Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research
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The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, is a research-based think tank in Sweden. It is a global network with about 75 TFF Associates working for "peace by peaceful means", the basic norm of the United Nations Charter [1] and of the philosophy of Mohandas K. Gandhi.
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[edit] History and governance
The foundation was established in 1985 by Jan Øberg and Christina Spännar in Lund, Sweden, as an independent not-for-profit foundation registered in accordance with Swedish law. At the time, Øberg was director of the the Lund University Peace Research Institute, LUPRI, which was closed down by the university in 1989.
TFF is governed by a Board of at least six members and conducts its activities with shifting teams of experts composed from its pool of TFF Associates. TFF is all-volunteer and a network rather than an institute. Neither being a state or university institute nor a movement, it preserves its independence and finances its activities by donations from ordinary citizens worldwide and receives no governmental and corporate organizational support.
[edit] Goals
- to promote conflict analysis and conflict mitigation as well as peace-building and reconciliation;
- to increase the general understanding of the potentials of non-violence in thinking, action and policy-making;
- to go beyond academic research and apply its knowledge to concrete conflicts with the aim of alleviating suffering;
- to provide alternatives such as perspectives of peace journalism to general news media coverage of conflicts where it works;
- to provide policy-makers and citizens alike with peace plans and other materials that combine innovative thinking and theories with workable, practical solutions.
[edit] Research, education and outreach
TFF's research work concentrates on conflict-resolution, peace studies, non-violence, reconciliation, world order,reform of the United Nations, nuclear disarmament and abolition, alternative security and defence studies.
TFF's publications are linked below. Among those its Associates have contributed to are Dietrich Fischer, Wilhelm Nolte and Jan Oberg (1989) Winning Peace. Strategies and Ethics for a Nuclear-Free World; Jan Øberg (ed., 1992), Nordic Security in the 1990s; A Vision of Hope. The 50th Anniversary of the United Nations (1995), Chadwick F. Alger (ed., 1998), The Future of the United Nations System; Metta Spencer (ed., 2000), The Lessons of Yugoslavia; Robert A. Hackett and Yuezhi Zhao (ed., 2005), Democratizing Global Media; M. Intriligator, A. Nikitin and Majid Tehranian (ed., 2005), Eurasia: A New Peace Agenda, and Johan Galtung and Charles Webel (ed., 2007), Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies and Lester Kurtz (ed., 1999 and 2009) Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict.
TFF combines on-the-ground research, active listening to all parties, academic and public education as well as advocacy.
Over the years, it has worked in a series of conflict regions such as all parts of former Yugoslavia, Georgia, Burundi and Iraq. Its teams carry out conflict diagnosis through repeated visits and interviews, produce peace plans, provide education and skills training, promote reconciliation or related activities.
It has worked with members of governments in Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Burundi and Iraq. It has mediated, facilitated reconciliation and provided training in co-operation with e.g. the Council of Europe and United Nations peacekeeping missions such as UNPROFOR, UNTAES and UNPREDEP and numerous non-governmental organizations (NGO) such as IOM, International Organization for Migration, the Norwegian Refugee Council and local civil society organizations in conflict zones. It has served as goodwill (unpaid) advisers to Dr. Ibrahim Rugova as well as three consecutive governments in Belgrade in the early 1990s.
Examples of outreach: CNN on Kosovo, OneWorld, Taipei Times, International Herald Tribune and Christian Science Monitor.
[edit] Associates
Among the foundations's Associates are: Richard A. Falk, Johan Galtung, Brian Urquhart, Michel Chossudovsky, Riane Eisler, Hazel Henderson, Ken Coates, David Loy, and Daisaku Ikeda.
Sir Paul McCartney is Honorary Friend of TFF.
