Online Course on Transforming Civil Conflicts

Recent history has witnessed a rapid increase in the number of violent, civil conflicts. Professional organisations have learnt that competence in conflict transformation is essential to effectively interact with the breakdown in social cohesion, community disintegration, marginalisation, and increasing social injustice that characterise situations of conflict. The Network University has therefore developed an online course designed to assist individuals and organisations whose work involves positively interacting with conflict. The objective of the course, is to help participants to place their own experiences in a larger framework and to get familiar with conflict transformation strategies.

Questions at the heart of the Transforming Civil Conflicts course are : What are the reasons for civil conflicts to occur ? What kind of processes accompany violent outburst ? How can these dynamics be transformed ? In this “dossier” you can find more information about some of these tools as well as more information about online learning as a tool in conflict transformation.

The courses are taught and supervised entirely on the internet in English. The courses focus on creating a shared learning experience and become part of a learning community of professionals, academics, researchers, students and recognised experts. This is achieved by using a variety of interactive methods that stimulate you to think critically on the why, when and how to apply conflict transformation. These methods are complemented by weekly assignments and intensive online discussions.

In this “dossier” you will find some of the experiences and analyses that participants have shared over the last five years. Participants come from a wide variety of countries and very different backgrounds : a Tamil refugee from Sri Lanka, a program assistant for a Dutch development organisation, a Kenyan government official and a Sudanese student and employee of a local NGO working for peace as well as a senior lecturer of the Mbarara University in Uganda.

For more information about the online course “Transforming Civil Conflicts” you can contact Claske Dijkema, who is its course director : claske@modop.org

Fiches du dossier