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My name is Andy Carl. I am working as an independent consultant, advisor and facilitator,  supporting people, organisations and processes to find ways to prevent, end and transform violent conflicts and defend human rights and human dignity around the world.

I grew up in Northern California and moved to the UK where I started my family and helped to establish International Alert (1989-94) a pioneering and international peacebuilding organisation and then I co-founded and ran Conciliation Resources (from 1994 until 2016) one of the most innovative and interesting international NGOs in the peacebuilding sector.

I’m now working freelance on a number of initiatives, and these include:

Acting as a Senior Advisor to the Somali Dialogue Platform. The Platform is an initiative that was set up to provide opportunities for political and problem-solving dialogues on contentious political settlement issues. Now supported and administered by the Rift Valley Institute, it enables a group Somali intermediaries to engage in and facilitate diverse dialogues that are informed by in-depth research and public debates on critical and contested issues.

With Adapt Peacebuilding we are supporting Christian Aid Ireland as they experiment with adaptive programming to strengthen their work with local partner organisations in six developing countries and context – finding ways to continue to be as effective as possible in dynamically changing contexts, deliberately learning from experience and then courageously trying out ideas and approaches based on that emergent learning.

I also serve as a member of the Board of Trustees two organisations I strongly believe in: Impunity Watch and the Rift Valley Institute. Impunity Watch enjoys the trust and confidence of individuals and communities affected by serious crimes and gross violations of human rights abuses and finds ways of working alongside them to design and implement policies that encourage dealing with the truth of what happened in the past, justice, reparations, and the non-recurrence of violence. The Rift Valley Institute pursues a mission, to “make local knowledge work” in Eastern and the Great Lakes. Over the years RVI has enabled African-based researchers and specialists from outside Africa to collaborate on original research and facilitate the exchange of essential knowledge to address persistent challenges.

I am also working on an ongoing initiative with the Telesforo Monzon E-Lab at the Olaso Dorrea Foundation (Basque country) and the Berghof Foundation (Germany) on one of the challenges for peacebuilding of how to ensure that there are enough protection measures and guarantees for members of negotiating teams and their advisors or advocates to not face the risk of death, injury or arrest as a consequence of their participation in and advocacy for a peace process.

Finally,  I continue to track and follow peace process and reflect on what can be learned from them in my news-stream Peace Talks (@PeaceNewstream) which I encourage you to follow.

Thanks for visiting this site. I am always interested in working with others to find innovative and more effective ways of responding to our global challenges of violent conflicts so feel free to get in touch.

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