During the upcoming Newark Peace Education Summit, Aldo Civico of Rutgers University will mingle his voice with those of three Noble Laureates--His Hiliness the Dalai Lama, Jody Williams and Shirin Ebadi--as well as Martin Luther King III and international "peace leaders" from a wide cross section of cultures, disciplines and perspectives.

"It is an absolute honor to be part of such an important and significant event in Newark," commented Civico. "We live in a world where peace cannot be limited to the development of our freedoms and the pursue of equality. Our societies need brotherhood and sisterhood to turn them in open and inclusive communities in which we welcome, we appreciate, and we embrace the other."

From April 14 to 17, I participated in Puerto Rico at the annual conference sponsored by The American Ethnological Society and The Society for Urban, National and Transnational Anthropology. On Friday April 16, I served as a discussant to the panel The Category of Perpetrator in Human Rights Discourse. Presenters, among others, were Winifred Tate, Linda Green, and Samuel Martinez.

There is today a small but significant number of anthropologists who have been dedicating their research to "perpetrators." Anthropology came in quite late in studying political violence and its main focus has been the victims of gross human rights violations. And this no doubt has been the right thing to do. In fact, as an expression of engaged anthropology, students of human rights have given a fundamental contribution to the field of human rights by allowing to bring to the fore effects of power and by lending an ear to a truth that speaks to power. Sally Engle Marry, Linda Green, Ricardo Falla, Deborah Poole, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Victoria Sanford and others have been pioneers in the field.

After eight years, I returned to New Orleans for the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.

At the occasion of the international conference in Panama on security for Central America, I was interviewed by the United Nations Program on Development about the challenges for security in the Americas, the role played by civil society, and especially women, the role of media. I also made reference about the experience of Palermo in the fight against the Mafia. I gave the interview only a few days after I returned from Monterrey in Mexico, where I had participated in a meeting on values and civic engagement. In one word: security in Latin America will relay on strategies that will activate citizen participation and make our imperfect democracies more inclusive.