A citizen of Burkina Faso, where she was born to an Iranian family
Her father was from a minority in Iran that was persecuted
After his passport expired, while working in Burkina Faso for the United Nations, the Iranian embassy did not issue a new passport, making the family stateless.
Currently lives in Brussels with her husband and two children
Because you cannot go somewhere and start something in the name of helping without engaging with the people in that village who know what needs to happen
You have to take into account the human dimension in order to have any effect
There can be a bit of an allergy to the concept of peacebuilding
The initial mandate for the pilot initiative of the Education For Peace Institute was small.
13 autonomous ministers of education in a country of less than 4 million people illustrated the level of division
You must address the fundamental assumption about the other, the dichotomy between us and them
You must create safe spaces that allow a reexamination of this dehumanization
It starts from within and feeds into systems and structures and human interaction
Unity in the context of diversity
Preserving identities within the collective
You have to create a safe climate
Peacebuilding is engaging individuals, primary groups and intergroups, systems, and structures and individuals, in a creative and inclusive process to begin to establish or reestablish relations
In a fragile environment there had to be an ongoing collaborative partnership with the government
There needed to be engagement and ownership for the institutions
Within the international community there was pessimism as to what was possible to accomplish within the area; this had a negative impact
I wanted to create a space for the practitioners and members of the international community to allow the conversation to unfold, you could call it training
You must think through the frame of engagement
The work happens before you get anyone in the room together.
Successes allowed for people to expand their ideas of what would be possible, while dealing with the realities of a country in transition
There is an emerging understanding that for processes of reconstruction we cannot put aside the human aspect; the human aspect comes first
Columbia Teachers College did a pilot to attempt to come up with ways to measure success for the Education for Peace project
If you truly want to engage in peacebuilding, you need to plan for a sustained presence
Unicef has a mechanism on the ground for sustained presence
Unicef is attempting to position and situate peacebuilding as an important element of the way that all programs are rolled out.
Designing a training architecture for the Unicef staff so that from the beginning staff are able to integrate peacebuilding into their work
Engage the communities in a consultative process, and create a mechanism to manage conflict issues
Come into peacebuilding with an attitude of humble learning
This field has not reached perfection
Be kind to yourself and be willing to learn and to explore and experiment
Have conversations
Listen to your inner voice
Peacebuilding is a topic which every one of us has something to say about; it touches the heart of our humanness
The clash of opinions in the field is not a threat, it is how things grow
Biography
Naghmeh Sobhani is a collaborative negotiation, post-conflict peacebuilding and conflict prevention consultant with expertise in developing and monitoring large-scale initiatives especially within fragile divided zones
Training and facilitating participatory inclusive processes involving disputing groups
Worked for 12 years of leadership experience in Education for Peace Institute of the Balkans
Other organizations include UNDP-Crimea, UNICEF, OXFAM, UNESCO Northern Ireland and WINPEACE-Greece UN Secretariat
Attended LANDEGG International University in Switzerland, where she majored in leadership and management, minor in consultation and conflict resolution
Trained in principal-based negotiation by the Harvard program of Negotiation