Preparatory Meeting
Palais du Luxembourg, Paris
Friday 20th and Saturday 21st April 2001

Rector's Conclusions
SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS (UPEACE Rector, Martin Lees):

At the end of the April 20-21 Preparatory Meeting, the Rector of the University for Peace summed up the meeting and drew conclusions as follows.

An important thrust of MPI's training work will be to help build local capacities in the developing world, chiefly by educating the educators. But MPI should also work through conferences and discussions aimed at engaging the people who are guiding the media -- such as parliamentarians, regulators and other actors of the civil society – and at helping them improve the entire media environment. The goal: to facilitate the operation of free, independent, responsible media more likely to decide to play a constructive role in helping prevent conflict.

The academic program will be built up progressively. It will begin with a number of short courses, and, in cooperation with other institutions and exchanges of materials and expertise, will progressively lead to a fuller curriculum and possibly to the establishment of a full M.A. program.

In the realm of research, the aim of MPI will not be to create a vast research institute with dozens of researchers sitting in one place. A lot of high-quality research is already being conducted in many places around the world. The problem is that it does not have the impact it should on real-world policy decisions.

The research needs that MPI would fulfil, therefore, are:

1. to ensure a wider, more results-oriented dissemination of knowledge -- most urgently and effectively by exploiting MPI's and the University for Peace's high-level contacts within the UN system, including the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the Department of Public Information, and (via the UPEACE president, a deputy undersecretary-general of the UN), the Office of the Secretary-General. MPI will track plans, operations and actual needs of UN peacekeeping very closely, with a view to doing research that will prove of real and timely value to UN policy-makers, as well as to those of regional peacekeeping organizations. To draw practical lessons, this will include many case studies.
2. to build networks focused on action-oriented definitions of problems that will pull together the best research brains from anywhere in the world. This is where the MPI research function might be most original and effective. It would be fundamentally in the network business, using modern communications technology for virtual collaborations.
3. to create original teaching materials tailored to the timely, reality-based courses which MPI plans. A major focus of such materials will be on case studies as a means of building up scholarship and knowledge which can be useful not just to policy-makers, but to students and journalists.