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Networking of asylum and refugee policy initiatives in Bavaria

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.

The OeVA - Oecumenical Planing-Comittee for the Intercultural Week in Germany (ÖVA - Ökumenische Vorbereitungsausschuss) prepares the annual intercultural week (IKW) which is taking place all over the country. It recommends content focuses, suggests a theme, carries out the annual, nationwide preparatory conference  offers materials available for the preparatory groups and organizes a central nationwide inaugural event.In the EPC 15 members are appointed from the churches. Up to six additional members are coopted from institutions, organizations and socially important areas.

What is the intercultural week?
The annual intercultural week (IKW) is an initiative of the German bishops' conference (DBK - Deutschen Bischofskonferenz), the Protestant church in Germany (EKD - Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland) and the Greek-orthodox Metropolie that takes place throughout all Germany. The intercultural week is held ince 1975 at the end of September and is supported by churches, local authority districts, welfare associations, trade unions, integration advisory boards and commissioned, migrant's organizations and initiative groups. In 2016 about 5,000 events were carried out in more than 500 towns and municipalities. The Refugee Day is a component of the intercultural week.