Oslo Peace Week is a non-profit organization, which will facilitate and host an annual gathering of urban planners, peace researchers, peace builders, technology providers and transnational, state, and public actors. We will invite stakeholders from all over the world to participate – all with the common goal of rebuilding our cities for a better, more peaceful future. Participants will be given a chance to exchange ideas, to share knowledge, showcase best practices and to discuss tangible solutions to the challenge of rapid urbanization. The Oslo Peace Week aims to build a global resource center for solutions that can support peaceful coexistence in sustainable and resilient cities. Over time, this resource can become invaluable, as input from around the world is shared and traded, ensuring rapid implementation of proven solutions.

How

Meet – a global arena creating understanding across borders
Build – a platform for merging citizens, peace builders and urban planners
Share – a resource for sharing knowledge, and exchanging solutions

• Bringing people from all parts of the world together who share a common interest in urban peace planning and development
• Facilitate a meeting point for exchanging ideas, sharing knowledge, discussing and developing resilient and sustainable solutions for the world’s fast growing cities
• Support youth projects and solutions helping peaceful development in local environments
• Contribute to greater awareness of our partners’ missions through the inclusion of the global society
• Engage city governments and mayors in taking action towards the development of peaceful cities
• Develop a global Urban Peace Incubator resource center
• Increase understanding of the challenges rapidly growing cities will face when it comes to peace building, the environment, climate change, technological obsolescence, infrastructure, poverty, and urban development,
• Engage urban dwellers through inclusion and open communication on a “grassroots level”

Anne Lene Hompland, Oslo Peace Week
Chair

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini – International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN)
Board member

Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini is the Co-founder and Executive Director of ICAN. For over two decades she has been a leading international peace strategist. In 2000, she was among the civil society drafters of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. In 2011, Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini was the first Senior Expert on Gender and Inclusion on the UN’s Mediation Standby Team. She provides guidance and training to senior personnel in UN agencies, governments and NGOs worldwide, and has worked in conflict-affected countries globally, including leading assessments in Maoist cantonments in Nepal. Between 2002 and 2005, as Director of the Women Waging Peace Policy Commission, Sanam led ground breaking field research on women’s contributions to conflict prevention, security and peacemaking in 12 countries. Between 2008-2010 she led UNDP’s 10-country action research on men in crisis settings. She has served on the Advisory Board of the UN Democracy Fund (UNDEF), and was appointed to the Civil Society Advisory Group (CSAG) on Resolution 1325, chaired by Mary Robinson in 2010. Since 2013, she has served in the Working Group on Gender and Inclusion of the Sustainable Development Network.

Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and between 2004-15 she was Research Associate and Senior Fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies. She has published extensively on peace and security issues, including Women building peace: What they do, why it matters (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007). She was the 2014 recipient of the UN Association of the National Capital Area Perdita Huston Award for human rights and the 2016 Greeley Peace Scholar at the University of Massachusetts. Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini holds an M.Phil in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University. Iranian by birth, she is a UK citizen, and has twin daughters.

Ihab I Osman, General Manager of NADEC New Businesses
Board member

Ihab Osman is General Manager of NADEC New Businesses. He is also the President of the U.S-Sudan Business Council in Washington. Ihab was previously the President & Chief Executive Officer of Sudatel Telecom Group, a leading African telecom group operating in 5 African countries. Previous to that, he was a Private Equity Senior Adviser at Kuwait Finance House (Bahrain).

Prior to moving to the Africa & Middle East region in 2003, Mr. Osman spent 7 years with Verizon Communications in the US holding a number of positions during his tenure including West Area Vice President based in Seattle. Ihab began his career at General Electric and then IBM in New York.

Ihab serves on a number of corporate and Nonprofit boards, including a term in the United Nations Global Compact Business for Peace Steering committee in New York, he also founded the Impact Hub Khartoum. Ihab holds a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University, an MBA from Oxford University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the New York Institute of Technology. He lived in 5 different countries and traveled to more than 80.

Kristian Berg Harpviken
Director, PRIO

Sarah Lister
Director, UNDP, Oslo Governance Center

Margaret Groff
CFO, Itaipu, Brazil

Lars Kåre Legernes
Oslo Chamber of Commerce (OCC)

Stein X. Leikanger
Concept and Strategy, OUPW

Sanam Anderlini
Co-Founder and Executive Director, International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), U.S.A.

Agnete Schjønsby
Director Communication, PRIO

Torunn L. Tryggestad
Director, Centre on Gender, Peace and Security

Kristian Hoelscher
Senior Researcher, Urbanization and Peace

“PRIO is a partner of the Oslo Urban Peace Week, which promises to become a global platform to share ideas and experience on urbanization – which is a main challenge of this century. Since the founding of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in 1959, we have seen Oslo as a global city, host of our ambitions to conduct research that will contribute to a more peaceful world. Research into urbanization and urban settings in conjunction with peace and conflict are core on our agenda.”

Kristian Berg Harpviken, Director, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

The world’s urban population is expected to double by 2050, yet many urban areas suffer from a mix of poor governance, lack of institutional capacity, and unplanned growth, all of which can lead to instability and violence. Urban expansion in fragile settings further increases the risk of conflict. It is critical to ensure that urban areas benefit from peace, justice and inclusion, as envisaged in Sustainable Development Goal 16. This is central to achieving sustainable development, and UNDP’s Oslo Governance Centre is pleased to support the Oslo Urban Peace Week’s contribution to that agenda.

Sarah Lister, Director, UNDP Oslo Governance Centre

The initiative to arrange Oslo Urban Peace week as a forum for meeting, sharing and building upon ideas on how to handle the rapid urbanization around the world in best possible way is an excellent idea. To use and build upon the reputation of Oslo as a city of Peace is also something that will bring many to our city in the years to come. We fully endorse the idea as a Chamber of Commerce and will use our worldwide network to promote the initiative.

Lars-Kåre Legernes, Managing Director, Oslo Chamber of Commerce

 Supporting partners