KATHERINE CLERIDES

Senior Fellow – Cyprus

Katherine Clerides is Honorary President of the Board of the Glafcos Clerides Institute*, an independent political think-tank in Cyprus, which among other activities, offers workshops in leadership and mediation skills training free of charge, primarily to young people and women.

About Katherine Clerides

Ms. Clerides is also a member of the UN-sponsored Bi-communal Technical Committee for the restoration of religious sites desecrated during the inter-communal fighting in 1963 and the Turkish military intervention in 1974.

She has qualifications in Sociology, Political Science and Law. After working in social research and the banking sector as a legal advisor, she entered politics in the late 1980s and was elected as a municipal councilor for Nicosia in 1986. She was elected as an MP for the Nicosia district for two terms (1991-2003), and as a substitute candidate (2004-2006).

Throughout her parliamentary career, Ms. Clerides was active in promoting legislation to enhance the status of women, including: the prevention of violence in the family, the division of marital property on divorce, combating sexual harassment at work, and promoting LGBT rights. She was the first woman to be elected as Vice-President of the Democratic Rally Party (2003-2007) and the first Secretary of the Women’s Organization (1990s).

Ms. Clerides was active in promoting contact and reconciliation between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and established the Bi-communal Relations Bureau of the party in 1999 to provide support to citizen action groups.

She further served as Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs of the Cyprus Government (2013-2015) with responsibility for the religious minorities of Maronites, Armenians and Latins, Cypriots of the diaspora, and matters relating to missing and enslaved persons.

Mediation Experience

Ms. Clerides began her ADR journey in the 1990s, participating in conflict resolution workshops organized by the Fulbright for Greek and Turkish Cypriots working for the reconciliation and reunification of the island. She qualified as a conflict resolution trainer and organized and participated in training workshops, as well as participated in brainstorming activities to find solutions to the Cyprus dispute throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. She continues to be active in reconciliation efforts.

ADR Achievements and Training

Qualified as a mediation trainer and was a founding member of the Bi-communal Conflict Resolution Group. Promoted contact and reconciliation between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities in divided Cyprus by organizing trainings and workshops.
Awarded a Weinstein JAMS International Fellowship, along with her husband, Costas Shammas, also a reconciliation activist in Cyprus (2016)
Eisenhower Exchange Fellow (Focusing on women’s issues, federalism and environmentally-friendly developments) (1994)
Harvard Negotiation Training Course, Nicosia (2017)
Attended classes and met academic staff at California State University at Dominguez Hills, Pepperdine Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, and Harvard Law School Negotiation Program (2016)
Participated in trainings carried out by the Institute for Multi Track Diplomacy (IMTD) with Ambassador John MacDonald, Louise Diamond and Fulbright scholars: Benjamin Broome (George Mason Univ.), Ron Fisher (Prof. Emeritus, School of International Service, American Univ.), Diane Chigas (Fletcher School of Law, Tufts Univ.), and others. (1993-1995)
Humanistic-Transformative Mediation Training: Mediation Training conducted by Marco Turk, Prof. Emeritus, Calif. State Univ. at Dominguez Hills (1998)

ADR Teaching and Mentoring

Under the auspices of the Glafcos Clerides Institute, Ms. Clerides organized four training workshops in mediation and leadership skills free of charge, attended mainly by women and young people.
Clerides’ latest project is a story for children to be illustrated by a Turkish Cypriot artist and published bi-lingually

Publications and Educational Qualifications

Educational Qualifications

Barrister-at-Law (Gray’s Inn) London, (1979) Member of Gray’s Inn and the Cyprus Bar Association
B.A., Political Science, New York University (1973)
BSc Sociology (Hons), Bedford College University of London (1970) (Social Theory, Economics, Philosophy, Statistics and Psychology)

*Note: The “Glafcos Clerides Institute” is named after Katherine Clerides’ late father, who was President of the Republic of Cyprus from 1993-2003. The Institute is the political foundation of the Democratic Rally Party, a center right party affiliated to the European Peoples’ Party in the European Parliament and the largest political party in Cyprus.