Fanie du Toit

Fanie du Toit is a Think Peace Affiliate. He is currently overseeing a process to build community capacity for insider mediation in Myanmar’s Rakhine State as a step towards reintegration following the 2017 violence which caused 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh. Previously (2016-2018) he was Chief Technical Advisor for UNDP Iraq, facilitating inter-sectarian dialogue in communities fragmented during and after ISIS rule. During the preceding 16 years, he was programme manager and then executive director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) in South Africa, focusing on issues related to post-TRC reconciliation and transitional justice, and worked with colleagues from other African states on similar processes. His latest book, Political Transitions that work—Reconciliation as Interdependence, by Oxford University Press in collaboration with Notre Dame University, appeared in July 2018. As Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, he completed a D.Phil in the Philosophy of Religion in 1995, and in 2005 he received a further Masters’ degree in Justice and Transformation from the University of Cape Town (UCT). In 2007 he received UNESCO’s International Prize for Peace Education on behalf of the IJR. He is also an Honorary Associate Professor at UCT’s Department of Political Studies and a member of the Advisory Board of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.