A conference on the political and humanitarian situation in the Horn and the Ogaden Region
October 16, 2009
Convened by
Ogaden Voice for Peace, and
Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice, University of San Diego
Location: Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Theatre
REGISTRATION Institute for Peace & Justice (IPJ) Rotunda 2:30pm - 3:15pm
WELCOME/INTRODUCTION (Co-sponsoring organizations)
Milburn Line (IPJ) and Abdi Mohamoud (OVP) 3:15pm - 3:35pm
“The Role of Advocacy in Changing Public Policy” 3:35pm - 3:45pm
Presenters: Members of Ogaden Voice for Peace
PANEL 1: Causes and consequences of conflict 3:45pm - 4:25pm
“Effective Third Party Engagement in Conflict Resolution”
Presenter: Charles F. (Chic) Dambach, President & CEO
Alliance for Peacebuilding
“The challenge of Finding Peace in the Ogaden Region: A Conflict Analysis”
Presenter: Hamse Warfa,
Executive Director
Institute for Horn of Africa Studies and Affairs
BREAK 4:25pm - 4:35pm
Question and Answer 4:35pm -4:40pm
PANEL 2: Human Rights 4:40pm - 5:15pm
“Plight of Refugees from the Ogaden Region”
Presenter:Fowsia Abdelkadir
Chairperson
Ogaden Human Rights Committee - Canada
“Captured in Ethiopia: An American nightmare”
Presenter: Rory Linnane-University of Wisconsin
Question and Answer 6:00pm - 6:10pm
“The Present and Future of Somalia” 6:10pm - 6:40pm
Presenter: The Honorable Ali Khalayf Galaydh
Former Prime Minister of Somalia
BREAK 6:40pm - 6:50pm
Question and Answer 6:50pm – 7:00pm
KEYNOTE ADDRESS: “U.S. Policies in the Horn of Africa” 6:50pm - 8:00pm
US Government Official
Office of East African Affairs
U.S. State Department
RECEPTION IPJ Rotunda 8:00pm - 9:00pm
“Working Towards a Lasting Peace in the Ogaden”
PRIVATE SESSION WITH COMMUNITY LEADERS
Convened by
Ogaden Voice for Peace and Institute for Horn of Africa Studies and Affairs
October 16, 2009
OPENING OF PRIVATE SESSION 9:15am - 9:30am
PRESENTATION: “Influencing Public Policy” 9:30am - 10:15am
Community Discussion
Adan Abdi Adar-Canada
ROUNDTABLE The Role of Communities 10:15am – 11:15am
Ahmed Sahid & Horseed Nooh
ROUNDTABLE What should be included in a resolution? 11:15am - 12:00pm
Huda Yusuf
ROUNDTABLE Lunch 12:00pm - 1:00pm
NEXT STEPS Next Steps 1:00pm - 1:30pm
CLOSING REMARKS 1:30pm - 1:45pm
Speaker biographies
Fowsia Abdulkadir has an MSW in social work with a concentration in Canadian Public Policy and a BSW from Carleton University in Canada. Ms. Abdulkadir received a graduate Certificate of Teaching English as Second Language (C.T.E.S.L) ), also from Carleton Univeristy; and a BA in Economics from Aligarh University in India. She currently works as a Program Evaluation & Performance Measurement Analyst at the Public Health Agency of Canada. In the international context, Ms. Abdulkadir’s research interests include gender-based analysis and gender mainstreaming as well as the role of women in governance, democratization, and conflict resolution in the Horn of Africa. In the national context, her research interests are in Canadian social policy analysis, particularly focusing on program and policy evaluation and public sector accountability issues. As an independent researcher, Ms. Abdulkadir has been researching immigrant and refugee women’s settlement issues, particularly exploring how these women re-negotiate their social identities in the context of intersecting issues of ethnicity, gender, and race. Ms. Abdulkadir has conducted extensive research in the areas of cross-cultural parenting, human rights, and immigrant and refugee settlement issues. In October 2007, she gave testimony to the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on African Affairs on the humanitarian tragedy in the Ogaden.
Charles F. (Chic) Dambach became President and CEO of the Alliance for Peacebuilding in November 2005. AfP is a network of private and public organizations dedicated to build sustainable peace and security worldwide. The organization facilitates collaboration and coordination among conflict prevention and resolution professionals, civil society, international organizations, and government agencies.
Previous national CEO positions include the National Peace Corps Association, Operation Respect, and National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies (now Americans for the Arts). He is also a writer, lecturer and consultant on nonprofit governance. He is the North American representative to the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, board chair for the Coalition for American Leadership Abroad (COLEAD), and a member of the board of the J. William and Harriet Fulbright Center. In addition, he serves on the board of CityLit Project in Baltimore.
In 1998 Chic helped form and lead a team of returned Peace Corps Volunteers to work informally with the leaders of Eritrea and Ethiopia to help end their border war. The team also facilitated joint meetings among the leaders of the combatants in the Congo civil war and participated in the Inter-Congolese Dialogue leading to the formation of a coalition government and the election of the official government. In addition, he served as an official in the 1988, 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games. He was named the Distinguished Alumnus in 2004 by the Oklahoma State University College of Arts and Sciences, and he received the International Platform Association’s Global Coalition Peace Award in 2001. He was inducted into the Worthington (Ohio) Schools Hall of Fame in 2007.
Abdi Mohamoud was born in the Ogaden and moved to San Diego as a refugee from Ethiopia in 1982. He attended Crawford High School and then studied Business Administration/Finance at San Diego State University where he obtained his Bachelors of Science. Mr. Mohamoud also holds a Master’s degree in Management from the University of Redland’s School of Business. He completed a certificate program at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in their advanced Executive Management program. In 2007, Mr. Mohamoud completed a graduate certificate program at the United States Institute of Peace on preventing violent conflicts. Fluent in Somali and English, Mr. Mohamoud has spent the past ten years in a leadership role within the East African community in San Diego through his work as founder and Executive Director of the NGO, Horn of Africa. Through a combination of hard work, skill, and determination, Mr. Mohamoud has helped Horn of Africa become one of San Diego’s most respected and effective refugee assistance organizations. In 2004, The San Diego Metropolitan Magazine named Mr. Mohamoud one of San Diego’s top 40 under-40 business leaders.
In 2004, Mr. Mohamoud was instrumental in establishing The Ogaden Voice for Peace, an advocacy group that promotes the peaceful settlement of one of Africa’s deadliest conflicts in the past half century. Over the past three years, he has been at the forefront of the Diaspora community in bringing the suffering of the region to the attention of the international community, including many members of the U.S. Congress.
Milburn Line joined the IPJ in August 2009, following more than 15 years of work in international missions and projects, principally in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia and Guatemala, as well as shorter periods in Africa, China, Latin America and the Middle East. His range of experience, from working with local communities, human rights defenders and refugees to international missions and national authorities at the highest levels, shapes his vision for peace and justice initiatives that will attempt to connect the IPJ from local scenarios through to advocacy efforts at a policy level. He will work with the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies to integrate efforts by the institute, school, university and greater San Diego community in the promotion of peace and justice initiatives worldwide.
Line most recently served as director of a $37 million human rights program in Colombia funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a project designed to prevent and respond to human rights abuses and protect vulnerable groups, as well as support civil society organizations to monitor human rights and public policies and advocate for victims’ rights to truth, justice and reparations.
Prior to his work in Colombia, Line worked with the Club of Madrid, an organization of former heads of state and government that addresses democratization challenges with national authorities at the highest levels. From 2001 to 2004, Line was the director of a USAID-funded Human Rights and Reconciliation Program in Guatemala. During the 1990s he worked with the Office of the High Representative and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Bosnia and Herzegovina; the United Nations Human Rights Verification Mission in Guatemala; Catholic Relief Services and the Columbia University Center for the Study of Human Rights.
Line holds a master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University and a B.A. with Highest Distinction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has done coursework at Wai Jiao Xue Yuan (Foreign Affairs College) in China and Universidad de Sevilla in Spain.
Hamse Warfa was born in Somalia. He moved with his family to the United States in 1994, after escaping Somalia’s civil war and spending almost three years living in a refugee camp in Kenya. He attended Crawford High School in San Diego, graduated from San Diego State with a degree in political science and received a Master of Science in Organizational Management and Leadership from Springfield College. Last year, Warfa completed an advanced graduate-level certificate program on the Foundations of Conflict Analysis from the United States Institute of Peace. As program officer with Alliance Healthcare Foundation, he manages grants, providing technical assistance to grantees and prospective grantees. Prior to his current position, he spent eight years as Associate Executive Director for Horn of Africa, a refugee assistance organization whose mission is to provide culturally and linguistically relevant services to East African refugees and immigrants. He continues his affiliation with Horn of Africa region as a founding member of Ogaden Voice for Peace and the current Executive Director of the Institute for Horn of Africa Studies and Affairs. Hamse is also the current chairperson for the San Diego Refugee Forum, a professional association of organizations and advocates serving all populations fleeing violence and persecution and taking refuge in San Diego. Last month, San Diego Metropolitan Magazine selected Hamse as one of San Diego’s outstanding young business and civic leaders.
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