Graduate students pursue peaceful solutions to the world’s grand challenges
January 22, 2025
Rotary Peace Fellow Debby Karemera speaks with genocide survivors while working with the Peace Building Institute in Rwanda. Photo submitted.
“Lifechanging, mind-opening… The list could go on and on,” said Khaled Shaath when asked how he would describe his experience as a Rotary Peace Fellow at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Rotary International created the Rotary Peace Centers program in 1999 to offer master’s level education in fields related to peace-building and conflict resolution to the world’s next generation of leaders in peacemaking.
Today, there are seven Rotary Peace Centers in the world, and the Duke-UNC Rotary Peace Center — established in 2002 — is the only Rotary Peace Center in North and South America.
Out of hundreds of applications received each year, only 10 fellowships are offered annually through the Duke-UNC Rotary Peace Center. Fellows are selected from around the world to complete a two-year master’s program — fully funded by Rotary International — based on their potential to contribute to world peace and conflict resolution.
Recognizing that peace can be achieved in different ways, fellows selected to enroll at UNC-Chapel Hill choose from many programs, including global studies, social work, or public health, while fellows who attend Duke study international development.
Jacinta Bailey
When Jacinta Bailey’s boss first recommended that she apply to the Rotary Peace Fellowship she said her first thought was “But I’m not a peace-builder.”
In a few months, Bailey will graduate from Carolina as a Rotary Peace Fellow with a master’s degree in global studies.
“The fellowship allowed me to expand my framing of peace-building as something that is integral in both active conflict states and states that are not experiencing active conflict, or what some would call developed states,” Bailey said.
Before coming to North Carolina, Bailey worked with a community-led development organization serving Indigenous Australian communities. At UNC-Chapel Hill she has continued to study community-led development. During her field experience last summer, she worked with LGBTQIA+ communities in the Bajo Cauca region of Colombia, which continues to experience tension and conflict following the Colombian peace process in 2016.
“I was really doing what I love,” she said, “engaging with community, building community confidence and investing in already existing community knowledge.”
This experience strengthened her resolve that community development is best done by investing in leaders of the community and not by bringing in outside frameworks.
“It changes you in so many ways and invites you to unpack and unlearn some of these cultural assumptions that prevent peace-building from being a collaborative process,” she said.
Mohammed Fakhry
Dr. Mohammed Fakhry, a first-year fellow, is studying global public health through the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Fakhry was working in an emergency department back home in Yemen when the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020. Fakhry said he watched as the already fragile health care system in Yemen — a country that has been affected by conflict for many years — collapsed during the pandemic.
Ten years ago, Fakhry took a course at Gillings with Karin Yeatts, who is now one of his mentors. What he witnessed during the pandemic set him on the path that led him back to Chapel Hill.
“I saw how fragmented the health care system was. I was in the hospital when it failed,” Fakhry said. “That experience really opened my eyes to public health.”
Fakhry felt that he could make a greater impact in health care by trying to solve the structural issues in a flawed public health system.
He spent several years working with the International Committee of the Red Cross and with the health systems in detention centers. There, he engaged in bilateral dialogues with authorities to uphold international humanitarian law for prisoners of war. Through this experience, he learned about the important role conflict resolution has to play in public health.
This summer he will head to Arizona for an internship supporting the health of migrant communities as they cross the border. Once he completes his degree, Fakhry hopes that whatever he does will support his community in Yemen.
Debby Karemera
Before Debby Karemera arrived at Carolina to study social work with a concentration in community, management and policy practice, she was involved in peace-building in her community in Rwanda.
“I come from a country that has been undergoing a lot of reconciliation 30 years after the genocide against the Tutsi,” Karemera said. “Over the course of nine years, I learned so much about the communities that I had worked with, and I decided I wanted to learn more.”
So, she began applying to fellowships to help cover the cost of an academic degree that would further her career goals.
According to Karemera, the fellowship has been life-altering. It has inspired her to think more about her future, and it has brought her out of her comfort zone. It has also introduced her to a diverse network of people with a range of perspectives.
“The fellows, we are literally from all over the world and with that we each bring a wealth of knowledge and experience,” Karemera said. “The diversity of the program will definitely inform the work that I do in the future.”
“After the two years of the fellowship, I am hoping to gain some international experience,” Karemera said, “and then I think I would like to take this experience back home because I have always believed that there is so much more we can do in our own communities.”
Khaled Shaath
Khaled Shaath, a first-year fellow studying global studies at Carolina, hopes to use what he learns as a Rotary Peace Fellow to help communities who have been displaced, as he and his family have.
Shaath grew up in Gaza. Since 2011, he has been working with Amideast, a U.S. nonprofit in Gaza, helping Palestinian students come to the U.S. to study. Now it is his turn.
“It has not been easy,” Shaath said. “My family lost everything and some days I feel very guilty for the comfortable life that I have here.”
Shaath hopes to use his degree to work on the ground in conflict zones in refugee camps, and one day he dreams of using what he has learned to help foster long-lasting peace in Gaza.
“It doesn’t seem to make sense to think about peace in Gaza with all of the violence happening,” Shaath said. “But being in a room full of peace-builders gives me hope. I have really learned how much people want to make a difference.”