I think we'll get started. We've been heavily oversubscribed today. So we're webcasting, and we're also beaming it into some overflow rooms for those who will be coming late. But we appreciate the interest you have in this event. First, before giving an introduction, I'd ask you to turn off your cell phones, including don't put them on vibrate, because it interferes with the sound system. I'm David Smock. I direct the Center for Mediation and Conflict Resolution here at the Institute, which is the center which has sponsored this series of publications, our Peacemaker's Toolkit, and want to welcome you all to be here. Five books have been published, and you've seen them out on the table out there for the taking, managing the mediation process, debriefing mediators, managing public information and the mediation process, integrating internal displacement and peace processes and agreements, and timing mediation initiatives. And within the next few weeks, we will publish another one called Working with Groups of Friends. And soon thereafter, there'll be another handbook on track two in relation to track one. And others will follow. The origin of this series came out of discussions that my colleague, A. Heather Cohen, until recently senior program officer in the center, had with staff at the Mediation Support Unit at the UN. MSU staff emphasized how helpful it would be to have a series of handbooks like this that would be of use to UN staff. More recently, we've been closely coordinating with the Mediation Support Network, which is a coalition of organizations focused on international mediation, including the UN, HD Center, Swiss Peace, Conciliation Resources, and others. And we've tried to work out a division of labor with these organizations on who would publish handbooks on what issue. A. Heather Cohen is now in Afghanistan. Is she been available? She would have been here because she's responsible for much of the work on this series, along with my colleagues, Ginny Bouvier and Stephanie Schwartz. Nigel Quinney has handled all the editorial work and has been a major contributor to the quality of what has been produced. As you are aware, these handbooks are free for the taking and are also downloadable from the USIP website. If you want additional copies or if you want multiple copies, you can talk to my colleague, Stephanie Schwartz, and she can arrange to get them to you. In addition, the first in the series, Managing a Mediation Process, which you can read on the website, but also that website has linkages to other resources on related topics, so that we put a lot of work into trying to make this a rich repository of resources on mediation, so I hope you'll make good use of it. In the first instance, we have hoped that this series of handbooks would be of use by international mediators. And we've had a good deal of positive feedback from international mediators who found the handbooks to be very helpful in their work. But we also found that these handbooks are a value to others who are involved in a variety of ways of peacemaking, both internationally and domestically. And we hope that you will find them helpful as well. On our panel today, we have three presenters who are handbook authors. Bill Zartman of Johns Hopkins Seiss is co-author of Timing Mediation Initiatives. Bill is well known in the field as the author of 20 books on related topics. Theresa Wittfield of both New York University and the HD Center is author of Working with Groups of Friends, which is forthcoming soon. She's also authored an excellent book that USIP published on a related topic, and she has extensive experience with the United Nations. And Jerry McHugh of Conflict Dynamics International is the lead author of Integrating Internal Displacement and Peace Processes and Agreements. Jerry has been deeply involved in various conflict zones, most recently in Sudan. In our discussion, we're pleased to have Kelvin Ong, who has up the United Nations Mediation Support Unit, who will reflect on these handbooks from his perspective and who is our partner in this venture. As you know, the bio-datas on all the presenters are available on the table out there. But I'll turn first to Bill Zartman. Bill, if you would step up here so the camera can get you. This is a great moment for me. As a Z, I usually come last. In fact, it's a biblical moment. The last shall be first. And I'm humbled. And I'm grateful to David. More than humbled, I'm silenced for the chance to put this book together. And also to Albert Soto, old friend for joining me in it. We've followed the topic for quite some time together. As people talk about ripeness, one of the questions that comes up is, how do you know when it's ripe? And from the unwashed and uncomprehensive, the uncomprehending, the even worst question of, isn't it tautological? It only happens when it's happened and there's no knowing ahead of time. So the question of when are things ripe and what kind of indications are there? And then that other dogging question, if it's not ripe, do we just sit back and do nothing? Are all questions that are important to this idea, the important idea, I think, of ripeness? And so I'm grateful for a chance to answer these questions by providing information on a new and undeveloped area in connection with ripeness. When does a mutually hurting stalemate take place? What does it look like when it takes place? And then what does a way out look like to the observer? When do we know when people see that there's a chance of finding a way out of the conflict in which they find themselves? And another important aspect of the work that I was enabled to do in this little booklet is to separate the objective from the subjective factors. Is there a stalemate? When there's a stalemate, or must you see it? Same thing's true in the way out.  Well, only one, but the light bulb really has to want to be changed. And so how do we know when the parties really see themselves in a mutually hurting stalemate? How do you know when the parties see themselves? See that there is, in the perception of the other party, a way out. And what is the relation between those perceptions, those subjective elements, and the objective elements that are characterized these two aspects? And then in another part of the book, well, what do you do when they're not, or when they're not yet? How can one ripen? How can one facilitate the existence objectively and subjectively? Or maybe I should say the reverse, because often the objective elements are there and they're not perceived. How do you facilitate the existence and perception of a mutually hurting stalemate, a time when mediators should seize on the moment in order to turn it into an effective opening of mediation among conflicting parties? And by the same token, how does one facilitate the perception that the other party sees that there's a possibility of coming to some kind of agreement, even if we don't know what that agreement is to be as yet? All of these elements, I think, need to be spelled out for the mediator to be able to effectively use the idea of ripeness and grab on to it in order to begin the mediating process. Many years ago, I was asked to come to the UN by my now co-author, who I was touched, came down to Washington and said, I want to talk to you about this idea. And he and Merrick Golding in the UN, in the Secretariat, wanted to pursue the idea of how do we know when things are ripe and how do we know what we can do in order to facilitate these two ideas. That meeting and a lot of work since then has led to this project. But I think I'll end up with the thanks I began with. I think due to the pressure, the opportunity of the Peace Institute, that for the first time, we've been able to spell out exactly what do you look for when you're trying to see a ripe moment walking down the street, even if the moment itself doesn't realize where it is. I'm tired of the mixing metaphor, so I'll go down to that. But read the book. It's got good stuff in it, I think. Thank you very much. I'd like to thank USIP and also acknowledge the debt that I have. I actually worked with Alberta Soto for a long time at the UN. And my interest in groups of friends was born on working with and observing the process in El Salvador, which he was leading and the first formation of a group of friends. USIP, I have to say, talked to me for some time about producing a toolkit from the book that I wrote with USIP support, and I resisted. And then they pushed, and I eventually gave in. And then the guidelines for authors arrived, and I resisted some more, because the guidelines were over 3,000 words long for a document that they said need only be 10,000 words. But I persisted in part because of Nigel Quinney, who edited my book, and is a fantastic editor, and I think guided, and pushed, and conjoaled us all to stick to a unified format, which has meant that the series as a whole, I think, is now extremely useful. So thanks for pushing. I have the advantage and disadvantages that my volume is not yet available, so I'm going to give a brief overview of what's in it. It addresses the thorny issue of how to work with the many external actors that are involved in any peace process. As mediators know, corralling and managing the external actors can at times be just as exhausting and difficult and frustrating as dealing with the parties of the conflict themselves. In the years since the end of the Cold War, a plethora of mediators and interests in mediation by states and others has led to a wide array of new arrangements to address this particular challenge. Most notable among them are many coalitions of states or multilateral organizations that provide or are supposed to provide support for resolving conflicts and implementing peace agreements. This broad set of mechanisms is often referred to as groups of friends, though they can be further broken down into friends, contact groups, core groups, and so forth. And distinguishing between them is a bit of a headache. All these groups start from the idea that peace processes in mediation would benefit from unified support by external actors. But obviously the complexity of conflicts embedded in difficult regions and different and powerful external interests make that unity very elusive. Different external actors engage in a conflict with different capacities, resources, interests, and ability to engage with non-state actors in a system as a whole that is, for obvious reasons, biased towards states rather than the non-state-down groups that increasingly are the opposing party in the conflicts that we're looking at. When an emphasis on the small groups of states that are gathered as friends of a mediator rather than to support the coordination of assistance during implementation, for example, the Hamburg seeks to explore how peacemakers may most productively work with friends. It takes us a starting point that a group of friends is an auxiliary mechanism and that it's part of a wider strategy for peace. It's not a substitute for one and it's not a panacea. A group of friends can help create the conditions for peace, but it can't force it through. The Hamburg, like the others, draws on mixed experiences, some good and some bad, and it doesn't actually advocate for the creation of friends as an answer. I think it advocates certainly and explains in different steps how a mediator can think about and develop a strategy for engaging external actors, and in some cases that will mean very much deciding not to create a group of friends. In others, there may be a group already in existence when a mediator comes in to a process that's been long running in an intractable conflict and he or she will have to work out how to manage what can be a help and can be a bit of an obstacle. Difference, the various groups that have been formed have different in the circumstances of their creation, in the mix of their states, whether it's security council members, regional actors outside, interested, sort of more disinterested, engaged states like Norway or Switzerland, even NGOs, and they've differed in their functions, the extent to which they relate directly to the conflict parties and the degree of complicity or not with the mediator, and they've also differed very much in their impact. The Hamburg introduces a rough typology that distinguishes among five different groups. The first two of which I address in much more detail because those are the tools that are more useful to mediators. Friends of the mediator process, ad hoc arrangements where a deliberate decision is made not to form a group, contact groups, implementation and monitoring groups that come out of an agreement and assistance coordination groups. What each group or arrangement will be able to offer will depend on both the specific requirements of each conflict and the characteristics, capacities and resources of the group's members. A range of different factors can either help or impede the peacemaker's effort to develop an effective strategy for working with external actors, but it will likely involve in broad terms attention to how to make best use of external partners, leverage, knowledge and resources, how to block or neutralize unhelpful external involvement and how to build and sustain broad based support for an eventual settlement. Like the others, it's divided into five chapters, assessing the environment for friends, developing a strategy, engaging with friends and conflict parties, sustaining coordinated support and preparing for implementation. The steps are presented sequentially, but once begun they will be necessarily ongoing and often a degree of overlap. I'm just going to quickly run through these five steps and the kind of things that they entail partly as you don't have the handbook in front of you. Just as the first step in any mediation effort is set out in the first volume in this series is to assess the conflict, so in thinking about group of friends, the first step has to be to assess the environment for friends. This will involve thinking about, and I would say a critical reflection on the mediators own strengths and weaknesses, different mediators, if you'll have different relations to the external actors. It's easy to think of this if you're mediating on behalf of the United States, you have one set of relations on behalf of the UN, another, Norway, another, or an NGO, such as the one I represent, the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, again, a different set of relations. And then you need to also look around you and think about the potential benefits and risks that the interested external actors in any conflict will bring. This will include looking at regional actors and other more distant partners. You'd immediately should evaluate the capacity for leverage and influence through an assessment of their relationships to the conflict parties, as well as their potential, as their possible role that they may be playing as spoilers. The engagement of regional actors in an external mechanism is particularly difficult. I think a core element of intractability, as many studies have shown, is a hostile regional environment or an environment where you have regional actors who are arming or supplying support of other kinds to one or other of the conflict parties. At the same time, regional actors in a number of cases have proven absolutely essential to establishing the basis for sustainable peace, whether it's Mexico in Central America, or Australia in East Timor, India in a very, very complicated relationship to Nepal, but certainly up through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2006. Now it's slightly more questionable the role it's playing, but the key external actors are absolutely critical. In many cases, they may play an active role within a group structure and in some cases they may not wish to. Working with external actors in the peace process is frustrating and time-consuming. Mediator, therefore, I caution should be patient. It's one of the core qualities that any mediator will possess because it's going to take a lot of patience. The handbook advises developing a strategy early, but also being open to the need for revisions to it. Mediator thinking about forming a group will need to look carefully at the pros and cons of a group structure and may welcome to decide that there are occasions where a group would only create complications. In thinking about which friends might be included in a group, there are a number of considerations that I'm happy to go into later in Q&A if it's interesting, but small groups have been shown to be most effective. Large groups can become very unwieldy and difficult to manage, but of course there are other costs associated with selecting a small group of states and therefore rejecting others. In any case, friends should be chosen with due regard to the contribution that each can make and also the timing of their engagement. Working engaging with friends and conflict passes will vary, obviously, all of this is context specific. The mediator will want to seek support for his leadership or her leadership of the mediation and involve the friends in building their credibility with the parties. There may be different state or non-state sensitive involved. There may be a party which the friends, which generally but not always representative states find it difficult to engage with. This, of course, has become a more complex issue in the era since 9-11 and with the listing or perception of groups through the lens of terrorism. He can or she can engage the friends, the leverage of the friends in different ways during the mediation. Sometimes asking the friends to deliver specific messages to the conflict parties. Sometimes that will be easier to have one friend who may have the ear of a particular party to deliver the message. Other times asking the group to do it together. At times making sure that everybody's singing from the same song sheet and on other occasions it may be helpful to develop a kind of good cop, bad cop strategy. Sustaining coordinated support amongst the friends in my fourth chapter is difficult. It involves maintaining, if not a consensus among the friends, then at least building on a sense that they're like-minded in their basic approach to seeking resolution of the conflict. Friends groups which have a widely differing position among the members of the groups can be very difficult to deal with and at times can undermine the work of the mediator who may find him or herself in as much mediation amongst the friends as with the conflict parties. The Friends of Georgia was one example of that. Russia was a prominent friend of Georgia along with a number of western states and as August 2008 showed that didn't go so well. There are uses of friends in terms of the possibility to work with a group of friends in multiple locations. It's been seen on several occasions with the UN where a UN envoy or mediator can engage with representatives of states in New York in the location of the conflict but also at the capital level and try and use the friends to make sure there's a consistent approach to the conflict among multiple representatives of a single state which isn't always a given. You can have widely varying views on a particular issue even within a single foreign service let alone between the foreign service and other agencies of that government as I don't need to point out sitting in Washington. The strategic coordination of international assistance to which friends seek to contribute is a critical element of the preparations for implementation but the implementation of any agreement is reached but the approach that I take in the handbook is rather to the smaller groups of friends that are working with a mediator in the peacemaking phase and the requirements of implementation and the coordination of assistance are likely to be rather different. Friends can provide a very helpful lever into the next phase not least because a moment of probably maximum leverage on external actors is just before an agreement is signed. So what is put in place in that final phase of negotiation can be very important both in terms of implementation mechanisms national and international monitoring mechanisms for example and in terms of forward planning and of course the thinking about the considerable financial resources that will be required. However, the small groups of friends that this handbook addresses and not tend to be changed after implementation as you require much broader coalitions of external partners to see a process through over the long haul. I'm finished with four elements that I think sort of concluded my work on this which is that whichever way one looks at it and whether the mediator does or doesn't decide to go with the group mechanism external actors cannot be ignored as strategy for their engagement may or may not involve a group of friends but the process of the development of the strategy will be useful to the mediator whatever the ultimate decision on that. That strategy should prioritize a careful analysis of potential friends knowledge, relationships and influence as well as their readiness to support a mediation that's led by another and not be wanting to hijack the mediation or go off in a tangent in a different direction. Strategic coordination doesn't come easily but requires time, patience and flexibility in accordance with the gradual evolution of the peace process. And finally peacemaking's a long term activity in which sustained investment in individual external partners or whether configures are grouped may bring with it many advantages and some of them will be unsuspected. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well if we started with what Bill mentioned for him might be a biblical moment I'm not going to guarantee it for all of you this is going to be a spiritual moment at the end of this presentation. What I do want to do is share with you some insights into one of the guides for which I am the lead author and it will require more skills of diplomacy than mine to explain what lead author means but basically I had a very easy job we had the benefit of colleagues at the Brookings-Burn Institute Brookings-Burn program on internal displacement and Professor Walter Kaelin, Andrew Solomon and others so very much I feel I have the benefit of all of those inputs and it's important to recognize that as well as the role of USIP. Let me tell you just a little bit about the content of this guide which is on integrating internal displacement in peace processes and peace agreements but also I'm going to completely abuse the podium by giving also a very, very quick insight at the end in terms of the utility of this and other guides in contemporary mediation processes so what can this and others hope to achieve just a short nugget on that as well. The content, it's the green one I like to think it's a nod to my Irish background but I think it's complete coincidence I'm told certainly what we tried to do in here was provide some core steps or elements for the mediator. What should be the essential considerations when looking at integrating internal displacement in peace processes so in the process itself but also substantively in any agreed outcome that may come? The first question, why should mediators bother? It's incredibly difficult. Takes an incredible amount of patience as Theresa mentioned for external actors. It requires a lot of time. Many times mediators they're short on time. Sometimes they're short on patience but mostly they're short on time. They may have very constrained resources to actually go and engage substantively with internally displaced communities. So why does it matter? It matters for a number of reasons. Number one is that the scope of the situation of internal displacement is big and I mean big, capital B, 26 million conflict related internally displaced persons worldwide at the end of 2008, 15 million refugees. So big in scope. Secondly, IDPs are those who stay most proximate to the conflict. So they may be affected in other ways and refugees for example who also have considerations but maybe in a different country. They also may have significant losses by nature being displaced, forced out of their homes or other communities. Thirdly, IDPs can be very important constituencies to secure buy-in into any agreement that may come. Now this is a very delicate issue that the mediator really needs to think about and that leads to the first issue area we said we should look at. One is to assess, the first step let's say is to assess the causes and the characteristics of internal displacement. There is unfortunately, how do I put this diplomatic? There is unfortunately a little bit of a perception that says well IDPs they're all one group they're all the same and in fact you will see in many situations there are IDPs who may be forced to live in camps. There may be IDPs living in the host community. There may be IDPs from very different ethnic backgrounds in the same conflict. So number one it's very important for the mediator to have a clear idea, who are you trying to engage? What are their interests? What are their interests in the political process, in the peace process itself? The second main area is to create a framework. Second step in the guide is to create a framework to help mediators consider about how to bring in internal displacement. And you may ask well why is this so important? And the reason is that in the annex year we gave a sampling of several peace processes and resulting agreements between 2003 and 2008. And we took a cross section of some which had reflected internal displacement very strongly in the resulting agreement. Some which had reflected internal displacement quite weakly and some which had not reflected internal displacement at all in the resulting agreement even though in those conflicts there was significant displacement, displaced communities. So what it points to is there has been a very ad hoc approach to trying to integrate internal displacement both on the process side but also on the substantive side. And this framework we are suggesting which is based on the guiding principles on internal displacement, national legislation where it's relevant, but also international obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law gives a foundation and a structure to integrating internal displacement. The third and fourth sections of the guide relate respectively to the process itself of how do you go and try and engage and consult with internally displaced persons? And the last one as I mentioned is more on the substance. How do you actually try and integrate specific human rights and interests of internally displaced persons in any agreement that may come? And I have to give you, I'm sorry I can't resist to give you a little anecdote on the process side. And that is that as David mentioned I said quite a considerable amount of time over the last number of years since 2005 in Sudan and about two years of that primarily based in Darfur. And whether it was by coincidence or not I often seemed to bump into envoys, many of whom were would-be mediators, actual mediators as well, but I always seemed to bump into them at the end of their trips to Darfur. And sometimes those trips were one day, two day trips, very short trips, sometimes they were much longer engagements. And I developed a little test in my mind because many of these envoys, mediators, would come to one of the larger towns, do a quick foray into the closest IDP camp, come running back, hop on a plane and go back to Khartoum. So I did the little test I think I developed and I think it's very useful. It only works in certain situations is that I would first of all of course meet the envoy or mediator, whoever it is. And then without trying to look too deferential I would look down at their shoes to see did they actually spend some time in these places? And in many occasions I can tell you that informal little test and the creases in their clothes told me that they spent zero time consulting with these people even though there was the snapshot photograph and they said, well, we've been consulting with the IDPs. The second problem was that in some of those situations the locations that were most frequented by mediators or envoys were those closer to the towns. And so they were getting a very one-sided view of the interests of IDPs. So there's a little anecdote to say that what we've suggested in the guide is some approaches how to look at mechanisms to engage in consultations. How do you manage that type of consultation with different IDP groups? The final one, as I mentioned, is more in the substance. How do you integrate human rights and interests of IDPs? Now, these last few words I've uttered are probably the ones we've spent a lot of time deliberating on because people say, well, what do you mean the interests of IDPs? And what we mean there is that in some cases there are rights, IDPs have rights, of course, the human rights of all other persons, but then some displacement-specific human rights. And people say, well, yes, of course, they have the right to return. That's it. We'll write it into the peace agreement. The right to return. Sorry, not right. They have the right to return, settlement in their displaced location, or resettlement elsewhere. So how are you going to know what their wishes are, what their interests are, unless you have that consultation to say, well, do you really want to return to your home community? Do you want to settle where you are? Or do you want to resettle elsewhere, which is what the guiding principles of internal displacement would say? So we tried to provide, in a modest way, some guidance on some of these issues, and that's the kind of overview of the content here. And now, like I said, I have to give a little nugget on the utility of the types of guides. And my own opinion is that mediation is part art and part science. The guides can really help on providing some guidance that can help on the kind of, more on the science side, yes. But also, if I think of the mediator as an artist, these can help the art of mediation by providing more colors in the palette, maybe a new tool, maybe a new scalpel to try some new techniques. It's not going to be to fix all. They're templates. The mediators will have to have the wherewithal, then the, I can't say wisdom. The wisdom, okay, I have to say it. The wisdom to think that, okay, this is what I know and I know what I don't know. This can give me a starting point, but let's take that then and hopefully, it can provide more colors in the palettes of some of our mediators, because frankly, some of them are very much painted in monochrome. Thank you very much, yeah. Good morning, everybody. Okay. I was surprised by that. Let me start by going back to a report that we wrote to the Security Council in April of 2009. It's on the UN website. It was the first report of the Secretary General on mediation and I was looking back at what we said we would do. And at the very end of this report, the SG said, since one of our most promising approaches to the peaceful settlement of dispute is skillful third-party mediation, we have a responsibility to professionalize our efforts to resolve conflicts constructively rather than destructively. When I was looking at this set of toolkits, it sort of helped me feel a little bit more reassured that we've gone a couple of steps forward on professionalizing mediation. So with that, let me congratulate USIP, David, Heather and the authors, because this has certainly taken us a couple of steps forward. The world that I inhabit, mainly on the mediation support side in the UN working with envoys and their teams and the negotiating parties, it's frankly a rather chaotic one. It's where the rubble meets the road. The colors are great, but there are real challenges that we face. And I have a couple of reflection on why those make such a big impact to the work that we do. The first thing that comes to mind is strategy. And Professor Zatman, Theresa, and Gerald all made references in their remarks on strategy. And I can't emphasize how important that is. Now you can't have a strategy if you don't have a framework of analysis. And I am often struck by how quickly we try to do things. There is an imperative. We have to put this person on the plane, by all means get the person out there and they'll figure it out on the way out. I've been subject to some of those where you print out as much as you can, you know, the couple of hours before you, you have to jump on that plane and while you're on the plane itself, you have papers strewn all over the place and you're desperately reading, trying to make sure that you have the right amount of information and you have the right analysis. Because otherwise it all goes downhill, you get it wrong at the very beginning, it's gonna be wrong all the way down. So the way in which the books are written, I particularly like the flip out thing because it does take me through that framework and gets me thinking. It's not unusual that we in the past were higher in envoy and sort of in reference to the lack of resources. Say to the envoy, here's the one political affairs officer who will be attached to you. Good luck, come back in six months, preferably with a solution. But now we've made some progress with materials like this, with frameworks of analysis, with a mediation support unit, we're trying to prepare our envoy's better. We're trying to prepare those political affairs officer better. It doesn't mean that if you have a political affairs officer that you're automatically trained to think about rightness or think about how to promote rightness. That's not necessarily what they do. So don't assume that you've got a cadre of political affairs officer that they're all naturally thinking about managing and brokering peace processes. They may not. So the aspect of strategy development is key and this helps because it does help us to think in terms of our approaches, our timing, our partnerships, who's in, who's out. When do we start it, where do we start it, what issues do we start it with? And of course the first one which was sort of managing mediation processes does attend to some of those key issues which is extraordinarily helpful. So no success without strategy. That's my first takeaway. The second is it helps us to think about participation. It's also not unusual for very often for the UN to come in or other mediators also to say, all right, let's go talk to UNDP, let's go talk to the rest of the UN system here, a couple of NGOs, a couple of member states and not necessarily get our shoes dusted and dirty and let's write that plan. That's how you do it. Those are the issues, not good enough. So it helps us to think also about participation. Women's groups, IDPs, refugees, what are their concerns? It's very, very time consuming and they don't necessarily, mediators do not necessarily have the kind of resources that are put at the disposal of a peacekeeping mission. And where there is a peacekeeping mission and where there is a mediation effort, they do not naturally line up together. I think we have to do a much, much better job in trying to make sure that we leverage all resources at our disposal to get to some of those issues. I was reminded, as Gerald was talking, of one of my discussions with a rather senior UN official in the field who had been there struggling with these hard issues for a while and I said, you've got to talk to the women's group. He said, I'm stretched and I'm struggling. This 1325 resolution, I don't have time for it. He says, why do I have to do it? And I said, well, the UN in front of your mission means United Nations and that means you have to do it. And we know it works. It doesn't always get to them why it works, how it works. So the more that we can give these material and sort of information and frameworks of analysis, the better. So no sustainable peace without adequate participation. That's the second takeaway. The third, which goes to the work that Theresa did on groups of friends, I would add also managing multiple mediators. In fact, that's one of our biggest challenges today. The barriers to entry for the mediation game, if I could be flippant, is rather low. If you wanted or if there was sort of interested players to the peacekeeping business, you require trucks, tanks, helicopters, troops, police. The anti upfront is quite high. For mediation, all you need is an ad ticket. And you're in. Now that's a problem. And having to manage those mediators, whether it is in the framework of a strategy or framework of a group of friends, it's fundamental to success. If you don't manage the complicated and the crowded field of mediation, you work at cross purposes. And success, again, is compromised. So you have to manage partnerships. And I think the notion of how do you manage group of friends is very, very helpful. And I started by saying, my world is kind of where the rubber meets the road. So I'm gonna make a suggestion on how these guidelines can meet the road, if I will. And that's how do you translate guidelines to practical sort of takeaways for those who have to implement. The notion of training, preparation, debriefing, that's all going to help. We've now started in the United Nations and specifically in the Department of Political Affairs, systematically providing new on voice with in-briefing packages, which means they come, we say welcome, that's already a start. Here's a list of documents that you should be familiar with, but if you don't, here they are. Here a list of topics which you should feel comfortable asking for help on. It could be micro mediation, negotiation skill. It could be managing and developing a mediation strategy. If you need help on any one of those, we can provide you with the assistance. And materials like these go a long way in making them feel more comfortable before we send them into the hot zone. But I would also suggest that the on voice, which are fundamental to this, is only one element of your target group. You have to get down to their teams. They are the ones that are likely to stay a little longer in theater. They're the ones that are going to help develop that strategy. They're the ones who are actually going to read past two pages. So you have to train the teams too. And of course, you've got to train your partners. And most importantly, as we talk about subjective elements or subjective perceptions of rightness, there's always a fair amount of work that you have to do with the negotiating parties themselves. And they're not monolithic. You've got to talk to the political folks. You've got to talk to the military armed groups. You've got to talk to the IDPs. You've got to talk to the women's groups. All that needs to be done. In the context of what is limited time, limited resources, limited information sometimes, and imperative to do something in a very chaotic environment. So, not a very sort of uplifting ending. And the greatest challenge I find, I once read a report that they had a rather long title and the title goes something like this. I cannot remember it precisely. It goes something like, their recommendations are not implemented, their reports are not read. That's the title of the report. Just to say that we come up with a huge amount of information. So the key there is get the information right, get it in the right hands, make it accessible and more important, train, train, and train. Thank you. I want to thank our presenters for being succinct and informative. And we have about half an hour for Q&A. And if you have a question you want to ask, if you would come to microphone either here or here, so that we can all hear your question if you'll identify yourself with your name and your institutional affiliation. Why be happy to try to respond to your questions. Any of the panelists have any comments they would like to make on anybody else's presentation? If you don't have any, just go ahead. My name is Fari Wors Frank Fouladi from ProcumaUSA.info. We are putting opportunity villages together. I listened to all of your very informative ideas. How about introducing as the previous president George Bush used to say, money trumps peace, bringing incentives for people to have peace, financial incentives. If you have, if you make business, you have access to food, access to shelter, access to healthcare, access to education. How about encouraging people to have more, be more enterprising and be a business log and have peace. Want to comment on that? Glad you mentioned that. Some of the things that we're talking about in connection with heightening the perception of ripeness, heightening the notion, particularly that there's a possibility of coming to a mediated agreement, involve not simply the pressures that one can put, that is the negative sanctions that one can put on parties in order to get them to think about ways out, but also the types of incentives that one can offer the parties in order to have them think about alternative ways to their conflict. Conflicts are fun, but conflicts are costly. They have to be fun because we try to sell them to our public and we have to sell the idea of the cost. And that often prevents people from thinking about alternative ways that are more fun, if you want, but less costly, in other words, that have incentives for them for a different kind of policy. So very often the two-handed policy is what's required, not simply blocking or perceiving that the conflict path is blocked, but also perceiving that there's a better way than continuing the conflict because of incentives that are provided. Probably the most cynical example of using positive incentives was the Mozambique peace agreement where there was marvelous interventions by Sena Gidio and the Italians and the Americans and others, but when it came down to a final agreement, the fact that the head of Renamo da Clama was given a big house and a big car and servants to work for him were, and some of his key officers given similar benefits was very persuasive in getting them out of the field and to sign a peace agreement, but I think Bill's point is more broadly relevant of the value of incentives, generally in peace negotiations, not just punishments. Other questions? My name is Ellen Candale with Alternative Resolutions. I'm curious, Teresa, about your use of the term friends as opposed to stakeholders or other terms. I was wondering if it had a Quaker connotation or if it was just a connotation that those friends have an alliance that will help build a peace or a mediation initiative. Sadly, in this context, it's rather more complicated and less well-intentioned than the Quaker use of friends, I think. It came that the use of a group of friends, so named, was first manifested in El Salvador and was an invention really of Alvaro de Soto who was the mediator for the UN at that moment, so it had origins in other group structures, such as the contact group in Southwest Africa that Czech Crocker worked with and other group structures that had existed before. When Alvaro coined the phrase group of friends, it was because it had a double sense, one which they were in that instance, it was Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Spain, a group of states and the US joined after the peace agreement was signed as a four plus one arrangement. It was a group of friends of states which had a genuine positive desire and interest to work with the UN to try and end the conflict in El Salvador. So they were states that were friendly to the mediator and willing and able to offer considerable support to help him and the UN and the UN Secretary-General in their work. There was also an element that it was sort of deniable. It was, oh, I'm just talking to a group of friends. It wasn't a formal mechanism and a lot of the most effective mechanisms have maintained a degree of informality. I think I've several times, I'm fairly frequently consulted by the UN on the construction of such groups and the two things that come up most often is, one, sometimes envoys or mediators will want to form a group as a kind of last resort effort. Something really isn't working. We don't know what to do on Burma or wherever, where there is a fairly useless friend of the Secretary-General on Burma or Myanmar, as it's known in the UN context. But the sort of mechanism of last resort, it won't really work because if the external interests are deeply opposed on a conflict, you won't fix it by forming a group. And the other relates to formality and informality and I think for the mediator, the informal groups, the groups that genuinely remain friendly states committed to reaching a settlement rather than more formal constructs have been most helpful. Thanks. Actually, I think the term comes from the time-honored legal phrase, amicus curiae, they're friends of the court, which means people who are in favor of the process who help with the process rather than helping one side or the other. Yes. Thank you for everyone for your wonderful presentation. I was recently, I spent the last two years in Senegal focused on the Casemont's peace process, so I look forward to reading the books to see, draw lessons from what we were doing there. In fact, much of the work was focused on supporting civil society and facilitating their participation in the peace process, which had both advantages and drawbacks. And as actors, they were neutral and not neutral. Especially when you talk about Casemont's civil society, they had been, had in many cases an interest in one way or another in participating in the process and the directions it took. And I would, I guess I wanted to ask, invite you to, when Teresa was talking about group of friends, I realized you were talking primarily about external state, but the role of internal civil society actors to move the process along and to try to help ripen the opportunities for resolving the conflict from what Bill Zartman was saying. We did not have much luck, I would say, in getting, having civil society as advocates to move the peace process along. And then also in the question of IDPs, they are directly affected by the conflict, but they're probably the weakest in terms of their ability to express themselves in what, in trying to bring the conflict to a resolution and get back to the point where they can go back. And what strategies can we bring to bear to help bring that voice a little bit more to the forefront? Jerry, you might want to say something about the agonizing process in Darfur also to try to bring civil society into the peace process. I think the one thing that has to be clear, thinking about internally displaced communities or other constituencies in civil society is that there is, my own experience has been that there has been a very unreasonable expectation of what you can achieve. It's extremely difficult for these groups, they can be concentrated, it can be far-flung, there are many different types of interests that can be bubbling within these constituencies. The question is absolutely correct, particularly for IDPs, it can vary. In some cases, there can be some capacity there from their previous personal experiences, their previous civil society organizations, if communities moved en masse to certain areas, some of the community structures remain in place even when they're displaced, so there is some possibility to engage there. But make no mistake, it's an incredibly difficult thing and I think what we had suggested was that in many cases, you need to identify if there are intermediaries or organizations that have been working with displaced communities, whether when they are displaced or even before they were displaced. That can give you some ability to tap in a little bit easier. But Calvin made the comment about resources. My own experience is that in many cases, I'm a political scientist, so I like the same politics as the pursuit of the possible, not the ideal, and very much in peacemaking. What is it possible to achieve to incorporate those views and perspectives within the time constraints, within the resources you have available, and taking into account the particular characteristics of those communities? To answer a little bit more directly on the question, very much if you can identify intermediaries, local organizations, other groups that have a more, maybe more scope, more interaction, more dispersion within these groups, then you have some chance of tapping in. Otherwise, you just have to be realistic about what you can achieve. And many of the mediation processes that we see contemporary mediation processes are undertaken in many cases under very tight time pressures, but in other instances, there has been a trend in many cases towards comprehensive types of peace agreements. So now the mediators are coming with this whole plethora of issues that they feel have to be in there and internal displacement, and women's groups and others are necessarily some of those. The last point is that in some cases, civil society constituencies can be extremely important influencers, and Northern Ireland is a critical example, where essentially women's groups in particular played a very influential role in terms of pushing forward in negotiations, particularly at times when there was stuff. Just to say a word about the Darfur experience, it's belatedly the UN AU mediator decided that civil society should be involved in the peacemaking process, but it's turned out to be a very agonizing effort with the difficulty of trying to select who would be adequate representatives of various elements of civil society. Then having the government in cartoon deny exit visas to people who have been invited to Doha to participate in the discussions and competition between groups, it's been less than fully successful, even though the ideal, I think has been applauded by everybody that civil society should be involved in the process to actually implement its turn not to be quite difficult. Yes? Hello, my name is Patty Marcus, and I am a lawyer and I'm currently a consultant to USAID. I just returned on Saturday from Iraq after spending six weeks there conducting a gender assessment. And as a lawyer, I was focusing on rule of law, access to justice, and national capacity building. First of all, I must commend USIP, who is doing incredible work there, and is really as far as bringing in women in particular, but also just doing very substantive programs. No matter what the legal requirements are, bringing women into the process just appears to be so, so difficult. And as things are worse than ever for women in Iraq, that 1325 and certainly CEDAW, that it's just ignored. And it's ignored by a lot of the international organizations. So I'd like to hear a little bit about that as well as coordination, especially as resources are more and more limited as far as the folks who are working there and have been there for a long time, people are still not talking to each other and certainly are not getting their shoes dirty. What I liked in the approach to the 10th year anniversary, especially the work that is being done in the council, Security Council, is trying to get down to indicators of results. It's good to say to the Secretary and to UN and to the world in general that you simply have to do this, but what does this look like? If you're talking about involving women in the participation of peace processes, what are you measuring? I think this movement towards log frames and results indicators and outcomes and goals, I think that's a positive outcome. And I hope that we will be able to move the agenda forward with that. Because what we have done in the Department of Political Affairs is to take that results framework and say to all our field missions, including in Iraq, here's what we mean when we say we're looking for moving forward on women's role in peace banking and prevention. Here's what we mean. Here are the few indicators that you must contribute to. Now tell us how will you contribute to that? It gets to a greater level of detail than simply saying, 1325 implement. So we hope that we will. Thank you for your presentations. I'm Natalie Weinstein. I just finished my master's degree at American University. I have two questions for Mr. Mehue. I'm wondering why you chose to focus on internal displacement and not also focus on refugees and the peace process. And my second question is, it seems like key actors in the international community are much more focused on the quantity of returns and not the quality of return. So ensuring human rights and also working to rebuild sustainable livelihoods. So I'm wondering how you might envision the shift in thinking when internal actors get involved in the return process. Yeah, I'll, I mean, two great questions. The second one, first of all, in March, I had them at a trip to North Kivu in the Eastern Congo. And to answer your second question about the quantity, there just happened to come across a very interesting program that was in process of a part of a demobilization and disarmament program where there was an effort to internationally funded effort to buy back weapons at a cost of $50 for a machine gun. And that resulted in a large quantity of machine guns, but in Eastern Congo and Central African public, you can probably buy an AK-47 for $20. So it focused very much on a kind of a quantity. Let's get as many of these out of the system on paper as possible without really thinking through the quality of that initiative. Certainly there has also been a trend to look at internal displacement in some of the same type of light. Big numbers, of course, if they're a big constituency, yes, but also it needs to be considered how much of an influence does that constituency have, big or small, positive or negative influence that can be there as well. So I absolutely agree that there needs to be some consideration more and more thinking of the quality. And this gets back to my, and I didn't mean it as a kind of a trivial question, but certainly thinking that I have seen many acts of mediators that all good guidance in the world will not guide them when it comes to a lack of common sense. If someone says, and I witnessed it myself, if someone says, we will have a final and comprehensive settlement to the Darfur conflict in December, that was in September of 2007. They said by December 2007, and that was by the incoming secretary general. That in my mind, there you need to think. We need to be thinking more longer term investment, quality, not quantity, not on paper. And the other question you have is also a very good question. Why internal displacement? One is that for refugees there is an explicit legally binding international, a regime of international law, which there is an evolving body for internally displaced persons, particularly with the guiding principles of internal displacement, but that does not have an explicit legally binding character. It does reflect the legal provisions of other instruments, in the guiding principles, but that was one of the reasons, and also partially because of that, refugees are afforded protection under international law in the countries in which they seek refuge, and for IDPs, in some conflict situations, that's not as easily the case, and that's precisely why in this case we did focus on IDPs. Can I just add on that having flipped through this in the online version, partly out of curiosity and partly because it's been presented in New York later this week, and I'm supposed to be commenting on it. I think it's, and I particularly welcome this volume because of the invisibility of IDPs in peace agreements. All the rest of us, if you look at the briefs, were under strict instructions to have little colored paragraphs, citing examples we could draw on from specific peace process and complex and experiences, and I, and I'm sure the other authors had a wealth of things to choose from. You could have filled volumes with examples you could cite from a variety of processes. It's not really the case as far, I mean, Gerry may correct me, but even looking at the examples in the back, there are a number of cases where IDPs have figured in agreements, but it's really compared with the extent of the problem. It's really pathetic and it's quite few, so I think I really welcome this as an attempt to get it on the map and to make people think. Yes. Yes, my name is Edouard and I'm a student at Lake Park in Church Mason University. I welcome the idea of integrating the IDPs in the peace process and I think it's a crucial element and component to any agreement. Most of the time, previous agreement, these constituent that are more affected by conflict were ignored in the process. Having said so, my question will be, how do you see the involvement of the diaspora community in a preventive way, not after the eruption of the conflict, but to prevent further eruption of conflict or to see preventive measure? Anybody want to take that one up? I mean, I'll probably won't be very... I mean, for sure, the IDPs we saw as that, yes, a critical constituency internally, within the context and diaspora groups but also, again, it's a personal reflection. It cuts both ways. They can be incredibly important positive influencers and they can be incredibly important negative influencers, particularly, and just to give an anecdote of the diaspora, from a context close to my own heart, is that for a long number of years, an organization here in North America called NORADE was supporting the freedom fighters in Northern Ireland, but largely providing some support to the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. In that case, the diaspora, in that case, was tapping into a very, very raw nerve here in the United States, but was causing incredible harm in efforts to try and resolve the conflict in Northern Ireland. And the problem there was that the different perceptions from the diaspora here in the United States supporting the cause back in Ireland. For the mediators trying to work in Northern Ireland, it was one of the biggest spoilers that were there, including not to go back on the biblical context, but including sending handguns back in Bibles to Ireland. I mean, Bibles to Ireland, it seems like a natural thing, but not when there's handguns in there, which was part of the process. So diaspora, my own experience, and the Darfur context David mentioned as well, there, particularly in Darfur, the diaspora, we had a very interesting situation when we were working on the mediation there, because the diaspora included many of the so-called leaders, Abdul Waheed, sitting in Paris, drinking cappuccino while the IDPs that purported their constituency are sitting in Zalindji in Darfur. Khalil Ibrahim, now leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, living at the Sheraton Hotel in Doha, and his purported constituents in very, very less luxurious factor there. The point being that the diaspora can be tapped in as a positive influence. It was the case in Sri Lanka. Some of the diasporas were able to bring a positive influence on the Sri Lankan conflict. In other cases, there could be increase in the negative influence there. Yes. Good morning. I'm Sandra Malone from Search for Common Ground. First of all, thank you very much to all of you, hugely interesting, and I can't wait to read your volumes. Thank you. We were talking earlier about the involvement of civil society in mediation processes, and we all know that those mediation processes which involve effectively as many people as possible who are relevant, and that's a lot of different parties, are the ones that have a likelier chance of having long-term solidity. And that very often what happens is that we shift or fly in and out of Geneva and other places, Sun City, et cetera, a group of politicians who very often don't have deep constituencies in countries, and yet who have the fate of many, many people in their hands. One of the things we work on, and I know USIP is having an event next week on this theme, which is the media part in mediation, how do you work with linking the civil society base, if you will, in a country to what's going on on an official track one level by making use without being propagandistic, but using the media which exist or could exist to link what's happening officially to what is needed, desired, and actually happening locally. A lot of people are working on this, but I'm just wondering in the many themes on which you've touched in your volumes, have you commented on the use of media for mediation? There is a whole handbook on that subject. Right, but I mean the four people who are here. Yeah, unfortunately we didn't have the author of that handbook here among the presenters, but anybody want to comment on use of the media? It wasn't something that came in part because I'm familiar with the media handbook on this, but it wasn't something within my brief and I would undoubtedly have been cut out by the sharp pen of USIP's editors because we were being kept very much to task. I think it's, the linking up is very difficult, as you well know, and Search's work has gone a long way in this direction. I think it's, and I think we need to be very careful in talking about civil society to realize, differentiate more, and that there are a number of processes where civil society is operating, you can't compare the efforts to bring in civil society in Darfur to the role that the Assembly for Civil Society played in Guatemala where it was led by the church and essentially was putting the substance of the agreements on the table, though it had a harder time in implementation. I do think media is incredibly important and I've worked quite a lot recently on the Nepal case which is an interesting one where the kind of critical shift in 2006 was precipitated by civil society leadership including through the media and led to the change with enormous numbers of Nepalis taking to the streets in April of 2006 which then created the way to a political process towards an agreement, but it was then lost. Civil society sort of pulled back, giving space and I've talked to people and it was almost a kind of, partly it was very polarized but it was giving a deference to the politicians to take it forward and the process of implementation has been far weaker for that disconnect of civil society thinking that they would take it for one way and then not. And then I would argue that one of the culprits has actually been the media which is very Kathmandu-centric, very elite politics-centered and has kind of missed a lot of those things. So I think it's a critical area but we need to be very careful and precise and contextualized in our approaches to it rather than sort of civil society is always great in how to do it. Yes. At the age 68, I'm really concerned, I hope and despair at the same time. I'll look, heard all of you, these five books are very good. Charity, framework, training. But I'm not so sure if you're looking at root causes. UN National Security Council membership. Who's saying them? Power imbalances among the members in the UN and the Security Council perpetuates conflict. So how do we train them? How do we eliminate that power imbalance within the UN? Calvin, you've got quick answers to that I'm sure. I'm sorry. Anybody else, Bill, you want to say something? We're not looking at root causes in these works, I think. And at the same time, we're all looking at root causes. It all began back in Eden, I'm feeling biblical today. And we've tried to correct that ever since then. But I think what all of us are writing about are while we're doing that, what can be done in the more immediate, time frame in order to deal with the, what the conflicts, the root causes have left us. And I think if we look just at the root causes, we get drowned in quicksand. But if we look for opportunities to bring people who are in conflict to a better outcome, we can be much more constructive. I think we have to realize that everybody in a conflict thinks they're right. We frequently say that the conflict, the rebels are bad and that name indicates that they're bad. Or we were just talking about diaspora, that the diaspora play a negative or a positive role. From whose point of view? And we often have a tendency to type one side or the other without looking at the fact that the people, the conflict indicates that there's a problem. It's important, I think, to understand what the problem is and then try to find ways of dealing with that problem to bring parties to a sense of a better outcome while others of us are trying to correct what happened in Eden. Can I just add to that? And that comes back, I think, to where the rubber meets the road in terms of what realistically can you achieve. I don't think that we've come across any mediators that basically say we're just trying to provide a band-aid solution so that they can go back to war once the agreement is written. That's not what they're trying to do. I think in most of the cases you try to get it to as many of the root causes as you can. And then you have enough momentum to move forward. The agreement is itself one stage of the peace process. As you can see, in cases like in Nepal where even with a minimal of consensus to deal with some of the issues, many issues remain unresolved and you have to keep going at it, even facilitating a continuing mediation during the implementation phase. So I would say that it's probably, we do wanna deal with as many of the root causes as possible but you'll deal with what you can and you keep the process going. We'll take the last question here. All right, I'm Helma Lani and I'm with the Episcopal Peace Fellowship. I also teach nonviolent conflict resolutions in a very practical manner. I'm facilitator for workshops to deal with that.  Nevertheless, I would like to raise the point that when we do our workshops, yes, we start in asking where did this conflict come from and we see that there was an as was mentioned an imbalance of power which we call violence in each case. So there was violence happening and we do try to address that by using the concept of compassionate listening. And you described to us how little time you have, you barely have enough time to read the facts and the statistics about any given population in conflict. So how can you possibly apply some of those issues? I just came back from Jerusalem and I'm trying since then to understand both sides in order to explain the situation to our, since I come from a church community in parishes. And I can't help but think that is very crucial to even solving a situation that we have now like trying to end the occupation or whatever you want to name. So I would like to hear you. I wonder whether you should take psychologist. Anybody want to comment on that? Except to say that I think that again it's something we're aware of in most of the cases, the time pressure is a reality but the, you know, just being sure that you don't rush in spite of that imperative and to be able to be, I think, working with a range of partners perhaps. If you can't get the information yourself to be able to work with a range of partners who can't, that's probably the best that we can do it. And I think when Calvin was talking about everything is done in a hurry and just trying to read frantically on the airplane, that doesn't mean that the whole mediation process is that kind of telescoped into a very short time period. I think most of the mediation processes that we're familiar with extend over months, years, and there's plenty of time for compassionate listening and from hearing from all sides. So I don't think we want to criticize universally mediators for trying to arrange a quick fix. I think people who've been in this field for a while realize this is, we've talked a lot about patience and we all know that patience is a critical quality for any good mediator. And that goes along with listening to all sides sensitively and compassionately. Well, I want to thank our presenters. I want to thank you for attending and I think this has been a helpful event. So thank you.


So I'm Bruce Wilson, executive director of Service Render, Incorporating, and Art's so wonderful.    And I say, you know, but anyway, so I think it's very important that producer shows from us, you know, I can't put it, I can't put it, like I said, it's too great to imagine. I mean, not to mention what it would cost us to be able to do this, you know what I'm saying? And also, you know, we get to use the cameras, you know what I mean? In the community, wow, how big is that? You know, it's too great to imagine, bro.  We just got through doing a show with the superintendent of Lucy School District.  It's like, so you've been very valuable, not only just for us, but for the Lucy School District. The superintendent, Sean McKenna, was sitting here talking about what the new development was, talking about how things, you know, what's happening in Lucy School District, schools. How important is that for people in primarily in Sydney County to hear this? I mean, how important is that? That's very important, you know what I mean? So, I'm happy to be able to produce shows that we can get guests on there that can talk about the things that they do, the important things that they do, and that, you know, they necessarily see it on the newspaper, you know, or whatever the town meeting has been very valuable for us.  So, I think that it comes out with good answers, you know. I was a little sick because I couldn't, you know, you couldn't come out to our places to do shows, or I couldn't do studio time, or, you know, I like to be able to do shows at least twice a month as well, instead of once a month. But, all in all, I mean, I cannot complain really. I really can't complain, bro. So, I'm not down just, I was like, it was tough me saying that, you know.


What is going on guys welcome back to the channel and I do appreciate you being here Today I bring another destiny 2 video and today I want to talk about the new season of destiny 2 season of the nerfs What are bungee thinking? I mean I hate making rant videos about destiny 2 But the way bungee are going on it's like they want this kind of reaction and they're getting it They are getting it the whole community It's pissed about changes they have declared are coming to our beloved Exotics in the near future now before we go any further guys if you enjoyed the video and I agree my opinion do smash that like button I do appreciate that support. Okay, so last night's twab I mean for the past four or five months now. I haven't really been on point with covering the twab I mean most of the time is just the same old same old But last night's Wow, I missed a treat. I woke up this morning checked on Twitter and I'm seeing everybody's upset everybody's pissed everybody's bitching and likely so because many many of our beloved exotics are Getting a nerf and the thing is the weapons and armors that bungee are nerfing are the very reason many many people Are still playing the game and having fun while they play the game It just seems as though from the very very start bungee have not learned I mean I do remember a time where they did state that they weren't gonna nerf anything They're just gonna buff other things and may have been dreaming I guess now I was dreaming But I'm pretty sure they did say that and in my opinion them nerfing these weapons them nerfing these armors these Exotics it just further in my opinion confirms that exotics do have an expiration date Making a grind we all pop towards these Absolutely meaningless, but that's just my opinion I'm pretty sure you guys will have your opinion too and let me know that damn it over in that comments section Now the nerves will go through them if you haven't read them or don't know what I'm talking about So we're gonna restrict them to have right now quote in the destiny dev team for season of opulence Several notable weapons are being adjusted or nerfed We want to ensure that encounters a rate and other end game content for example remain a challenge Some of these weapons have been overwhelming that challenge Our first choice is to buff underused weapons But if we continue to push every weapon up higher and higher it will be impossible to maintain Challenging experiences. I'll just make them harder. This is not a full list of changes But some of the most impactful whisper of the worm. No, I don't want to go any further people Whisper the worm was already adjusted in season of the drifter But an exotic that can generate an infinite amount of heavy ammo is still a Gigantic outlier and renders many weapons irrelevant for certain encounters While exotics are intended to be powerful and novel by passing the ammo economy can tend to force us to adjust Enemies to compensate this effectively results in sniper rifles as a whole being punished because of whisper's unique ammo ability As a result, we are removing the ammo generation Ability so that we can increase the effectiveness of all other snipers that don't have endless ammo supply White nail pulls ammo from reserves rather than creating it Wow I'm pretty sure this is what they did to the first original black spindle in destiny one and reserve ammunition increased by 18 Without ammo reserve packs Wow, what are they doing bungee? What are you doing the whole point of whisper the worm is right now and how it is now? Nothing that it's just gonna it's just people are just gonna vault the weapon yet another amazing exotic being made Absolutely pointless by bungee. Wow. I cannot believe that I cannot believe that people Okay, so moving on to the sleeper's human and to be honest. I don't want to go any further I just want to end the video now Costing bungee, but we will go we will carry on sleeper's human The reduction of balance shut damage for sleeper's stimulant is already present and several important enemies We are now making this reduction part of the weapon The difference in damage is too large between a single precision shot of sleeper's stimulant and an angled shot that pierces the target and Then also hits the target again with the bounce projectiles much like whisper We've had to adjust enemies around that potential by making these changes a permanent part of weapon We can get it into a more balanced position reduced ricochet bounce damage and boss combatants Modified precision behavior total damage is unchanged, but non-precision shots are significantly more forgiving Wow Lord of Wolves Lord of Wolves received a massive increase in damage with the full benefits of shotgun changes in season of the Drifter This made it a lot more popular But we got a significant amount of feedback that released the wolves activating on every kill made it difficult to control the weapons and more Consumption as a result we were allowing you to swap between the two states to control the output while also reducing its output slightly PvE damage reduced by 20% Release the wolves perk has been reworked no longer triggers automatically on kill This effect is now triggered by holding reload Similar to the fundamentals on hardlights and borealis PvE damage and range bonuses on this effect have been removed and replaced with a universal damage bonus instead Acer spades Acer spades is pretty hard and accrucible and has been since its inclusion in Destiny 2 4 second the number of perks on the weapon combined with the Semi-permanent effect of Memento Mori gives the weapon too many advantages compared to other weapons Now that Memento Mori ends when you stole the weapon You'll need to make a decision on whether or not you'll keep the weapon drawn to retain the bonus Memento Mori now ends if the weapon is stalled The PvP damage bonus of Memento Mori was slightly reduced to prevent two tapping gardens while vengeance one-eyed mask was active Specifically you'll need four resilience to survive this Memento Mori is active for six shots again up from five Now though the ace of spades wasn't a weapon I really used I mean I know it was a fan favorite by many and I mean this is gonna piss a lot of people off that is for sure Okay, so we're gonna move on to the exotic armor along with the exotic weapons above We will also be making some changes to the exotic armor pieces primarily We're paying attention to pieces of exotic armor that grant back super energy We thought they are increasingly becoming must pick your choices Orb generation from teammates is meant to be the best way to accelerate your super generation These exotics are allowing players to bypass this teamwork mechanic by generating a large amount of Super energy without relying on other players orbs Also because these items are so Overwhelmingly strong in situations where players face off against the large numbers of enemies Some activities were designed considering the use of armor such as obvious rigs the Phoenix protocols school of the ahamkara Etc. This means if someone in your fire team doesn't have these super exotic equipped the activity becomes far more difficult We are making some changes to these armor pieces to try to preserve their power fantasy and still leave them as Viable choices for difficult activities without making players feel like they must have them equipped or be a huge disadvantage Super-generating exotic armor changes school of the ahamkara obvious rigs and Phoenix protocols now receive super energy back With diminishing returns making it rarer to get a full super back Shards of Ganon and Ursa Furiosas had their super game caps Reduced to be in parity with other super exotic changes Horizon Vest has its energy reduced from 15 to 8 percent for killing one to two guardians still scales up similar to before When killing three or more guardians PvE energy return remains similar to before Whilst sympathetic about the fact that the changes we make in the interest of balancing combat and game design can be jarring It was important that we have this conversation before you read the patch notes We know many of you have a lot riding on day one of season of opulence Hopefully this intel will assist you in building the perfect monster killing machines for the next season of play Yeah, I mean I just don't understand bunches for process here exotics are meant to be exotic Exotic should be fun.  That is the whole point of an exotic I mean we've been here before we've been here in the passive destiny one I'm sure destiny two where they drop these amazing Exotics and then nerf them a few months later when people are having fun with them The most surprising out of all these nerves in my opinion though is the whisperer worm When we've had this weapon for over a year now well close to a year Maybe I don't know. I'm not sure exact date or details Whatever how long have people been using it how long of things still being a challenge It's like they know things on the basis of a certain set group of people who like to speedrun things And do things quicker than everybody else But you don't understand that these kind of players these kind of hardcore players will always find a way of speedrunning things While everybody else who ain't on that level of game takes fully impact of these nerfs I mean the below average to average player Exotics like these exotic armors like these that have been nerfed really help out Taking them away will make things harder for many many people I mean bungee did so good at a zero hour outfit perfect admission only for a week later To destroy all of that with these dumb nerfs It's like bungee doesn't want to bank any other player goodwill the second they earn any they turn it around and Flush it down the toilet the funny thing is that I've been doing this for many many years While we surprised it's like they drop all this because they don't care They know we will all be playing anyway with season the opulence so now be a good time to nerf Everyone's beloved exotics these exotics that they're nerfing now in my opinion and literally yellow labeled legendaries That's what they will be that's what they will become many of these will be vaulted And that what we'll see is a drive in other exotics and other weapons being used and then in a few months time They will get nerfed to put in a game in even a more stale state than what it will eventually become If they carry on the way they are going it blows my mind and people say bungee are just listening I'm sure that's a meme now that is that is not true at all if they will listen They will have known that people are having so much fun playing the game the way it is I mean yes content isn't amazing, but the way the game is its base its core. It's pretty good exotics feel exotic Some legendaries feel legendary why take that away? I just do not get it people but on that note I'm out. I've had enough. Let me know your opinions down below within that comment section Hope you guys enjoyed the video leaving a like really does help out Thanks as always for stopping by and hopefully I will see you on that next one


We're gonna go three beats, one twenty-four each on the beat We change up the format every beat battle This year we wanted to do one twenty-four bar verse per beat Bonesy on the deck is gonna play beat number one It's gonna be on natural verse number one Natural verse dot, let's go Yo, what, natural, G-Y-B?