Douglas Yates

Dr. Douglas Yates will participate in the 21st World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Santiago de Chile, July 12-16 2009.

He will present a paper entitled "Enhancing Governance in Africa's Oil Sector", which compares all of the oil-dependent countries in Africa with the effort of the international community (NGOs, IGOs) to promote transparency and fight corruption in those countries. Dr. Yates evaluates how successful those efforts have been. His paper will be published as a chapter in a forthcoming book edited by Kenneth Omeje (summer 2009).

50 national political science associations and 3,000 individual members are expected to atend this conference which marks the 60th anniversary of the International Political Science Association (IPSA).

Douglas Yates has been commissioned by the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) to write a report on the Petroleum Industry in Africa, and to present it at a GARP-SAIIA conference to be held in Tanzania in mid-November 2008.

While in Tanzania, Dr. Yates will visit Arcadia University's Nyerere Center for Peace Research in Arusha, Tanzania.

On July 26-29, as every year since 2006, Douglas Yates was invited to join the visiting faculty of a special summer program on peace studies at Jeju National University, in South Korea. This program takes place on the Jeju National University campus on Jeju Island, off the Korean peninsula, and features an international faculty.

With the support of the Jeju provincial government , the UN, and Suffolk University in Boston, USA., it seeks to promote world peace through the concept of peace island, which is based on the idea that islands have originally peaceful cultures that can be used as models for peninsular and continental countries. In an interview with The Korea Times in 2008, Ko Chang-Hoon, who heads this program at Jeju National University, said Jeju Island was developing itself as 'a Mecca for world peace.'

Read more on the Peace Island concept in Douglas Yates's Op-Ed article

Dr. Douglas Yates published a chapter on 'UNESCO in Africa' for a book on the UN in Africa edited by Adekeye Adebajo (Lynne Rienner, 2008), with a foreword by former UN General Secretary Boutros-Boutros Ghali. Yates also wrote a chapter on Chinese relations in Gabon entitled 'French Puppet, Chinese Strings' in another edited volume to come out later this year, and published a chapter on president Sarkozy's new African policy entitled 'French Connection' in the South African journal Global Dialogue (March 2008). Yates wrote the chapter on Gabon for the Africa Yearbook 2007 (Leiden: Brill)

In January 2008 Dr. Douglas A. Yates travelled to India to present papers on conflict resolution at the New Dehli University and at the Institute of Social Sciences in New Dehli. Yates also went to Sri Lanka to present papers on the American elections and their international implications at the University of Colombo and at the Lakshaman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies.

Dr. Douglas Yates went to Berlin in February 2008 to give a paper on politics in Gabon during a one-day seminar for students preparing a simulation for Model United Nations in New York.

On September 15^th - 19^th, Dr. Douglas Yates travelled to Cape Town, South Africa, upon the invitation of the Center for Conflict Resolution, to participate in a conference on China in Africa. He presented a paper on China in Gabon which will be published in a book by Lynne Rienner, China in Africa: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?.

On July 25th-29th, 2007, Dr Douglas Yates travelled to Jeju Island, off the South Korean peninsula, as a visiting professor at Jeju National University. He gave lectures on Emmanuel Kant and Hans Morgenthau's theories of peace in the 2007 International Governance Summer School for World Heritage, Peace Studies and East Asian Governance ran by the University's Institute of Peace Studies.

In December 2006 Dr. Douglas Yates was invited by the United States Information Services (USIS) to give a series of lectures in Mauritania to young aspiring politicians. The wokshops were entitled "The Coming Generation: How Young Political Leaders can Influence their Country's Future". Dr Yates had training sessions in the capital city, Nouakchott, and in the Southern provincial towns of Kaedi, Kiffa and Aleg.