Islamabad - NUST Centre for International Peace and Stability, and Hanns Seidel Foundation, Pakistan on Thursday signed a research project agreement focusing post conflict rehabilitation and development in North Waziristan.
Funded by the HSF, the year-long project is titled, “Unravelling contextual realities in post-conflict North Waziristan Agency (NWA): Understanding displacement, resettlement and post-conflict development.”
As an academic think-tank, CIPS ventures into developing the understandings of contemporary peace and conflict dynamics to emerge with pragmatic and unprecedented perspectives to address the most ruinous issues related to international and national development. This research undertaking is a pioneering effort by an academic research team to explore the ground realities in NWA on the aforementioned thematic areas mentioned in the title of the project. It is focused on post-conflict rehabilitation and development, which is hailed as one of the most recent developments to peace efforts in NWA. Andreas Duerr, Acting Director HSF, signed the agreement on behalf of HSF and Dr Nassar Ikram (Pro-Rector RIC, NUST), Dr Tughral Yamin (Associate Dean, CIPS) and Dr Makki (Assistant Professor, CIPS) were the signatories representing NUST. Dr Makki and Dr Bakare Najimdeen (HoD, CIPS) are principal investigators for the research project. A day earlier, NUST CIPS and HSF jointly convened a roundtable titled, “Legal and Socio-cultural Discourse on Human Migration” at NUST’s main campus. The roundtable was the first of a series of three roundtable conferences. Their overarching aim is to produce a blueprint or policy framework that contributes in devising Pakistan’s migration management strategies. Davide Terzi, chief of mission, International Organization for Migration, Pakistan, graced the occasion with his presence.
The roundtable brought together speakers with expertise in international and national law, academic backgrounds in migration studies and, in particular, practitioners dealing with refugees in Pakistan. They emphasised on the need to arrive at more pragmatic and implementable steps concerning the various manifestations of human migrants.
