Building a world of peace for all humanity

Golden Words by Peace Ambassador of present era Mr @ManHeeLeePeace ..@hwpl_nl @hwpl6chicago @HWPL_ZA pic.twitter.com/vgMriiXxNe

— Syed.K.I. Zabiuddin (@rafay06) March 14, 2016

Religions for Peace speaks out on the events in Paris

Dear Partners in Peace,

Religions for Peace is filled with sorrow for the innocent people killed in France. We cry out in anguish over their blood, which was shed to terrorize and divide people. We are in prayerful solidarity with their families and loved ones.

It saddens us unspeakably whenever religion is twisted and distorted to justify violence. Morally united across all our diverse religious traditions, we utterly reject and condemn violence committed in the name of religion. Not only is it profoundly cruel, cowardly and misguided; it is also a criminal behavior that needs to be addressed by all due legal means.

Together, we firmly reject the attempts to polarize and divide our religious communities. Are we to let these cruel and senseless murders fuel distrust and cycles of violence amongst diverse religious, cultural and political communities? With a single heart, we answer No!

Rather, we reaffirm---based on 45 years of experience day in and day out---that the diverse religious communities working together across the world in Religions for Peace are committed to taking concrete action together to respect religious differences, honor human dignity and advance our common good.

In our shock, sorrow and moral outrage, now is the time for sincere believers of all traditions to further commit to principled multi-religious collaboration for the common good. Let each religious community come to the defense of any other community whenever its members are under attack, slandered or scapegoated. We in Religions for Peace have found that this approach is a true way for each believer to honor his or her respective religious tradition. In doing so, we can as diverse religious believers also address together even the most misguided and hideous misuses of religions as we work to help build the Peace.

Yours in solidarity,

 

Dr. William Vendley

Secretary General

Nazi Hunter Elie Wiesel is the 2015 Nobel peace Prize Winner

Elie Wiesel Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Author of "Messenger for Peace"..With the hard-earned wisdom of his own...
Posted by Patricia Olive Corowa on Friday, 13 November 2015

Pax Christi Victoria - Christian Muslim Relations

               

Pax Christi Victoria

        International Christian Peace Movement

PO.Box 31

CARLTON SOUTH 3053

6 November 2015

Email: ahmkerr@hotmail.com   

Dear friends & members of the ANZAC Centenary Peace Coalition.,

An invitation to another organisation’s AGM might seem like the ultimate turn off.

Nevertheless Pax Christi Victoria does warmly invite you to our AGM for the following reasons:

We live at a time when relations between the West and Islam are at low ebb. This raises troubling but unavoidable questions for all of us.

How should we relate to our Muslim brothers and sisters in Australia at what is a rather difficult time for them? Many Muslims feel isolated, harassed and humiliated by the words and actions of politicians, important sections of the media and bigoted elements of society.

To help us think through this and other questions we have invited Ghaith Krayem to address us on the occasion of Pax Christi’s Annual General Meeting on Sunday 15 November, at 2.00 pm.

Ghaith was until recently president of the Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV), the umbrella body of the Muslim communities of Victoria which brings together some fifty member and affiliated organisations. In his position as president and before that as Secretary of ICV, he has played an important leadership role in guiding the Muslim community’s response to terrorist incidents, the government’s counter-terrorism policies and so-called deradicalisation strategies.

Ghaith is one of Australia’s most thoughtful Muslim leaders, articulate and outspoken, with a firm grasp of the needs of Muslim communities and of the diverse views and traditions within Islam. He has at the same time a sharp understanding of how mainstream society operates. Ghaith has held many senior positions within Australia Post, and presently runs his own consultancy Hikmah Consulting.

Ghaith Krayem’s address on Sunday 15 November and the lively discussion that will no doubt follow will help Pax Christi and its friends, supporters and partner organisations to develop a clear set of objectives, strategies and actions over the coming year. The issues to be dealt with are morally and politically challenging. They include:

·                     Christian-Muslim relations

·                     Appropriate responses to terrorism and the ‘war on terror’

·                     Practical ways of promoting a peaceful end to the conflict in Syria

·                     Australia’s role in the Middle East

·                     The dangers posed by the Sunni-Shia divide within Islam

·                     The need to rethink the future shape of interfaith dialogue and multicultural Australia.

The address by Ghaith is open to the public. So, please bring the event to the attention of people in your networks, and feel free to mention it to your social media contacts, whether through Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or other avenues.

I very much hope that you will be able to join us for this crucial discussion on 15^th November.

Sunday 15 November,  Kildara Centre rear, 39 Stanhope St, Malvern

1 p.m. Shared meal to which you are warmly invited. Bring some food to share.

2 p.m. Address & discussion, Ghaith Krayem until 3.30

Don’t feel obliged to stay for the AGM business. (Actually we lock the doors & don’t let you out until you have agreed to join the committee!)

Warm regards.

Harry Kerr, Convenor, Pax Christi Victoria

Rev Harry Kerr
101 Katrina Street,
BLACKBURN NORTH,
Victoria Australia 3130
Phone +613 (0) 9893 4946
Mon +61 (0) 424 950 852

Let's start dancing our way to peace, fellow-feeling and good times

Be Happy
Posted by HI Jwl on Thursday, 31 July 2014

Release of the Report and Recommendations: ASEAN and the Prevention of Violence Against Women

Picture below is from this site

In time for The Responsibility to Protect at 10: Progress, Challenges and Opportunities in the Asia Pacific Conference (26-27 February, Phnom Penh, Cambodia), the Report and Recommendations of the workshop on ASEAN and the Prevention of Violence Against Women in Conflict and Humanitarian Situations has been released. Hosted by Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect with the support of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, on 20 August 2014 in Jakarta, Indonesia, the event was attended by 48 leaders from the government sector, nongovernment organizations and international organizations from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Brunei, Thailand, Singapore and Viet Nam.

Acting British Ambassador to Indonesia, ASEAN and Timor Leste, Rebecca Razavi, delivered the keynote address on the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative. This report highlights the key themes discussed at the workshop and recommendations put forward by participants to augment regional efforts to prevent violence against women in conflict and humanitarian situations.

Key recommendations:
 

1. Strengthen the case for engagement with UN Security Council 1325 (2000) Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in the ASEAN Political Security Community.

a. In particular, promote WPS engagement within two ASEAN institutions strongly associated with the Political Security Community – the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and ASEAN
Institute of Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR).
b. Continue to promote the complementarity of the WPS agenda in meeting the prevention of violence against women agenda in the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting for Women (AMMW) and the ASEAN Commission for Women and Children (ACWC).

2. Further consideration of how to engage the security sector in the prevention of sexual violence in conflict and humanitarian situations.

3. Facilitate peer-to-peer knowledge exchange on the value of WPS National Action Plans (NAPs) in building capacity to prevent violence against women and empowering women in peace and security institutions, particularly gender inclusion and mainstreaming in the judicial and security sectors.

4. Facilitate WPS awareness raising, advocacy and networking as part of R2P exchange in the region.

5. Conduct research, particularly monitoring and evaluation of national level performance, to help inform policy interventions aimed at implementing WPS at national and regional level.

The Report may be read in full here.

The above is from Protection Gateway

Let the nonviolent Jesus form us ...

Ross Parry shared John Dear's post.

Post by John Dear.

Peace ecology, water scarcity, and water wars

Published on

Monday, November 10, 2014

by

Common Dreams

Peace Ecology: Deep Solutions in an Age of Water Scarcity and War

by

Randall Amster

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A key concept of what we term "peace ecology" is grounded in the notion that conflicts and crises driven by scarcity of natural resources—such as water—can also be opportunities for us to reimagine what is possible and ultimately foster mutually beneficial solutions and longer-term sustainability. (Photo: Louis Vest/flickr/cc)

The following is an excerpt of the Randall Amster's latest book, Peace Ecology, and appears on Common Dreams with the kind permission of the author and publisher. All rights reserved. Please note, book citations have been removed for online reading but a fully cited version (pdf) can be accessed here.

Mark Twain once purportedly said that “whiskey’s for drinking—water’s for fighting.” While the evidence for attributing this to Twain is shaky at best, the quote is nonetheless frequently invoked as a foregone conclusion: people will fight over water because it is scarce, essential, and invaluable for the growth and development of human societies. In reality, “water wars” are exceedingly rare, with the overwhelming majority of the world’s 263 shared river basins being subject to treaties, agreements, and other mechanisms for allocating their flow. Still, there is a deeper concern reflected in Twain’s apocryphal quote, namely that while water wars between nations may be rare, modern water utilization on the whole often reflects a collective war that humankind is waging on the environment. All too often, what are coded as “shared waters” and “peaceful resolutions” to human-human conflicts still involve deep incursions against the natural flow of surface waters, including channelizing rivers to fix national boundaries, altering the saline and sediment levels, and damming rivers for hydroelectric plants. Such outcomes are part of a larger orientation that comes to equate peace with control—especially control of nature.

"We must recognize water as boundless... as life."

As human cultures expand, water is emerging as the central resource in local and global politics alike. Pressures to privatize and commodify water are continually being brought to bear, often under the guise of development schemes that are portrayed as linking growth with security. To ensure that water flows even in places where it is highly problematic—from Abu Dhabi to Phoenix—massive delivery infrastructures are contemplated, including energy-intensive desalination plants and circuitous concrete canals transporting water hundreds of miles across deserts. Science fiction scenarios abound, as plans are conceived to capture clouds, drag icebergs, and create mountains and lakes for delivering water supplies to thirsty nations. One of the first high-tech regional water projects, which would serve as a template for similar projects worldwide, was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) developed in the 1930s, comprised of a series of elaborate dams and hydropower generating stations. When World War II broke out, the project was reoriented toward wartime production, doubling its power generation and producing a majority of the phosphorous used by the U.S. military for bullets, bombs, and chemical weapons, as well as aluminum for aircraft. The “most significant contribution to the war” was created at a TVA-powered laboratory: the fissionable uranium-235 that was used to fuel the Manhattan Project that developed the world’s first nuclear weapon.

The TVA example is stark for its specific militarism, yet it reveals something deeper about how we tend to view water. Oftentimes the choice for transnational actors appears to be one of engaging in either water wars or joint development projects—in essence, either militarism or capitalism; a World War and/or the World Bank. If we are inclined to associate the latter with peace, then it obviously becomes preferable to the alternative, and yet deeper questions about the meaning of water remain unresolved. Water is inherently fluid, unpredictable, prone to extremes of either floods or droughts, both transient and in situ, primeval in its simplicity and purity. Water reshapes images beneath its surface and accurately reflects those above it; it is "an active agent, changing all it touches … creating new courses and possibilities yet to be appreciated by humans." As we co-evolve with all of the essential resources in our midst, we must also apprehend "the limitations of instrumental rationality in capturing the meanings of water and shortcomings of modern science in improving our understanding of its treatment in society."

Increasingly, we come to recognize that no peace between nations is possible without reconciling underlying water issues. It has been surmised that the failure to attain peace in the Middle East between Israel and its Arabic neighbors has been due in part to the concomitant failure to achieve a mutually cognizable agreement over the Jordan River and underground aquifers in the region, yielding a climate of "mistrust, fears of dependency, and perceived threats to national sovereignty." In the case of India and Pakistan, where border clashes and warlike tensions have persisted for decades, a treaty governing the Indus River basin was signed in 1960, following a World Bank proposal to divide the waters between the two countries. While the agreement may have helped forestall violent interstate conflict, it also led to "an all-out effort to build a monumental array of dams and canals"—leading one of the Pakistani (formerly Indian) engineers on the project to observe: “This was like a war. These were huge works…. Everybody was after us. They said we had sold the rivers, that we were traitors to our country”.

What we learn from these examples is that water is more than a mere resource, and that both fighting over it and dividing its spoils are equally problematic resolutions to looming global water issues. As we have seen throughout this volume, both the hardware and software of conflict must be addressed, requiring a simultaneous emphasis on peacemaking at both the human-human and human-environment interfaces. As Vandana Shiva documents, efforts to privatize water and dam rivers often result in the displacement of peoples and the despoliation of the environment—as well as an ensuing “centralization of power over water” that conjures a double meaning for the concept of "hydropower." While it may be the case that "the world is more conscious than ever of the unbreakable nexus between water and life," this realization—coupled with depletion of freshwater sources and a rising contingent of global competitors for resources—has led many to speculate that the wars of the 21st century will be fought primarily over water, not oil or other valuable resources. On the other hand, more promisingly, a spate of literature has emerged in recent years suggesting that water can be a powerful basis for transborder cooperation, collaboration, conservation—and peace.

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There are myriad lessons to be gleaned from the field of hydro-politics, which we may take as the "systematic study of conflict and cooperation between states over water resources that transcend international borders." Chief among these lessons are that water highlights our innate interdependence with one another and the environment alike, and likewise that water directly connects the economic and ecological spheres of human life. As with other environmental components, "water bodies respect no political borders," thus engendering a wider perspective that is particularly useful in light of global scarcity and the essential nature of the resource. While studies of water in relation to violent conflict have reached varied conclusions…, there is an emerging consensus that scarcity in the context of renewability coupled with the “critical need" for water can provide the impetus for cooperation—yielding "peaceful and successful conflict management schemes" even among "states with recent militarized conflicts."

If we take to heart the premise that scarcity and essentiality can promote cooperation, then the prospects for water to spur transborder peace initiatives are indeed promising. Nearly half of the earth’s land mass abuts river basins shared by more than one nation, and more than three-quarters of the available fresh water flows through an international river basin—reminding us in stark geographical terms that "a river is without a nationality." It is becoming increasingly clear that lasting peace is possible, from the Middle East to the American Southwest, "only if water is taken into account." Highlighting these themes, the United Nations declared 2013 as the "International Year of Water Cooperation" and the years from 2005-2015 as the "Water for Life Decade"—optimistically citing the operative notion that "history has often shown that the vital nature of freshwater is a powerful incentive for cooperation and dialogue, compelling stakeholders to reconcile even the most divergent views. Water more often unites than divides people and societies." In order to reach this ambitious horizon, we must strive to "build bridges between various meanings and understandings" and to enhance "the legitimacy of noninstrumental uses of water." In short, we must recognize water as boundless—as life.

If we are thus seeking the robust peace contemplated by the peace ecology perspective, then we will need to do more than sign treaties that allocate every drop of water among competing users. Control and peace are often dichotomous, at least in the context of transnational security issues and a complex geopolitical landscape where looming resource wars and ongoing processes of economic colonization continue to dominate the discourse. Physical borders between nations are increasingly militarized in the post-9/11 era, even as the barriers to so-called "free trade" and footloose capital are simultaneously relaxed. This has the effect of diminishing the potential for genuine exchange among peoples and communities on opposite sides of national borders, interrupting the natural processes of ecosystems that do not abide the largely artificial lines on maps. It also serves to exacerbate tensions among nations, leading to the creation of permanent war economies whose explicit "national security" focus is the procurement and control of dwindling resources—down to even the essentials of food, water, and energy. The zero-sum logic of scarcity and competition is palpable, and has become a central norm of international relations, even as its workings are becoming little more than a self-fulfilling downward spiral in which vast resources are expended in the attempt to secure more of them.

[A]ny exploration of processes confronting these eventualities is potentially revolutionary in its full dimensions. The set of interrelated themes brought together under the rubric of peace ecology remain grounded in the notion that the crises of scarcity and conflict are also opportunities for mutually beneficial engagement born of necessity yet aimed at longer-term sustainability. The cultivation of a sense of shared destiny and mutual necessity can bring even ardent transnational adversaries to the negotiating table, since, as Alexander Carius reminds us, "environmental problems ignore political borders." This emerging holistic perspective suggests that peoples and nations have the potential to find ways of managing ecological concerns that not only work to avoid conflicts but that can also serve to promote peaceful relations among human communities and with the environment itself.

© 2014 Randall Amster / Paradigm Books

Randall Amster, JD, PhD, is Director of the Program on Justice and Peace at Georgetown University, and serves as Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association. His recent books include Peace Ecology (Paradigm Publishers, 2014), Anarchism Today(Praeger, 2012), Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness; and the co-edited volumes  Exploring the Power of Nonviolence: Peace, Politics, and Practice (Syracuse University Press, 2013) and Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action.

United Nations : women, peace and security.

In a unanimously adopted Presidential Statement this morning ahead of a day-long debate on “women, peace and security,” the Security Council reaffirmed the need to dismantle the “persistent barriers” facing gender equality, calling on Member States to embrace a “dedicated commitment to women's empowerment, participation, and human rights” and ensure their full and equal participation in peace and security issues.

Held annually, the Council's open debate provides an opportunity for the wider UN membership to reflect on the progress made, and accelerate action on implementation of the Security Council resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, which requires parties in a conflict to respect women's rights and support their participation in peace negotiations and in post-conflict reconstruction.

In a message to the 15-member body delivered by Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon thanked the Council for its “consistent focus” on women and peace and security issues, noting that such debate has enabled the international community “to move beyond viewing women as only victims of conflict to seeing them as agents of peace and progress.”

However, he expressed concern that “unprecedented levels of displacement” and the “immense human and financial cost of conflict” is testing global commitments to addressing the needs of women and girls around the world while also hindering their participation in conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding initiatives.

To read more please go here

Is it possible? A Peaceable Economy by Edward Dommen

From the World Council of Churches:

A Peaceable Economy

A

Edward Dommen

Visions & Voices series

Specs: 172 pp.; 5 x 7”; paper; perfect; 4-colour cover
Topic/Shelving: Religion / Economics
ISBN: 978-2-8254-1639-6
Price: CHF 7.00; £5.00; €5.00; $7.00; Spring 2014

Order: ww.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.com, www.ISBS.com, www.gazellebookservices.co.uk and at local bookstores and online booksellers.

Rethinking the foundational elements in economics-

Edward Dommen has taken up the challenge and breaks fresh ground. His shrewd critique of conventional economics is supported by a penetrating use of biblical and Reformation teachings, and he convincingly shows that another world can be made - is - possible." --Gilbert Rist, author of The Delusions of Economics

The same dynamic drives all kinds of economy and wars: it is cumulative causation, along the lines of "Those who have will receive more and they will have more than enough; but as for those who don't have, even the little they have will be taken away from them." Violence is rooted in the workings of both economies and war. The purpose of war is to compel others to do our will, and it is the outcome of many kinds of economic activity. War and economies are intimately related. The key to an alternative vision is the injunction, "Love your neighbour as yourself.. However, while sermons are easy, there is no conclusive evidence that humanity has made moral progress over time. The struggle for a peaceable economy must be ceaseless, repeated again and again to counterbalance the inertia of cumulative causation. As William the Silent said, "One need not hope in order to undertake, nor succeed in order to persevere."

Edward Dommen is a specialist in economic ethics, a longtime economist for the UN Conference on Trade and Development, and a Quaker. He lives in Geneva.

Click here to download the table of contents, introduction and chapter 1 (pdf)