300 voluntary workers, military personnel and experts in international agencies study conflict and peace with the UOC and UNITAR

One of these recent graduates is Hisham Al-Omeisy, a journalist from Yemen, who was held hostage by Houthi rebels during the civil war. According to the BBC, several human rights groups state that Houthi forces have carried out enforced disappearances, tortured detainees and arbitrarily detained numerous activists, journalists, tribal leaders and political opponents. Fortunately, after months of anguish, Al-Omeisy was released.

His optimism and his desire to return to his daily routine led him to study the Master's Degree in Conflict, Peace and Security (UOC-UNITAR), which he successfully completed last year. A frequent correspondent with the international media, such as The Guardian and the BBC, he will speak at the graduation ceremony that the UOC is holding on Saturday 23 November, at noon, at the Teatro Lope de Vega in Madrid. He will take a look back over his life, his months in captivity, at what it means to live in a country at war, at the need to seek refuge in Egypt and his studies in conflict and peace at the UOC.

He will also take part in a round table on UN peace initiative processes in Yemen, which will feature a number of experts in international relations, such as Jon Hans Coetzer, coordinator of the Online Learning and Education Pillar at UNITAR, and Daniel Rajmil, director of the Master's Degree in Conflict, Peace and Security, taught jointly by the UOC and UNITAR. The event will be held on Friday 22 November, at the UOC centre in Madrid (Plaza de las Cortes, 4), at 4:30 pm.

"Humanity's efforts to live in peace offer us sufficient knowledge to achieve real results, do away with war, transform conflicts and be able to manage them positively", explained Professor Daniel Rajmil, who has been in charge of the Master's Degree in Conflict, Peace and Security (UOC-UNITAR) for nearly two years. Over 300 students all over the world have studied on this course, and it has now been completed by around a hundred graduates. The highest percentage of students is from Africa, representing 80% of the total number of enrolled students.

Since Professor Rajmil took over the management of the master's degree, he has placed the emphasis on two new fields of knowledge: he has added the gender perspective with the "Gender Issues" subject, and he has extended the concept of security, focusing not solely on armed conflict, but also on food and environmental issues. Rajmil has also introduced a fairly young field of study, called game theory: "Faced with a conflict situation, we propose various options for action to the student". The master's degree programme's management is also working towards enabling students who study on this programme to complete an internship with UNITAR.