Lebanese civil society group exchanged experiences in peace building with Northern Ireland MP’s

Beirut October 6 2008: The United Nations development Program in collaboration with the Westminster Foundation for democracy organized a one day workshop “National Dialogue and conciliation: Lessons from the Northern Ireland Experience.  The activity which included discussions on conflict resolutions, mediations, re-conciliation, negotiation and power sharing aimed at empowering civil society to play a more active and assertive role at the national and local levels.

As part of this event, three Irish politicians and three representatives of Irish civil society (2 NGO, 1 academic) lead discussions  on dialogue and the peace process, and showed the similitarities  between the northern Ireland peace building experience and the Lebanese situation. They also discussed setting up institutions to facilitate the peace process, based on the Irish model, and shared the peace building experience of NGOs and academia.

Baldati and four other Lebanese NGOs provided brief presentations on their works, their experiences and the obstacles they face.