It also facilitates the development of policy-relevant framework to mainstream and institutionalise peace and conflict studies at tertiary institutions.
Study programs will be available in areas such as international business, sustainable development, international relations and conflict studies.
Francis is UNESCO Chair of African Peace and Conflict Studies in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford.
The UNESCO Chair in Africa Peace and Conflict Studies works with partners on the continent to build a critical mass of expertise in this area.
The purpose of the UNESCO Chair is to promote an integrated system of research, education, training, capacity building, information and documentation in the field of African peace and conflict studies.
Looking at the whole field of climate-conflict studies, he said, a key was to understand the reality of what might link short- or long-term climatic change to outbreaks of conflict.
He has facilitated the introduction, development and implementation of fifteen undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes in Peace and Conflict Studies, Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution at African universities in 10 countries, including the establishment of four specialist peace and conflict management centres.
This work studies competition and conflict on every level, from the interpersonal to the international.
The main objectives are to explore how universities could benefit from incorporating conflict transformation and intercultural dialogue studies and skills into their academic curriculum, and to raise awareness of the importance of practical peace building skills in education.
Some of the topics discussed in the meeting were conflict transformation and intercultural dialogue studies in the Arab region, in what way is education a major tool for peace building and the international perspective on the integration of conflict transformation into the academic curriculum.
Observers such as Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, say a wider Mideast conflict could be avoided.
Frederick Barton, a post-conflict reconstruction expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says there was never a clear U.S. strategy for reconstructing Iraq.
Cai Jian, deputy director of the Centre for Korean Studies at Shanghai's Fudan University, disagrees and tells Global Times that a large-scale military conflict is unlikely to break out because North Korea's threats are largely just psychological warfare against the US and South Korea.
应用推荐