Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR) 6372 views

Established in 1968, the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR), Cape Town, South Africa, has a long history of policy research, training, mediation, and facilitation that builds on experiences garnered over the past five decades.

Since 2003, CCR has worked on a pan-continental basis to strengthen the capacity of African institutions and actors to manage conflicts and build peace. It has also sought to influence and contribute positively to policy and academic debates on African security and governance issues through providing an impartial space for key stakeholders to engage critically and freely in these discussions.

Overall, the Centre aims to contribute towards a just and sustainable peace in Africa by promoting constructive, creative, and cooperative approaches to conflict resolution; building the capacity of local, national, and regional bodies to influence peacebuilding in their own communities; and providing support for African interests to be represented effectively in continental and global decision-making fora.

In this respect, CCR's niche is defined by its work in peacebuilding and region-building, as well as by its synergistic combination of policy and practice, focusing on a small number of carefully selected and complementary themes. The Centre remains among a handful of African policy and capacity-building institutions with high-level convening power, and a solid track record in empowering actors at the national and regional levels.

Since 2003, CCR's Africa Programme has been guided by a pan-African vision. Twenty percent of the organisation's staff and 50 percent of its board are from countries as diverse as Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Uganda.

Mission

The Centre for Conflict Resolution aims to contribute towards a just and sustainable peace in Africa by promoting constructive, creative and co-operative approaches to the resolution of conflict through training, policy development, research, and capacity-building.

Vision

CCR is a pan-African organisation playing a leading role in contributing towards the resolution of conflict and the reduction of violence in Africa.

Goals

• To document and disseminate the results of CCR's policy research and peacebuilding activities;
• To facilitate the development of skills by individuals, groups and institutions for managing political and social conflict at local, national, and regional levels;
• To initiate and contribute to local, national, and regional peace and conflict transformation initiatives;
• To influence policy development through the production of academically-rigorous research and best practice;
• To promote democratic values, as well as public awareness and practice of constructive conflict resolution;
• To contribute to the development of African researchers and practitioners in the field of conflict resolution;
• To support the research, training, and policymaking capacity of state institutions; and
• To analyse critically post-apartheid South Africa's political, socio-economic and foreign policy challenges and to support efforts to integrate the country into the rest of Africa.