By Cora Weiss

The International Peace Bureau awarded the Sean MacBride Peace Prize to Rosalie Bertell in 2001. The Peace Bureau’s president, Cora Weiss, spoke at the Nobel Symposium on the occasion of the centennial of the peace prize. This is what she said. (Reproduced with her permission)

Nobel Symposium
December 7, 2001
Oslo, Norway
Cora Weiss, President
International Peace Bureau

The International Peace Bureau is honored to be among those who, as a previous Nobel chairman Egil Aarvik said of one laureate, “are not satisfied merely to draw attention to alarming trends, but to devote energy to turning the tide.” (1982)

It was in that spirit that not only was the IPB elected a Nobel prize winner, but 13 of our officers have also been among laureates including the first, Frederic Passy in l901, Alva Myrdal a vice president in l982 and our past president, Sean Mac Bride, in l974.

The IPB, since l892, the most comprehensive international peace network, is committed to disarmament and a culture of peace. It was named a laureate , “in the spirit of Alfred Nobel’s plan to support, accelerate and promote the peace movement” and for its support of the League of Nations. We are grateful, indeed the world must be grateful, for the award of this year’s prize to the United Nations and its caring leader, Kofi Annan. We congratulate them.

Professor Nye addresses the power of the non state actor in the 21st century and quotes a British observer who wrote that American power is not great enough to solve a number of serious global problems.

True, but America and the world of nations need the help of the United Nations, not only that of of separate nations. America and the United Nations need the help, indeed the partnership, of civil society. We need a new democratic diplomacy where governments, international governmental organizations and civil society work together.

We address ourselves today to the subtitle of this session: Build institutions to promote peaceful change. Nation states have failed. They have failed to keep the peace. They have failed to eliminate the root causes of war. Military and economic dominance have fueled resentments which contribute to violence. War as an institution, protected by international laws, has proven a hopeless method to correct social and economic inequities.

We believe the world needs a new social contract. A contract that puts women equally at all tables where the fate of humanity is at stake; a contract that insists that reading, writing and arithmetic are no longer sufficient basic skills for all children to learn. We need to integrate peace education in all schools in the world; a contract that would make it illegal and immoral for any nation to have a military budget greater than its health and education budgets combined; a contract that recognizes that when one sixth of the world follows the Muslim tradition and one quarter of the world’s states are Muslim, it is essential that everyone close the gap, not of misunderstanding, but of no understanding between Islam and the other great world religions and cultures. We recognize Amartya Sen’s plea not to lump people into “civilizations”. Whether the Muslims are democratic, or anti-democratic, fundamentalist or not, we still need to understand them. Finally, the new social contract for the 21st Century should abolish the institution of war and its genocidal weapons just as we have abolished slavery, colonialism and apartheid as legitimate institutions, despite egregious examples of their lingering.

May I explain.

WOMEN

While our hats are off to East Timor for having 27% of their government seats filled by women, the fact remains that women have always been second class citizens, or worse. The atrocities committed in Afghanistan have brought to world attention, more clearly than any other example, and there have been many, the issue of the gender gap, of gender insensitivity, and the need for gender equality. Women have demonstrated our capacity in scientific laboratories, in hospital surgeries, in global leadership and government offices. There is no field of life, no position in government or civil society where women are not as equally capable – or incapable – as men. Yet in 100 years of awarding Nobel peace prizes, only 10 women have been recipients. At a table where nation building has been taking place and the future of a country beleaguered by 25 years of war, poverty, and conflict is being determined, a country where women widowed by wars are the majority of the population, only 3 women are among nearly 30 delegates to design the first steps to democracy. It is reassuring , but not enough, that 2 women are among the new temporary administration.

There is now a law, unanimously adopted by the Security Council, that calls for a gender perspective in all UN missions, for increased representation of women at all decision making levels in national, regional and international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention, management and resolution of conflict. It also calls for the protection of women and girls during armed conflict. Gender inequality is no longer acceptable and must become part of the relic of unfortunate history. It is Security Council Resolution 1325 and should be required reading and following for everyone in every government.

PEACE EDUCATION

To move away from the culture of violence which has defined the past centuries to a culture of peace – which must define this new century – or we may not see future centuries, we need to raise new generations of people who will reject violence as an option for settling disputes. We need to sustain the disarmament agreements the world has negotiated, to implement the decision of the International Court of Justice that held that under international law the threat and use of nuclear weapons are generally illegal, and to prevent the degradation of Mother Earth. To do that and to assure a future for our children and our children’s children, we need to integrate teaching for democracy, for justice, for disarmament, for human rights, for tolerance, for respect for different cultures and for alternatives to violence. Peace education is a participatory process which develops critical capacities essential to global citizenship.

Peace education helps teachers and learners seek solutions to the challenges of war, of terrorism, of economic and racial violence, gender exploitation, environmental damage and the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Peace education teaches negotiating skills, and is essential for the development of a culture of peace. Peace education is not a separate course, not an after school program; it must be integral to all curricula. It asks future generations to live by the force of law not the law of force. And it raises academic performance. To help achieve this, the United Nations should reopen its Peace Education office which was unfortunately closed due to budget cuts.

REALLOCATION OF RESOURCES

The world is again spending nearly a trillion dollars a year in the preparation for and the carrying out of war. That does not include the billions it takes to repair the destruction caused by war. It takes only one quarter of all military spending to fix everything up including only $9B to provide clean water and sanitation for the whole world; $12B for reproductive health care for all women; $13B for basic health and nutrition, $6B for basic education. It’s a bargain. Yet the world can’t seem to find the resources to create a basic level of decency for everyone. Surely this would lower the level of violence, reduce the anger that comes from being unequal. Too many nations find it too easy to squander precious national resources on buying arms, improving nuclear arenals, and can’t seem to find the less expensive solutions to good health and basic education.

This misallocation of resources is devastating. Bombs cannot buy peace in a world of extreme injustice and inequality.

CLOSING THE CULTURE GAP

Of over 6 billion people on earth more than 1 billion follow the Muslim tradition. Of the nearly 200 countries in this world, over 50 are Muslim. Yet the rest of the world knows little and little effort is made to learn about Muslim culture. I see this as an anthropological, not a religious challenge. We need the world’s religious leaders and those who promulgate the faith in every community to take seriously the absence of understanding which so easily leads to hatred, to enmity, to contempt for the “other”. But it is not sufficient to leave this to the religious communities; we must all make a more deliberate effort to understand and respect each other’s cultures. “Fear is the enemy of learning. It gives ignorance its power,” says the Rev. William Sloane Coffin. Just as we must beware the dominance of one power, so too must we embrace all cultures and all faiths as one form of prevention of conflict and as the only standard of decent behaviour.

ABOLITION OF WAR

Finally, it is not utopian to consider the institution of war itself. For centuries humankind has reached for the gun, dropped the bomb, raised the fist when filled with greed for more territory, or resources, when confronted with serious disputes. I am not an ideological pacifist. Yet we look around us and, as our great poet, Grace Paley writes, “The darkness is widening between our lucky stars”. We cannot afford to revisit the loss of blood and treasure that accompanied the struggle to free the world of slavery. We cannot relive the wars that threw off the yokes of colonialism that kept millions subject to bondage. We must never again see the violence that accompanied the over throw of the apartheid regime that denied millions of South Africans their freedoms. In a world of nuclear weapons, with the heavens already militarized and on the brink of being weaponized, humanity cannot endure an armed struggle to eliminate another institution whose time to go has come.

We have spent too many years studying conflict prevention and resolution and have developed a new vocabulary of peace making words. We have successfully invested in creating a world institution dedicated to preventing the scourge of war. With the world awash in weapons of mass destruction, it is too dangerous a time for war to remain as a legitimate institution. It is time to put it on the table for dismantling. Eleanor Roosevelt, the mother of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said, “If we really acquire this will to peace we will gradually impart it to our children. But we will have to give them something to take the place of the adventure and excitement of war.”

That is our challenge, friends. We are not raising our grandchildren to see them become cannon fodder. Sustainable development, education for peace, human rights and justice, elimination of hunger, prevention of HIV/AIDS, understanding each other’s cultures, examining the heavens for stars, not for weapons, designing ways to heat our homes, run our cars and fly our planes without depending on non renewable resources, seeing to it that women are treated equally with men, these should provide the adventure and excitement that will keep our youth from fighting men’s wars. We must remember Rachel Carson’s lesson. “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

We now have a decade for a culture of peace from 2001-2010; we have a day, September 21st, for cease fire. We need a whole future free of war.

What a golden opportunity we have – with so many of the world’ moral authorities gathered together- to issue a call, a declaration, that would support the peace process in the Middle East; that might establish a Nobel commission to study the de institutionalisation of war and the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction. We have a rare opportunity to use that moral authority, our hearts and minds, to help assure peace for our children and children’s children.