Richard Melville Smith

Richard Melville Smith is a peace and human security strategist from South Africa. With over twenty-five years of experience his approach to process design and facilitation, mediation, dialogue and transformative peace leadership, is informed by a background in activism, working with student, youth, women and workers organisations. He has been actively involved in support of peace processes, and conflict sensitive development in Sierra Leone, Sudan, Syria, Burundi, Mozambique, Myanmar and Zimbabwe. Richard is also a rostered civilian member of the SADC Regional Peacekeeping Standby Force and has served as a mentor on several Integrated Mission and Exercise Planning courses. He also designed and facilitated the process that led to the adoption by the SADC Summit of the SADC Strategy for the Prevention of Electoral-Related conflict. His involvement in political and electoral affairs began as an anti-apartheid activist and through his involvement with the Independent Electoral Commission in South Africa during the first democratic election in 1994, and later with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He has built up extensive experience working as a conflict transformation researcher, process facilitator and trainer, including residential experience in the Horn of Africa while based in Ethiopia, in Sri Lanka during the dialogue process in 2001/2002, and as International Fellow with UK based Responding to Conflict. He now works mainly with the international diplomatic community, senior government officials, policy makers and civil society leaders in his efforts to build consensus and find systemic solutions to peace and security challenges. He is co-author of “Working with Conflict”, published by Zed Books in 2000 and has lectured on conflict sensitive development at the Legon Centre for International Affairs in Ghana, and at the University of Birmingham.