London, 2 February. Dr. José Ramón Cabañas, director of Cuba’s International Policy Research Centre (CIPI) joined other scholars as a speaker in Oxford University’s John Porter Diplomacy Centre lecture series. Under the title Healing the Wounds of History from Lebanon to Europe, and South Africa to Northern Ireland, the event addressed the topic of peacemaking and reconciliation, and how to heal from the wounds caused by wars, conflicts and disputes throughout history.
The speakers on the panel also included Centre for Lebanese Studies’ founder Alexandra Asseily, South African poet and intellectual Athol Williams, and Austrian academic Dr. Katrin Bachleitner, who in their presentations discussed their views on how to achieve peace and what has been learned from previous peace processes globally. In this context, Dr. Cabañas, a former Cuban ambassador to Washington DC, spoke about the Cuba-US negotiating process (2015-2017) and how two of the fundamental tenets underpinning that exercise were equality and reciprocity. Furthermore, he addressed the important role played by Cuba in the peace process in Colombia, and in the peace negotiations in South West Africa last century. The panel was moderated by Tom Fletcher, director of the Hertford College, who later opened the floor for questions from the audience.
Attached to the Hertford College of the Oxford University, the John Porter Diplomacy Centre seeks to make a practical contribution to the peace processes of the 21st Century. The Centre aims to prepare students to be a frontline for a better society.