Technology for Peace: Difference between revisions

       |project_title=Technology for Peace

      |contract_number=[[Using Technology for Virtual Negotiation and Peace]]<br>[[Technology for Peace: Phase 2]]<br>[[Technology for Peace: Phase 3]]

       |funding_period=

       |coordinator=[[Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute]]

The project '''Technology For Peace''' (Tech4Peace) was envisioned and implemented in order to enhance one of the most basic human rights, the right of communication across the military barriers in Cyprus.

 

The Tech4Peace project was founded as one of the projects selected for implementation during a Peace Bazaar organized by the Cyprus Conflict Resolution Trainers Group in 1997 <ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_Conflict_Resolution_Trainers_Group#Cyprus_Peace_Bazaar Peace Bazaar in Wikipedia]</ref>. The members of the founding team were [[Yiannis Laouris]], [[Harry Anastasiou]], Dervis Besimler and Bekir Azgin. They were all members of the [[Cyprus Conflict Resolution Trainers Group]].

The Technology for Peace (Tech4Peace) project began in 1996 with two activities which were practically funded by their participants:

 

# A bicommunal virtual organisation (known at the time as UCM: [[United Cyprus Movement]]) has been set-up on the Internet to discuss matters of general interest and attempt to inform and recruit Cypriots (both Turkish and Greek) who lived abroad.  The software for automating the workings of this virtual community was partly designed and developed by Greek Cypriot [[Yiannis Laouris]] and Turkish Cypriot [[Turgut Durduran]].  The whole system was hosted in various university servers (USA, Australia), but since 1997 it became a "refugee project" because the expenses rose to a level that the participants couldn’t afford.

# In August 1997, [[Yiannis Laouris|Laouris]] and [[Harry Anastasiou|Anastasiou]] (from the Greek Cypriot side) in coordination with their counterparts in the North, [[Dervis Besimler]] and [[Bekir Azgin]], together with other members of the Initiative from both communities, and all members of the [[Cyprus Conflict Resolution Trainers Group]], planned and materialized an Internet Workshop for students<ref>Chart</ref>.  This activity was funded (provision for space and snacks) by the [[Fulbright Commission]] and took place in the [[Fulbright Building]] in the Buffer zone.

# Developing an on-line web-based system, which would permit the members of the various bicommunal groups to re-vote, thus changing their votes on certain questions based on changes in the real political arenas and the changing broader political environment of the Cyprus problem. The Interactive Management methodology introduced by Professor [[Ben Broom]] in Cyprus had been used to develop the first bicommunal vision maps, obstacle maps and options map. With this tool, Tech4Peace wanted to not only have a stationary picture of the three maps, but also a dynamic one that would reflect the changing phases that the Cyprus problem was going through. That would in essence provide a picture of how bicommunal consensus changes in time due to external factors (i.e. political environment, economic changes, crisis events, development of the peace movement etc.). Furthermore, the system would allow any Cypriot citizens from anywhere in the world to participate in a collective map, thus contributing to a Cypriot Bicommunal Peoples' Vision Map. This objective has not been achieved to the present day.