| Posted: April 29 2005,11:02 |
If you wrote this report, you will find a button here that you may click
in order to make changes in the report. 
|
PROGRESS: Has your organization seen
progress toward a culture of peace and nonviolence in your domain of
action and in your constituency during the first half of the Decade? |
In
our daily task to promote an education to peace and to study the
conditions for the construction of peace, we have noted a true
progression - slow as it may be but nonetheless real ! - from a culture
of war towards a culture of peace.
In our field, which is peace
education in the very broad meaning, and especially in the schools,
high-schools and colleges where we use to act through exhibitions,
presentations, conferences and lectures, we witnessed a growing
interest for the issues of solidarity and global development which are
important paths to peace.
We are studying (see below) the possibility of "measuring" peace through spécific indicators.
|
OBSTACLES: What are the most important obstacles that have prevented progress?
|
The strongest obstacles remain :
- the mainstream thinking about the permanency of war in history and mankind,
- the bad understanding of what is really peace,
- the lack of imagination to go beyond the refusal of war and to conceive concrete actions to build peace,
- the growing complexity of our world,
|
ACTIONS: What actions have been
undertaken by your organization to promote a culture of peace and
nonviolence during the first half of the Decade?
|
We can examine two fields in which such progress in the culture of peace has been notable since the beginning of this decade :
a) Military order progressively coming to an end
b) A greater consciousness for the necessity of developing an education for peace understood in its broadest meaning.
Through our relationship with the military.
More
and more often, dialogue has been made possible with those that used to
be considered as the main instigators of war and those responsible for
the great suffering it brings about. We had a personal experience of
this during our meetings of the World Social Forum in Porto
Alegre and Mumbai, between 2002 and 2005, where we had invited high
ranking officers from France and other countries, as well as generals
and admirals to debates and workshops. It was observed that they
proved to have a real interest in these exchanges with the civil
society and that their presence appeared more and more natural with
each new forum. The necessary complementarity between civil and
military action has been clearly stated by the military themselves :
without hesitating they pleaded for resorting to civil means of
prevention in the treatment of crises. We can testify on many
circumstances when the military have been playing a constructive role
in this respect : for example , as concerns thee Indian subcontinent,
efforts toward an appeasement in the conflict between India and
Pakistan have been engineered by former Indian and Pakistani officers.
In Brazil, the Ministry of Defense is headed, for the first time by a
civilian. More and more, security problems are relevant to global
policies, and on this point the primary responsibility of the political
class bas to be underscored.
Reconverting military installations
shows not only a new restructuring of the means of defense but also a
new mission for equipment that has become useless : in Spain the
largest fortress in Europe is looking for a new function through the
hosting of seminars between military, political and administrative
local authorities, and civil society ; in France a community of towns
around Mulhouse in Alsace is undertaking the restoration of a monument
to commemorate the memory of Worid War I as a manner of educating
citizenship through pedagogical action ; a town around Lyon is inciting
us to help find a new vocation for an ancient fort by endowing it with
a role in promoting sustainable development and the culture of peace.
Progress in peace education
The
very notions of peace and the culture of peace have become enriched :
they are integrating wider notions, namely sustainable development,
human development human security, governance, international
co-responsability. Thus we are now in contact with a vietnamese
peace and development Foundation (Vietnam peace and development
Foundation), recently created by Vietnamese authorities, that closely
associates peace and development in order to promote cooperation
between nations, protection of life and human resources, human
progress, etc...
In July 2003, there appeared in the official
bulletin of the French ministry of Education new instructions
concerning the education of "development and international solidarity"
aiming at "fostering greater understanding of the imbalance of the
world and allowing for a reflection on the means to remedy it, so that
every nation and every individual may have a right to contribute in,
and benefit from the development." For two years, we have been engaged
in a project in Colombia trying to define a strategy for peace
education at a national level, associating all the actors of society,
among whom the Colombian Ministry of Education which has just
Launched a program called "Competencias Ciudadanas".
Also
to be noted, is the part that the economic sector is taking in these
efforts. Companies increasingly recognize their "social
responsibility" and are more willing to support supporting
educational programs through the actions of foundations.
The
university network that we put together at the instigation of the
Culture of Peace program of UNESCO has developed well since we have
started organizing and participating in various university modules.
Through this program, we have witnessed an increasing number of
trainees. We are thus happily surprised by the interest generated
by this program among young people as well as among the university
officers. There is indeed a point of convergence between an original
idea and the realization that it is necessary to undertake such an
action and to reflect on this matter.
|
ADVICE: What advice would you like to
give to the Secretary-General and the General Assembly to promote a
culture of peace and nonviolence during the second half of the Decade? |
Since
the dialogue between the military and civilians becomes easier we have
to consider that the main problem is more and more the responsibility
of political authorities and we ought to find the ways to get from the
politicians the right decisions to promote and foster peace. The very
challenge is that not only the citizens but also - maybe first ? -
those in power have to be taught to deal with peace issues, to
act with cleverness to build peace.
Why not try to emphasize the importance of the Millennium goals themselves as the conditions to make progress toward peace.
|
PARTNERSHIPS: What partnerships and
networks does your organization participate in, thus strengthening the
global movement for a culture of peace? |
-
la Coordination française pour la décennie internationale de la
promotion d'une culture de la non-violence et de la paix au profit des
enfants du monde
- the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World
|
PLANS: What new engagements are
planned by your organization to promote a culture of peace and
nonviolence in the second half of the Decade (2005-2010)? |
The
project is entitled “Peace Indicators Project.” It was launched
in 2005 at the École de la paix (School of Peace) in Grenoble.
After the initial phase where we studied the feasibility of such
a project, we are now beginning the developmental process and are
already looking at its potential practical applications. The premise
upon which this project was born is that something that can be measured
will more useful than something that is not.
The purpose, quite
simply, is to establish a reliable manner in which to measure « peace.
» Then, we seek to diffuse these findings. The nature of
the work is threefold : quantitative, qualitative, educational.
The basic idea of this project is that peace is not just an
absence of conflict, and therefore that it needs to be studied as a
phenomenon largely independent from war.
The quantitative part
is the most difficult since many elements relating to peace are either
subjective or difficult to measure. Nevertheless, we seek to
establish a fairly reliable barometer of peace, using various
indicators in order to come up with numbers for national, regional and
international figures. We call this barometer the Passy Scale, in honor
of the first Nobel Peace laureate, Frédéric Passy (1901).
The
qualitative work will complement the quantitative findings and will
take the form of a World Report on Peace that will explain the nature
of the indicators, analyze the different trends and focus on case
studies.
Finally, since one of the missions of the School of
Peace is peace education, we seek to make our findings accessible to a
wide public that includes students of all ages. For this reason,
we will also be producing a World Atlas of Peace.
|
Postal address of organization
|
Ecole de la paix
7 rue Très-Cloîtres
38000 Grenoble
France
|
E-mail address of organization
|
ecole@ecoledelapaix.org
|
Website address of organization
|
www.ecoledelapaix.org
|
Highest priority action domain of a culture of peace
|
Education pour une culture de la paix
|
Second priority action domain of a culture of peace
|
Paix et sécurité internationales
|
Highest priority country of action (or international)
|
Internationale
|
Second priority country of action (or international)
|
|
| Back to top |
|
