• TRANSCEND Peace University has opened its online courses in peace and conflict studies for the upcoming spring semester. TRANSCEND was founded by Dr. Johan Galtung, widely known as the father of peace studies.
• NATO announced on Wednesday that it will buy five US-made unmanned drone aircraft capable of…

• The UN conference on trade and development (UNCTAD) secretary-general published a report on Tuesday that called for fundamental reform of the global financial system that would be of benefit to the global poor. The report will act as the theme for the UNCTAD XIII conference in Doha, Qatar in April.
• An Online Dispute Resolution…

As a professional peacemaker, I tend to look at conflicts from the perspective of the people instead of politics. In the process of mediating thousands of conflicts, large and small, I find that conflict dynamics tend to fall into predictable patterns. This is especially true in family business conflicts. The same themes arise over and over again such that the conflict dynamics are predictable and systematic.

 While reading about the Syrian uprising some months ago, I read a brief…