced that the winner for the 2009 prize will be Barack Obama a president of the USA who has been in post for less than a year and was only in office for two months before he was nominated.This is an interesting choice for the Nobel...