VANCOUVER -- Feb 4, 2010 -- UNESCO-IHE recruits Dr. Ernest Thiessen to teach Smartsettle for Negotiation and Mediation in Water Conflict Management.

Dr. Ernest Thiessen will be a lecturer for UNESCO's Negotiation and Mediation for Water Conflict Management I short course, which runs from Feb 8 to Feb 26 at Delft and the Clingendael Institute (http://www.clingendael.nl) in The Hague, Netherlands. This course is initiated, developed and jointly offered with UNESCO’s programme ‘From Potential Conflict to Cooperation Potential (PCCP)’ and the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education. The course introduces the basic concepts of water cooperation, conflict prevention and mitigation and provides in-depth skills training.

Dr. Thiessen's lectures will include a simulation demonstrating how Smartsettle could be used by Iraq, Syria and Turkey to negotiate water quantity and quality issues in the Tigris-Euphrates watershed.