President of Iraqi Kurdistan Accepts IGL Diplomacy Award

On May 7th, 2011, the President of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, accepted the Robert and JoAnn Bendetson Award from the Institute for Global Leadership's Robert and JoAnn Bendetson Public Diplomacy Initiative.

The award was presented to President Barzani by Robert Bendetson, Co-Chair of the Institute's External Advisory Board, "in recognition of your valorous and distinguished work on behalf of a united and peaceful Iraqi future for all its peoples."

"We at Tufts University, the Institute for Global Leadership, and the Robert and JoAnn Bendetson Public Diplomacy Initiative are so proud to recognize the efforts and achievements of President Barzani in stabilizing Iraq," said Mr. Bendetson at the award ceremony.

Awards were also presented to Dr. Kemal Kerkuki, Speaker of the Kurdistan Parliament, "for your dedication to peace and a progressive future for Iraqi youth and for your educational efforts and initiatives," as well as to Nawzad Hadi, Governor of Erbil Province, "for your enlightened educational vision and your quest for a peaceful Iraq."

This most recent trip continued the Institute's efforts to promote political stabilization in Iraq through the Bendetson Public Diplomacy Initiative.  Begun in 2006 as part of the Institute's 2006 EPIIC Colloquium on "The Politics of Fear," the Initiative has conducted numerous fora, conferences, and meetings between Iraqi leaders and officials from other post-conflict states to foster reconciliation and peace within Iraq. 

In 2007, the Initiative sponsored the "Iraq Moving Forward" conference at Tufts University, which brought together key international players from several divided societies, the United States and the Middle East, to bring the lessons of collective narratives of violent confrontation and subsequent efforts to mediate differences through peaceful means to bear on the situation in Iraq.  Following this conference, the Initiative helped sponsor and coordinate reconciliation meetings between Iraqi politicians in late 2007 and early 2008 in Helsinki, Finland.

Mr. Bendetson's recent trip also expanded the Institute's growing relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan, where a group of undergraduate students from the Institute's NIMEP Program traveled for two weeks in January to conduct independent research.

President Barzani was also visited earlier this year by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who "expressed their appreciation for Barzani's role and his initiative to bring together Iraq's political blocs and groupings in Erbil, which resulted in the formation of the Iraqi government after political crisis had engulfed Iraq."  (For more information, see the article enclosed at the bottom of this page, translated by Rana Abdul-Aziz, an alumna of the Institute for Global Leadership and Lecturer in the Arabic Language Program at Tufts University.)

For more information about the JoAnn and Robert Bendetson Public Diplomacy Initiative, please visit its website:

http://www.tuftsgloballeadership.org/programs/bendetson

More information about the award, in English, can be found here

More information about the award, in Arabic, can be found here