Peace/conflict

The experience of the peaceful "Wende" in 1989 awakened in many people the hope that a Germany without a military could be possible. This hope led people from various civil initiatives in Halle together to found the Friedenskreis in 1990. The Friedenskreis Halle e.V. is an group of people of differing world views, religions, nationalities and political affiliations. We see peace not as a state of being or as a distant goal, and not simply as the absence of war. Peace is for us a means to a common, just and non-violent life together in diversity, where the personal development and liberty of the individual is made possible. The conception of this life together is always a new experience. This is why we try to explore, find and pass on new ways of doing so, while never forgetting to question the same. We are consequently involved in education, peace-associated activities and in projects for civil conflict resolution on both the domestic and international levels. Our work is made possible by paid and voluntary staff and carried through donations and public subsidies. Our current programme and projects

• Seminars and educational programmes in the areas of communication, conflict resolution, mediation, dealing with violence and learning how to speak out
• Consulting for initiatives and projects
• Lectures and seminars on current peace-associated themes
• Civil conflict resolution through the development of an educational and encounter centre in Jajce, Bosnia.
• Work camps, youth encounters and volunteer work in the countries of the Balkans.
• Counselling on military service and conscientious objection
• Cooperation in activities and campaigns against militarisation
• Coordination of the initiative "Zivilcourage: Bündnis für Gewaltlosigkeit, Demokratie und Toleranz in Halle"

The Open School 21 offers students in and around Hamburg (Germany) a broad program for global education. It aims to raise their awareness of global correlations and realities. At the same time concrete options for action are created for and together with students that enable them to make a self-determined contribution to a sustainable development and more global justice. In the Open School there is the experience that one can make an important contribution to justice, environmental protection, peacekeeping as well as poverty reduction by oneself and that success in these areas is possible.

Open School 21 offers about 40 different workshops, project days, city walks and harbor tours on request. Topics of the Open School are globalization, human rights, poverty reduction, world agricultural trade, climatic change, flight and migration, fair trade, sustainable
consumption, child labor, colonial history as well as living conditions and environments in different countries.

The program of The Open School 21 is directed to school students from every grade and school form. The activities take place at the harbor, in different parts of the city, in the education center “Werkstatt 3” or in one’s own school.

The events are held by self-employed experts with abroad and migration experiences that come from the field of development cooperation, arts and science. For teachers, the Open School 21 offers consultation for global education, support for day-projects as well as materials for preparation and follow-up of events.

Arche noVa is an aid organisation that sets up humanitarian aid projects (Syrien, Irak, Libanon, Ukraine), development cooperation projects (Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippinen, Uganda, Äthiopien, Somalia, Mali, Kenia) as well as development education in the form of school projects on topics such as ‘water’, ‘world trade and globalisation’, ‘(international) conflicts’ and ‘humanitarian aid’.

Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK) at the Department of Political Science at the University of Heidelberg

The HIIK is a registered charitable organization which devotes its work to research, documentation and analysis of national and international conflicts. The HIIK was founded in 1991 to continue the work of the research project entitled "Conflicts since 1945" headed by Prof. Dr. Frank R. Pfetsch at the Department of Political Science at the University of Heidelberg.

The HIIK publishes a report called Conflict Barometer every December. This report describes the recent trends in global conflicts. It is divided into five world regions and shows all the current conflicts in detailed tables combined with short descriptive text elements. In addition it includes global trends in the conflict behaviour of the different states, as well as the measures that were taken for conflict resolution in the respective year. Coups d'état, attempted coups d'état, acts of international terrorism as well as new measures of conflict resolution are also recorded.

In their Cosimo database, the HIIK records information about the political conflicts that have taken place since 1945. Since 2003, a relational database system has been in use that has revised, updated and expanded the entire set of data of the 1.3 version of the Cosimo conflict database. Today, Cosimo 2.0 contains information about more than 500 conflicts with more than 2,500 instances that have complicated their resolution. The new version enables a delineation of the detailed conflict development in its violent and non-violent phases with the help of the systematic recording of the individual phases of fighting. Furthermore, the database includes extensive details about the structure of governmental and non-governmental participants in the conflict recorded by years.

The HIIK creates regional and global abstracts, counts, and analyses from the Cosimo data base for journalists, researchers, institutes, public institutions, and everyone who is interested in conflict management.

Greenpeace is an international environmental organization which fights with direct actions free of power for the protection of the natural resources of human and nature and for justice for all living beings. Greenpeace works on the subjects of seas, agriculture, rubbish, forests, climate changes, biodiversity, energy transition, the arctic, environment & economy. Greenpeace was founded in 1971 and today it is represented in more than 40 countries. More than three million people support Greenpeace worldwide, out of that are about 590,000 conveyor members in Germany. Greenpeace works independently of governments, parties and economic interest groups. Greenpeace doesn’t get any financial help from the EU or UN for their projects.