Confronting the challenges of division

news release

13 October 2003 – For immediate use

Confronting the challenges of division

A major conference in Armagh tomorrow (Tuesday 14 October) will examine the role of civil society organisations – voluntary and community organisations, trade unions and business associations – in bridging or tolerating divisions in Northern Ireland.The NICVA annual conference Divided Societies: does civil society bridge them or bear them? will take place at the Armagh City Hotel from 10.00am to 3.30pm.

Major speakers at the conference will include Ted Cantle, who was appointed by the Home Secretary to chair the Community Cohesion Review Team which was set up to review the causes of the summer riots in a number of northern towns and cities in England, and Kumi Naidoo, Chief Executive Officer of CIVICUS, the civil society world membership body and former Executive Director of the South African NGO coalition, SANGOCO, NICVA’s equivalent organisation in South Africa.

NICVA’s Chief Executive, Seamus McAleavey, explains: “The aim of this conference is to encourage voluntary and community organisations and others to take a hard and honest look at the work they do in a divided society.Are they actively trying to bridge divisions or does their work either ignore the situation around them or even give support to the forces that perpetuate division? We want to ask the question can we have a fair and just society in those circumstances or is it fundamentally flawed, destined to be inequitable, unfair and even uncivilised?"

Other speakers at the conference include Duncan Morrow, Chief Executive of the Community Relations Council, Jenny Pearce from the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, Neil Jarman from the Institute for Conflict Research and Geraldine Keys from FOCUS in Omagh.

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For further information, please contact:

Frances McCandless, NICVA
028 9087 7777 (work) 07721 746804 (mobile).