On May 21, 2020, our founder Aya Burweila participated in the virtual session “From Kinetic to Cyber and Back Again: Technology and Peacemaking in the Arab World”, organized by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Virtual Forum on Peace and Development “Sustaining Peace in the Time of COVID-19” and in partnership with Euro-Gulf Information Centre (EGIF) in Rome, Italy.
The full video of this important session is now available online here:
Peace is more than the interruption of conflict—it is a way of thinking. In order to generate and maintain peaceful relations between hostile states and/or substate groups and in order to prevent conflict recurrence, social learning must precede change.
This online roundtable looked at how social media and innovative technologies are able to affect social healing in war-torn states across the Middle East and to teach by doing. While this online roundtable is primarily focused on some of the larger conflicts afflicting the region (re: Syria, Libya, Yemen) it also looks to some regional models that may be emulated (re: Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE etc.).
Drawing on regional expertise, it seeks to show both the positive and negative aspects to cyber engagements. EGIC’s aim is to bring scholars, practitioners and the interested public together to engage this issue. It hopes to create both the momentum and network to further develop cyber roads of understanding—followed by kinetic engagements—and therefore contribute to peaceful solutions to Middle Eastern conflicts.
Speakers at the Session included;
- Aya Burweila, Founder of Code on the Road (COR), BBC Expert Woman on terrorism and radicalization, and Visiting Lecturer at the Hellenic National Defence College (Athens, Greece);
- Fatima Abo Alasrar, Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute, Director for Cure Violence;
- Mitchell Belfer, President of the Euro-Gulf Information Centre (EGIC) in Rome, Italy, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Terrorism and Security at the Metropolitan University Prague (Czech Republic) and Editor in Chief of the Central European Journal of International and Security Studies.
The session was moderated by Arthur De Liedekerke, Consultant for European Commission on Cyber Security (Brussels), and organised jointed by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Euro-Gulf Information Centre (EGIC).