Padraig O’Malley, UMass Boston’s first John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace, and other members of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies spent four days with the Helsinki-based group Crisis Management Initiative in Finland to create a framework for peace in Iraq.

There were 16 delegates from Sunni and Shiite groups w ho were on hand for the discussions, and agreed to a 12-point framework to guide peace in Iraq, known as the “Helsinki Agreement.”

Recommendations in the agreement include solving issues through non-violence, the protection of human rights, the creation of a unified political process and creating independent and effective courts.

The talks that spurred the Helsinki Agreement were held in secret, and were led by O’Malley, along with other people familiar with the peace processes in Northern Ireland and South Africa.

“This is representational of the kind of work that we think a public policy school should do,” Steve Crosby, McCormack Graduate School Dean said in a press release. “The university believes that a public policy school should be deeply involved in public policy issues, and this is one of the most profoundly troubling public policy issues, and one, principally through the Moakley chair, that we want to be very much involved in.”

O’Malley is the founder of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies’ New England Journal of Public Policy and has been editor for 20 years. He has also written a number of books, among them “Homelessness: New England and Beyond,” “The Uncivil Wars: Ireland Today” and “Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa,” which was printed this April and has a foreword written by Nelson Mandela.

For more information on the agreement, visit the UMass Boston’s news page at umb.edu/news. For more information on the McCormack Graduate School, visit www.mccormack.umb.edu