News
ORG ANNOUNCES NEW SENIOR APPOINTMENTS
ORG is pleased to announce two new appointments to its senior team,
CHRIS LANGDON will take up his post as ORG's Managing Director on 7th December. This part-time position will involve playing the lead role in shaping and oversight of ORG's central support functions (governance, external relations, communications, and administration). Chris is currently an advisor to ORG's Middle East Programme. From 1997-2008 he was a Programme Director at the Wilton Park conference centre where he ran their South East Europe programme. He is currently directing the "Communicating Europe” project for the independent think-tank, the European Stability Initiative. It brings policy-makers and TV editors from the Western Balkans working on EU integration to EU capitals to engage with decision-makers. Chris has also worked as a TV producer and researcher for the BBC and ITV for 16 years. He was senior producer responsible for BBC TV News coverage of the 1989 Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution. He is still active in media work; working on media development projects. He directed two ESI documentaries covering human security issues; one in Bosnia funded by DFID, and one on Kosovo supported by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.
BENJAMIN ZALA will join ORG as Manager of its Sustainable Security Programme on 11th January. Ben is currently Project Co-ordinator on the "Trade, Finance, and Climate Change" Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He is also a PhD Candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham. Prior to coming to the UK he was a Graduate Research Assistant at Latrobe University, and also an editorial assistant for the journal "Global Change, Peace, and Security" managed from La Trobe. He has particular research interests in the impact on security of the changing balance of power in the 21st Century world, and also writes on nuclear weapons and disarmament issues.
These appointments will coincide with some organisational restructuring, in particular the stepping down of Dr John Sloboda from the role of Executive Director after six years in post. John will remain on ORG's senior management team as Director of its "Recording Casualties in Armed Conflict" programme, and fully engaged in its strategic development, along with the directorate of ORG's two other major programmes "Human Security in the Middle East", and "Sustainable Security for the 21st Century".
DR SCILLA ELWORTHY APPOINTED ORG PATRON
ORG is delighted to announce the appointment of ORG's founder, Dr Scilla Elworthy, as Patron, to serve alongside recently appointed Patrons Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Baroness Shirley Williams, and Ashraf Ghani. This appointment comes at the end of the year in which Scilla stepped down from membership of the ORG Board, thus completing 27 years of unbroken service to ORG, as Executive Director from 1982-2003, as Chair of the Board from 2003-2007, and as an ordinary Board member from 2007-2009. The announcement was made at a private reception for ORG sustainers on 4th November, where Scilla spoke on "How change happens: a quarter century of dialogue with policy
makers on the prevention of war". A film of a recent interview with Scilla on the prospects for nuclear disarmament has been posted on the www,talkworks.info website. Talkworks is a film and video project directed by ORG's Honorary Archivist, Rosie Houldsworth, which aims to show the weight of expert opinion that is behind President Obama's goal of global nuclear disarmament.
Programme Updates
Moving Towards Sustainable Security
On Monday 30th November, ORG will publish a major new briefing paper by Professor Paul Rogers, entitled, "Global Security after the War on Terror". This paper will examine the context of the decision to go to war after 9/11 and the anticipated results. It will go on to analyse the actual consequences and seeks to explain why they have been so radically different to original expectations by the United States and its closest coalition partners such as the UK. It will then update the analysis of the major global challenges that Oxford Research Group has previously discussed, and the need for a new paradigm focused on sustainable security. It will conclude by assessing how the experience of the eight years that have followed the 9/11 atrocities might make a change of paradigm more likely. The paper will be downloadable from the front page of the ORG website on Monday 30th November.
Recording Casualties in Armed Conflict
The Recording Casualties of Armed Conflict International Practitioner's Network is pleased to announce the release of its first joint communique on 25th November 2009. Twenty organisations so far, from around the world, declare: "We will collaborate to raise our capacity, visibility and collective strength, thereby enhancing casualty recording activities worldwide." The full communique and a list of signatories is available here.
Human Security and the Middle East
The Middle East team organised a very successful workshop in Doha from November 8th -9th 2009. This workshop was a collaboration between the Brookings Institute in Doha and ORG. The purpose of the meeting was an enquiry into what scope was there for national dialogue between the Islamists and secular movements for cooperation on the project of state-building. The workshop in Doha presented a unique environment for participants of varying backgrounds and political affiliations from Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Somalia to engage in frank, informal and serious dialogue on the proposed subject.
Participants were invited to discuss whether an all-inclusive policy of dialogue on an integrated approach to state-building / state-effectiveness could contribute to conflict resolution efforts in the broader Middle East region and avert the slide to “fragile” or “failing” states. As a result of this workshop a number of further consultations are planned. In the first instance, this will involve members of the ORG team going to Gaza to talk to senior leadership about what are the conditions they feel able to engage with a project of state-building.
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