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The International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution on Online Dispute Resolution continues to expand its sponsors and partners for the event.

Interested corporations should be aware that sponsorships are conducted with the Royal Roads University Foundation, and are fully tax deductible.

For information on becoming a sponsor - donor - partner please see:

http://odrforum2008.icann.org/host

The Forum welcomes the attendance of Ambassador Patricia Durrant (Jamaica) former Assistant Secretary General (Ombudsman) as a particpant in the Forum. As a past member of the UN's Security Council, we look forward to her particpation in discussions on ODR and Peace.
The Forum gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Canadian International Development Agency as a funding partner for travel.
THE FIRST UN OMBUDSMAN, MS. M. PATRICIA DURRANT
(JULY 2002 TO JULY 2007)
On 26 April 2002, Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Ms. M. Patricia Durrant of Jamaica as the first United Nations Ombudsman - an office created by the General Assembly at the end of 2001. Ms. Durrant has represented her country at the UN for some 15 years, both as Deputy Permanent Representative (1983-1987) and Permanent Representative (1995-2002).
Between those two stints, she served as Jamaica's Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany and non-resident Ambassador to the Holy See, Israel, the Netherlands and Switzerland (1987-1992) - as well as Director-General of Jamaica's Foreign Ministry (1992-1995).
As Jamaica's Ambassador to the United Nations, Ms. Durrant served on the Security Council from 2000 to 2001. She was also President of the high-level committee on technical cooperation among developing countries from 1999 to 2001. In 2002, she chaired both the Preparatory Committee for the General Assembly's Special Session on Children and the Consultative Committee for the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
A career diplomat since 1971, Ms. Durrant was also Vice-Chair of the Preparatory Committee for the Assembly's Special Session on Population and Development (1999). Prior to her first UN assignment, she was in the Political Division of Jamaica's Foreign Ministry, as Assistant Director (1977-1980) and Deputy Director (1980-1983). She was also Minister-Counsellor at Jamaica's Permanent Mission to the Organization of American States (1974-1977).
Ms. Durrant brings a wealth of experience and sensitivity to the position of UN Ombudsman. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Diploma in International Relations from the University of the West Indies, as well as a Diploma in Overseas Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Among other honours, she is the recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award from the World Association of Former United Nations Interns and Fellows.
As United Nations Ombudsman, Ms. Durrant served a non-renewable, five-year term at the level of Assistant Secretary-General.

10 March 2008 by ICT4Peace Foundation

The ICT4Peace Foundation today entered into a partnership to strengthen the 2008 International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution . Victoria, British Columbia serves as the host city for the ODR Forum and this important conference will held at venues including Royal Roads University, and the Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific on Vancouver Island June 18-19, 2008.

The Forum in Victoria will build on the research, applications and field development discussed at other international ODR meetings and workshops that were held in Geneva (2002 and 2003), Edinburgh (2003), Melbourne (2004), Bologna (2005), Brussels (2005), Cairo (2006), and Palo Alto (2007), Liverpool (2007) and Hong Kong (2007).

The Forum will consist of two days of plenary sessions and breakout sessions. The Forum brings together the world's leading practitioners, academics, students, and civil society to discuss the resolution of disputes using online technologies. These disputes may range from b2c (Business to consumer) to the prevention of human rights violations in conflict regions, to reconciliation of opposing groups in armed conflict, to disputes over intellectual property on the internet. It also brings together the leading technology developers who design conflict resolution platforms for use legal, commercial, or insurance related disputes (i.e. PayPal).

The Foundation's participation will ensure that its significant work on ICT4Peace and in other areas is leveraged to strengthen deliberations at the ODR Forum.

http://www.ict4peace.org/view_blog_posts-1-v-123.html

Learn more about ICT4Peace at:http://www.ict4peace.org/home-1.html

Technology and peace: What's the connection?
In an ideal world, we'd all find the peace connection in whatever we do. One technologist hopes his group ICT4Peace can make a difference in world crises.
By David Kirkpatrick, senior editor
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NEW YORK (Fortune) -- As 2008 gets underway we don't have peace. (Just look at this depressing list in Wikipedia of ongoing conflicts worldwide.) But Daniel Stauffacher doesn't get depressed. Instead he thinks technology can help. This entrepreneur and Swiss diplomat leads a recently-formed group called the ICT for Peace Foundation, which aims to promote the latest digital and Internet tools for the people who truly need them most. (ICT stands for Information and Communication Technology.)

Geneva-based ICT4Peace, as it is known, is funded by the Swiss and Norwegian governments, along with private foundations, and has set itself a goal of improving the use of IT by the many groups working to alleviate humanitarian crises. It may seem a modest goal, compared to stopping war itself, but it is vexing enough.

While there are many humanitarian relief efforts underway around the world, Stauffacher says in most cases technology is not used effectively. The problem, he has concluded, is more often one of leadership than of a lack of technology itself. While standards for communicating data between groups are insufficient, on that technologists can make steady progress. The bigger challenge is making relief and peace groups want to use them to better collaborate in the field.

"The IT person has been telling the head of an operation what they could and couldn't know: 'We don't have that information,' or, 'There are no standards for sharing information.' But that's baloney!" he pronounced during a recent breakfast in New York. "This is a question of leadership - of the leader of a relief group determining what they need to know in a crisis situation. What are the human needs and who has what resources?"

But leaders of UN agencies and NGOs have typically not put much emphasis on IT. So ICT4Peace is putting a priority on educating them. In a crisis the UN, NGOs, and often military and business groups need to be able to communicate quickly about needs and how best to collaborate. Chaos typically reigns after a disaster or in a war zone. Relief often goes to the wrong places, and groups resist sharing information. Turf battles are common.

"But these turfs can be broken," says Stauffacher. "We need to name and shame. Perhaps we need something like a Moody's rating system - which could say, for example, this is an excellent NGO which is good at sharing information."

In the Web 2.0 age it's easy to imagine new ways for recipients and aid groups to better communicate, using cellphones, wikis, social networks, and other simple free tools. "Maybe you can have a feedback system for the recipients," says Stauffacher. "A kid in Darfur with a cellphone camera can go into a hospital and show that the supplies have not arrived, or that they sent outdated yogurt. And the old lady in the village who was supposed to get food or shelter should be able to say if what she got was valuable or useless."

While it's not intended for responders, if you type "crisis in Darfur" into the amazing downloadable Google Earth software, you can get a sense of the kinds of systems that are possible to keep track of crises.

ICT4Peace is working closely with, among others, the first Chief Information Technology Officer of the United Nations, Choi Soon-hong, just appointed last summer. Microsoft and Oracle, among others, are contributing resources.

Along with the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development (led by former Intel CEO Craig Barrett), ICT4Peace sponsored a meeting at the UN in mid-November to raise awareness of the need for IT collaboration among aid groups. Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, an ICT4Peace board member who also heads a peacebuilding group called the Crisis Management Initiative, opened the meeting, which was attended by top diplomats from Russia, France, the EU, and Switzerland as well as leaders of many UN agencies. Though there were a lot of the usual windy truisms which characterize many UN meetings, the session ended with a commitment to continue such dialogues at least twice a year in New York.

"The first step is to get the house in order within the UN family," Stauffacher says. "Then we can start to engage with the U.S. Department of Defense, with the EU, NATO, the African Union, Latin American peacekeeping forces, and development agencies."

Who better than a Swiss guy to try to play the neutral role helping to bring so many often fractious parties together? As he says "Peace is a nice word. Everybody wants to build peace. But the question is 'What can you bring to the table?'"

There is a website now for updates on the President's condition:

http://www.ramos-horta.org/

Other news can be found here:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=timor&ie=UTF-8&scoring=n

East Timor president wounded in attack
Last Updated: Sunday, February 10, 2008 | 9:20 PM ET
The Associated Press
Rebel soldiers attacked President Jose Ramos-Horta's house in East Timor early Monday, wounding him in the stomach. The Nobel Peace laureate was undergoing surgery, but the gravity f the injury was not clear, a presidential adviser said.

East Timor television reported that Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao's home also came under fire but that no one was hurt, raising the possibility that the rebels may have been attempting a coup.

East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta was wounded by rebel soldiers on Sunday. He's shown here in 2006.
(Firdia Lisanwati/Associated Press) The events plunged the recently independent nation into renewed uncertainty after violence in 2006 killed 37 people, displaced more than 150,000 others and led to the collapse of the government.

Ramos-Horta was being operated on at an Australian army hospital in the capital, Dili, presidential adviser Agusto Zunior told the Associated Press.

Two cars carrying rebels passed Ramos-Horta's house on the outskirts of the capital around 7 a.m. local time and began shooting, army spokesman Maj. Domingos da Camara said. Guards returned fire, he said.

Rebel leader killed

Rebel soldiers attacked President Jose Ramos-Horta's house in East Timor early Monday, wounding him in the stomach. The Nobel Peace laureate was undergoing surgery, but the gravity f the injury was not clear, a presidential adviser said.

East Timor television reported that Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao's home also came under fire but that no one was hurt, raising the possibility that the rebels may have been attempting a coup.

East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta was wounded by rebel soldiers on Sunday. He's shown here in 2006.
(Firdia Lisanwati/Associated Press) The events plunged the recently independent nation into renewed uncertainty after violence in 2006 killed 37 people, displaced more than 150,000 others and led to the collapse of the government.

Ramos-Horta was being operated on at an Australian army hospital in the capital, Dili, presidential adviser Agusto Zunior told the Associated Press.

Two cars carrying rebels passed Ramos-Horta's house on the outskirts of the capital around 7 a.m. local time and began shooting, army spokesman Maj. Domingos da Camara said. Guards returned fire, he said.

Rebel leader killed

Continue Article

Notorious rebel leader Alfredo Reinado was killed in the attack, as was one of Ramos-Horta's guards, da Camara said.

Reinado was due to go on trial in absentia for his alleged role in several deadly shootings involving police and military units during the violence in 2006. He had evaded capture since then and refused repeated pleas by the government to surrender.

Australian-led troops restored calm following the 2006 turmoil and peaceful elections were held in which Ramos-Horta was elected president. But low-level violence has continued in the country of one million people since then.

Deposed prime minister Mari Alkatiri has maintained Ramos-Horta's government was illegitimate. His political party immediately condemned Monday's attack in a statement released to the media.

East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, gained independence in 2002 after voting to break free from more than two decades of brutal Indonesian occupation in a UN-sponsored ballot.

Ramos-Horta shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with countryman Bishop Carlos Belo for leading a nonviolent struggle against the occupation.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/02/10/president-timor.html

Please visit Dr. Ramos Horta's web page: http://www.ramos-horta.org/

His Excellency, Dr. Jose Ramos Horta, President of East Timor - Nobel Peace Proze Laureate 1996, and Dr. Vinton Cerf, the Father of the Internet, have both been confirmed as the Forum's Keynote Speakers. Both Dr. Cerf and Dr. Ramos Horta will be presented with Honourary Doctorates from Royal Roads University on June 20, 2008. http://myrru.royalroads.ca/convocation

Congratulations to both degrees honorees.

Now that Hong Kong is complete, I invite ODR colleagues to consider the 7th Forum. I would encourage you to provide me with input on the agenda, or proposed topics of conversation for the Forum.

I would be very pleased to receive suggestions for particpants on two panels: ODR and the Environment, and ODR and First Nations.

The 6th International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution has ended. We must thank our local hosts, and forum Chair, Christopher To, for putting on a very successful international event. There was a very informative program, with an interesting focus on the use of ODR in Asia. It was a pleasure for me to meet with ODR colleagues, and to meet with new practitioners and academics.

I hope you find this resource useful and informative.