Fifteen years ago this past weekend, I lost a friend and mentor in a car crash in Croatia.
Steve Degeneve was one of the first people to teach me about how conflicts, and conflict management, play out in real life. He was an idealist and a passionate, sometimes almost obsessive, believer in promoting human rights and the rule of law. He died at the age of 37 on Jan. 12, 2004.
I often wonder what he would say about a world in which his ideals are increasingly under threat.