Event description

This event provides an opportunity to discuss key features of a new book by Dr. Daisaku Higashi of Sophia University in Tokyo, entitled Inclusivity in Mediation and Peacebuilding: UN, Neighboring States, and Global Powers, which was published in January 2022. The book is published as part of the “Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) book series”.  The book is based on field research in Afghanistan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Timor-Leste. Throughout the various chapters, Dr. Higashi illustrates the importance of mediators taking flexible approaches to inclusivity in mediation during armed conflicts, highlighting the crucial balance between the need to select conflicting parties to make an agreement feasible and the need to include a multiplicity of parties to make the peace sustainable. Higashi also emphasizes the importance of inclusive processes in the phase of post-conflict peacebuilding.

speaker

• Dr. Daisaku Higashi, Professor, Center for Global Education, Sophia Institute of International Relations, Sophia University in Tokyo

Dr. Daisaku Higashi is a professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, specializing in mediation and peacebuilding. From 1993 to 2004 he worked for NHK, Japan Public TV station, as a program director and produced numerous TV documentaries, including “Rebuilding Iraq: Challenges of the UN”, which received the silver medal from UN Correspondents Association in New York. He then completed his PhD in political science at the University of British Columbia in Canada. He worked for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) from December 2009 to December 2010 as a team leader for reconciliation and reintegration. In January 2011, he started working for the University of Tokyo as an associate professor. He also served as a Minister-Counsellor in the Permanent Mission of Japan to the UN from August 2012 to August 2014, directing the activities of Japan on the issues of Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) and mediation. After returning to the University of Tokyo, he transferred to a tenured position at the Center for Global Education at Sophia University in 2016. He has been frequently assigned by Japanese Foreign Ministers to visit Iraq and South Sudan to advise on peacebuilding since 2018.

discussants

• Dr. Sukehiro Hasegawa, Former Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Timor-Leste and President of Global Peacebuilding Association of Japan (GPAJ)

• Dr. Andreas Hirblinger, Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP)

moderator

• Dr. Sara Hellmüller, Senior Researcher at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding

Watch the event recording