WANA Fellows Participate in the Third Annual Hague Peace Conference

Last week, WANA Research Fellows Kim Wilkinson and Emily Hawley attended the Third Annual Peace Conference, hosted by The Hague University of Applied Sciences, in the Netherlands, after being selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants.

The Third Annual Hague Peace Conference has a unique and poignant history. The Conference was originally intended to occur one hundred years ago, in 1915, as a summit between European leaders and influencers on how a just and sustainable peace in the region could be achieved. However, the outbreak of the First World War prevented the Conference from going ahead. Last week, almost a century to the date of the original scheduling, the Conference invited young delegates from over 30 countries to come together to share their fresh thoughts and opinions on how peace can be spread in a world prone to ever more turbulent conflicts and war.

The focus of the Conference was the current generation of students and their ideas about effective ways of peacekeeping and improving human rights. Students and recent graduates from all over the world were invited the opportunity to write essays about these subjects, and the one hundred students who wrote the best essays were invited to attend the conference. WANA is delighted to announce that the essay written by Kim Wilkinson, on the subject of augmenting early warning systems to help inform institutions and the international community about the potential of the outbreak of conflict, was selected as one of the top 15 essays at the event, and will be published in a forthcoming book comprised of the top twenty essays contributed to the Conference. 

The topics addressed during the three-day event included the humanitarian law of war and how the international community can devote its efforts to maintaining peace. The Keynote speakers at the event included Nico Schrijver, Professor of Public International Law at the University, who spoke on the subject of improving the decision-making process of the UN Security Council, and Joris Voorhoeve, the former Dutch Defence Minister and current head of the International Peace, Justice & Security research group, who spoke on the prevention of war and the post-conflict peace process, and encouraged the attendees to have a “critical brain, but optimistic heart” when it came to their work.

Photo courtesy of Third Annual Hague Peace Conference