Kosovar Unity Team signing the Pocantico Declaration at Developing a Strategy for Kosovo’s First 100 Days, Pocantico, USA, 2007

Politics without Violence, Colombia, 2008.

Current Initiatives

Since its inception in 1992, the Project has facilitated progress in negotiations, helped to break down barriers to agreements, and brought former combatants and enemies together to find new solutions to the entrenched problems their societies face. In over 55 initiatives, the Project has been invited by in country actors to apply our powerful and proven shared experience methodology. Utilizing this methodology we activate our network of extraordinary practitioners who have overcome these problems and identify appropriate leaders to assist in each conflict setting. At present the Project has three types of programming: geographic, thematic and educational.

Geographic Programming

The Project's geographic programming facilitates progress in particular negotiation processes and helps build leadership capacity with the goal of making change or reconciliation possible in specific post-war contexts. In these in-country programs, the Project applies its powerful methodology to facilitate trust and build capacity to engender progress toward peace and/or reconciliation. The Project is currently working on initiatives for Bahrain, Cuba, and Kosovo.

• Bahrain: Since the spring of 2011, PJTT has deployed top leaders from South Africa and elsewhere to help guide the government of Bahrain and the opposition into a dialogue and to help both sides develop a road map for a peaceful resolution to its conflict.

• Cuba: Helping leaders to identify creative approaches that can facilitate improved relations between the US and Cuba and meet the needs of a future Cuba.

• Kosovo: The Project has been working in Kosovo since 2002 to prepare both Albanian and Serb leaders in Kosovo for negotiations with Serbia and the United Nations on final status issues. In February 2011, PJTT convened an expert workshop to evaluate the current proposals for Northern Kosovo and develop policy recommendations for a more inclusive negotiation process. Current programming remains focused on Northern Kosovo and how to generate creative, effective solutions to violence in this disputed territory.

Educational Programming

• ACCESS "Engaging undergraduates with senior negotiators and diplomats:" A Mentorship program and joint partnership with the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University that enables Tufts undergraduate students to participate in high level international events focusing on diplomacy, conflict transformation and reconciliation.

Thematic Programming

The Project’s thematic programming utilizes its network of people and its long experience to help better understand the challenges to conflict transformation.

Specifically, the Project believes that the global conflict resolution and foreign policy community needs to reassess its approach to conflict in the 21st century and find new strategies to address some of the central challenges that confront negotiators, policymakers and conflict resolution practitioners. In an attempt to make a contribution on these issues, the Project has developed several exciting, multi-year initiatives that seek to identify and catalyze new solutions. These include:

• “Neuroscience and Social Conflict ”: This multi-year initiative, in partnership with the SaxeLab for social cognitive neuroscience at MIT, will facilitating research across disciplines that explores the latest findings in neuroscience and its implications for conflict management and foreign policy formulation. Our launch conference will take place on February 9-11, 2012 and will bring together social neuroscientists, experienced leaders of societies in transition from conflict, and conflict management experts. These experts will exchange findings and challenges from their respective fields while also developing research agendas that scientifically assess approaches to reduce conflict.

• Revisiting Transitional Justice in Divided Societies: A multi-year initiative that will bring together key leaders from conflict affected communities including Sudan, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Bosnia Herzegovina, and Northern Ireland to explore the impact of truth commissions and other efforts toward reconciliation and accountability to establish accountability and reconciliation. The discussion seeks to identify a new set of policy recommendations and mechanisms for fostering peace and reconciliation in deeply divided societies.