International Centre for Peace Initiatives

The International Centre for Peace Initiatives (ICPI) was created in Mumbai, India, 1990. It was established with the intent of it being a South Asian based NGO concentrating on progressive means for conflict resolution between governments and as an institution focusing on preventive diplomacy.

Peace Catalyst

The ICPI views itself as an innovative conceptualiser of methodologies leading to peace at global, regional and national levels. It looks to achive these goals by acting as a "catalyst in partnership with like-minded institutions" and by being a "social entrepreneur on the leading edge of the South Asian public policy agenda". [1]

It has often been the breaker of new pathways to peace making in South Asia. In the early 1990s it brought World Leaders together to try and design a new architecture for global security. In the mid 1990s it initiated the process of bringing current South asian political leaders together for conflict resoloution processes. In the late 1990s it designed means of bringing the owners and editors of indigenous language and regional media outlets together to foster understanding and trust.

Starting in 2000, the ICPI brought together experts from both India and Pakistan to work out peaceul solutions to their conflicts with outcomes palatable to both countries. They also started to publish jointly authored research papers that looked forward toward possible areas of dispute and to find solutions for them.

In 2002 the ICPI started the Strategic Foresight Group, a think tank that was intended to conceptualise answers to possible points of conflict in the future, initially focusing on India, Pakistan and West Asia, but with the intent of spreading out into other regions in the future.

Initiative and Partnerships

• Abolition 2000 - a partnership of over 2000 organisations in over 90 countries trying to implement a global ban on nuclear weapons.
• The Japan Center for Conflict Prevention's [2] - E-symposium 2001 for Conflict Resoloution.
• Paradigms of Conflict Resolution In South Asia - Univ of Karachi. [3]
• South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

Members

• Sundeep Waslekar (or Wesleker) - Founder
• Karan Sawhny - Director
• Ilmas Futehally - Assistant Director - Carnegie Council Fellow 2001-2002 [4]
• Shabnam Siddiqui