The February 20 family reunions held between North and South Korean citizens represent a step in the direction of peace between the two nations.

Inside the South Korean Unification Ministry there sits a list of names of over 70,000 citizens who were separated from their family members in the North more than sixty years ago. When the Korean War came to a halt by way of ceasefire in 1953, the North and South became independent, but ideologically divided; and in so doing prevented all communication between families that had been split - literally down the middle at the 38th parallel.

On the 20th of February this year, however, the two states put aside their differences.

For the first time since 2010 they came together at the border that divides them to provide families with the opportunity to reunite.

One hundred citizens from North Korea, and another hundred of their relatives from the South met with each other, some for the first, and some for the last time, in the town of Panmunjom which straddles the states. For five days, relatives met every afternoon and were able to come to know those family members who had been absent from their lives. Two citizens from the South arrived by ambulance in order to take part in the meetings, while others in ill health exerted themselves beyond their capacity for this opportunity which they knew would not come again.

Once a family is chosen by random ballot to reunite, they are given only a single meeting. Reunions, which depend on the health of the relations between the Koreas are also infrequent, with less than 20 having taken place since 1985 when they were established. For many, the goodbye is necessarily final, and there is a growing worry that the majority of those who were alive throughout the Korean War will not live long enough to see their relatives again.

Although the road to good relations may be long for the two Koreas, the family reunions they have allowed to go forth in the last month represents a small step in the right direction.

In the late 1960’s, West and East Germany existed in a similar state, and a future of peace for the two countries looked unpromising. But in 1990, when East Germany elected to dissolve itself as an independent country and instead become part of the West, it was the result of tireless efforts for reunification on both sides: efforts that were started by the small gesture of familial reunification. Today, less than 30 years later, Germany is a decisive and most importantly a peaceful country, and one that leads its region and the world in economic and social spheres. Those who have no confidence in a future of peace for North and South Korea should be reassured by Germany’s example.

The reconciliatory spirit demonstrated by the Korean family reunifications of this past February are also indicative of the tangible presence of the Pillars of Peace - a conceptual framework designed by the Institute for Economics and Peace that explains how attitudes, institutions, and structures can build and support peace in society. In particular, the family reunifications in Korea are strongly related to ‘Acceptance of the Rights of Others’, a Pillar that describes the ways in which respect for diversity in society builds stronger community ties, which in turn encourages resilience in the case of external shocks (such as the Global Financial Crisis) and closer ties between individuals and groups, that work to prevent the outbreak of violent conflict.

Ultimately, even informal social acceptance within communities builds peace between individuals, which can then transform into group, and state level peace - even if the process starts with only one family at a time.

Changes in Peace: North and South Korea

Levels of peace in North and South Korea are almost at opposite ends of the spectrum. South Korea is among the top 50 most peaceful countries, ranked 47th of 162 countries on the 2013 Global Peace Index (GPI); while North Korea is one of the ten least peaceful countries, along with conflict ridden countries such as Somalia, Syria, Iraq and the Central African Republic.

North Korea is ranked 1st worldwide for violence containment spending, meaning that it spends more on preventing and containing violence than any other country in the world. According to the Economic Cost of Violence Containment, North Korea spends 27.5% of GDP on violence containment, which reached a total of US$10,980 million in 2012.

Compare levels of peace in North Korea and South Korea.

Reference

• http://www.visionofhumanity.org

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Creative Growth - William Scott - Peace Worlds

Pharrell William's "Happy" music video is one of my favorite today. And I got to know he's amazing work "i am OTHER". This video -that i posted up above- is one of the video from 'i am OTHER' youtube channel. 

Well, I think this video is truly inspiring. It shows pure heart of William Scott, how he's thinking for World Peace. I think that is something needed for starting peace. Such a beautiful soul. And amazing artwork!

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Frieden in Mindanao (Peace in Mindanao)

Botschafter des Friedens veranstaltet eine Friedensvereinbarung-Zeremonie zur Verbindung des Katholizismus mit der Islam.

Der Frieden hat begonnen, in der Insel Mindanao. Diese Region plagte sich mit den Konflikten zwischen Katholizismus und der Islam schon mehr als 40 Jahren lang, und dies führte zu mehr als 100,000 Tote. Manhee Lee, der Friedensunterstützer unternahm seinen dritten Besuch auf den Philippinen, und während seines Aufenthalts, empfehlte er den Erzbischof und den drei Bischöfen in den Nonnenklöster an, den Friedensprotokoll zu unterschreiben. Der Zweck des Besuches von Herrn Lee war diese Friedensvereinbarung abzuschließen, die den Konflikt in der Region Mindanao zur Ruhe führen könnte. Erzbischof Antonio J. Ledesma (die Gemeinde der Cagaya de Oro) traf Herrn Lee zum ersten Mal im September, 2013 und seit ihren Treffen lud er ihn mehrere Male zu den Philippinen ein. Der Friedensunterstützer entschloß sich nun, trotz der angespannten Unruhe in der Region, auf die Phillippinen zu reisen.

Weltfriedenskämpfer Manhee Lee veranstaltete am 24. Januar in der Innenstadt General Santos einen Friedenslauf, indem 1,000 Leute teilnahmen; Studenten der Mindanao State University, Mitglieder der Internationalen Jugendgruppe, und religiöse Führer. Hiermit gingen Leute in der Region zum ersten Mal über die Grenzen der Religionen und Nationalitäten hinaus. Diese Bewegung erregte große Sensation und Hoffnung im Kreis der Filipinos, die sich nach Frieden sehnen, und ließ innerhalb des internationalen Gesellschafts und Medien eine Welle des Friedens entstehen. 

Nach dem Friedenslauf, versammelten sich Studenten der Mindanao State University, die Jugendgruppe, Bürgermeister, Professoren der Universitäten, Führer der katholischen Kirchen und Führer der Islam, die im Friedenslauf teilnahmen, in einem Konferenzraum eines Hotels im Innenstadt der General Santos. Vorträge über Konflikte und Lösungen zum Frieden auf der Insel Mindanao wurden gehalten, der Reihe nach: der Vertreter der katholischen Kirchen(Fernando Capalla, früher Erzbischof der Mindanao Davao), der Vertreter der Islam(Esmael, Herrscher der Maguindanao, und islamischen Gemeindebezirks in Mindanao) und der Vorsitzende Manhee Lee. Die Vertreter der katholischen Kirchen und Islam vereinbarten sich den Friedensprotokoll für die Endung des Krieges und die Vollführung des Weltfriedens zu unterschreiben, und gaben ihren Ehrenwort mit Manhee Lee gemeinsam zu arbeiten. Nachdem sie den Protokoll unterschrieben, eröffnete der Vertreter bzw. Vorsitzende Manhee Lee eine Friedensvereinigung-Zeremonie in der es veröffentlicht wurde, dass Katholismus und Islam vor Gott, vor allen Leuten der ganzen Welt, und vor den rund 150 Anwesenden nie wieder Streiten anfangen werde.

Obwohl es in 2012 ein Friedensvereingungstreffen gab, die von der philippinischen Regierung und dem islamischen Gemeindebezirk gehalten wurde, konnte Frieden nicht gebracht werden. Offen gesagt, es war das erste Mal, dass ein Vertreter eines südkoreanischen Friedensorganisations in den Philippinen eine Friedensvereinigung durchführte, und die Welt war überrascht über diesen Anblick, wie eine Nation vom Tod zum Leben hinüberzog. Die philippinische Regierung drückte dem Vorsitzenden für seine Leistung einen innigsten Dank aus und eröffnete ein Ereignisfeier um den denkwürdigen Tag zu feiern.

Die staatlichen und privaten Sender in den Philippinen berichteten über dieses Ereignis und dies überraschte und begeisterte die Bürger auf den Philippinen. Manhee Lee wird seine Reise hier nicht beenden, sondern wird am 29. auch mit Fidel Valdez Ramos eine Friedensvereinigung beschließen, den früheren philippinischen Präsidenten. Diese Nachricht zieht schon Aufmerksamkeit auf sich und es ist bereits vorgesehen in vielen Medien übertragen zu werden, innerhalb und außerhalb des Landes. Der Vertreter wird am 30. den Staat verlassen.

Nachschlagen

Reference

• http://www.spyghana.com
• Asia news agency

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Rigoberta Menchú Tum – The Nine Nobel Women (9)

It was announced in October 1992 that the prize would go to Rigoberta Menchú, a Mayan Indian of Guatemala "in recognition of her work for social justice and ethnocultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples."

The decision was generally applauded, but conservative critics charged that Menchú had taken part in violent actions of the Guatemalan guerrillas against the government. Previous Nobel prizes for champions of human rights had been given only to those who used nonviolent methods, like Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma. It was true that Menchú had every provocation to take up arms, and two of her sisters had indeed joined the guerrillas. Government soldiers had brutally murdered their mother and brother because their father opposed the landowners, and finally the soldiers had set fire to the Spanish embassy where the father and other compesinos were making a peaceful protest and burned them all to death.

Menchú tells this terrible story in I, Rigoberta Menchú, An Indian Woman in Guatemala, a book composed of a series of reminiscences she dictated in Spanish to the anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. That Menchú did not turn to violence, but to political and social work for her people, is the reason why she received the prize. She became an active member of the Committee for Campesino Unity and then helped found the Revolutionary Christians. Menchú explained that "we understood revolutionary in the real meaning of the word 'transformation.' If I had chosen the armed struggle, I would be in the mountains now."

Committee Chairman Sejersted in his presentation speech emphasized the meaning of Menchú's decision. He spoke of "the brutalizing effect of the use of violence. Whoever commits an act of violence will lose his humanity. Thus, violence breeds violence and hate breeds hate." How can one break out of this circle, especially when one is confronted with the blind violence of the other side?

An answer can be found in "the shining individual examples of people who manage to preserve their humanity in brutal and violent surroundings, of persons who for that very reason compel our special respect and admiration. Such people give us a hope that there are ways out of the vicious circle."

To Sejersted, "even in the most brutal situations, one must retain one's faith that there is a minimum of human feelings in all of us. Rigoberta Menchú Tum has preserved that faith."

Her whole life story represents a remarkable achievement. Born in abject poverty among a suppressed people, working since the age of eight --- "I never had a childhood" --- she managed to get some minimal education in her church, where she first showed her potential ability, taught herself Spanish so that she could tell the world of the sufferings of her people, and, driven into exile in Mexico in fear of her life because of her political activities, she developed the skills of leadership and diplomacy until, as the prize announcement states, "Today, Rigoberta Menchú stands as a vivid symbol of peace and reconciliation across ethnic, cultural and social dividing lines, in her own country, on the American continent and in the world."

Reference

• http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/peace/heroines/index.html

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Aung San Suu Kyi – The Nine Nobel Women (8)

At the ceremony for Aung San Suu Kyi in December 1991, she was still being held in detention by the military dictatorship in Myanmar (Burma) and could only be represented by her two sons, her husband and her picture facing the audience. In his speech presenting the prize to her sons, Professor Francis Sejersted, chairman of the committee, declared, "Her absence fills us with fear and anxiety," but he felt we could also have confidence and hope. He went on to sum up the meaning of her prize:

In the good fight for peace and reconciliation, we are dependent on persons who set examples, persons who can symbolize what we are seeking and mobilize the best in us. Aung San Suu Kyi is just such a person. She unites deep commitment and tenacity with a vision in which the end and the means form a single unit. Its most important elements are: democracy, respect for human rights, reconciliation between groups, non-violence, and personal and collective discipline.

The sources of her inspiration, Sejersted explained, were Mahatma Gandhi, about whom she had learned when her mother was ambassador to India, and her father, Aung San, the leader in Burma's struggle for liberation. She was only two when he was assassinated, but she had made his life a center of her studies. From Gandhi she drew her commitment to nonviolence, from her father the understanding that leadership was a duty and that one can only lead in humility and with the confidence and respect of the people to be led. Both were examples for her of independence and modesty, and Aung San represented what she called "a profound simplicity."

We must add that undergirding her political philosophy in spirit and deed has always been her Buddhist faith, which is also the foundation for her belief in human rights. In championing human rights in her political opposition to the military dictatorship, she needed to be fearless. Sejersted referred to the incident during her election campaigning when she courageously faced a detachment of soldiers, whose officer lined them up in front of her, prepared to fire if she continued to walk down that street, which she did.

Several times in his speech Sejersted cited the collection of her essays, entitled Freedom from Fear, which her husband, Michael Aris, edited and published before the ceremony, so that her voice could be heard beyond the reach of her oppressors. The title essay begins, "It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it." Fearlessness is the best response to governmental violence. In conclusion she writes that "truth, justice and compassion... are often the only bulwarks against ruthless power." These are the teachings of Buddha.

Sejersted told how Suu Kyi spent many years abroad, first when with her diplomat mother in her younger years, then studying at Oxford, working at the United Nations in New York, marrying Aris, a British Tibetan scholar, starting a family when they were in Bhutan, finally ending up in England, after scholarly assignments in Japan and India. Burma was always on her mind and heart, however, especially after the military seized power in 1962. When she married Aris, she told him that one day she must return to Burma when she was needed.

It was to nurse her dying mother that she returned from England, but as the daughter of Aung San, she could not stay aloof when she saw the government brutally repressing a popular movement in opposition. She headed a political party in the elections which the military permitted, but she was so successful that even before election day, she was ordered confined to her home. Nevertheless, her party won by a great majority, after which its other leaders were jailed.

"We ordinary people, I believe," Sejersted declared, "feel that with her courage and her high ideals, Aung San Suu Kyi brings out something of the best in us... The little woman under house arrest stands for a positive hope. Knowing she is there gives us confidence and faith in the power of good."

As of this writing Suu Kyi is still under detention, separated from her family, despite efforts of many governments and the United Nations to secure her liberation. A group of Nobel peace laureates only got as far as Thailand in an attempt to bring their petition to the military dictators who hold her. In 1994, however, a U.S. congressman was permitted to see her, and, as a result of mediation by a Buddhist monk, she had a conference with members of the government. There is now more hope.

Reference

• http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/peace/heroines/index.html

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Mother Teresa – The Nine Nobel Women (6)

Professor John Sanness, who chaired the committee, gave the speech of presentation for the 1979 prize to Mother Teresa. After speaking of the many paths to peace which had been recognized in previous awards, he explained what was special in this one:

Can any political, social, or intellectual feat of engineering, on the international or on the national plane, however effective and rational, however idealistic and principled its protagonists may be, give us anything but a house built on a foundation of sand, unless the spirit of Mother Teresa inspires the builders and takes its dwelling in their building?

Sannes explained that this spirit is rooted in the Christian faith. "She sees Christ in every human being, and this in her eyes makes man sacred... The hallmark of her work has been respect for the individual and the individual's worth and dignity. The loneliest and the most wretched, the dying destitute, the abandoned lepers, have been received by her and her Sisters with warm compassion devoid of condescension, based on this reverence for Christ in Man.

Sannes told how Mother Teresa was born into a Roman Catholic Albanian family living in Skopje, capital of the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. At the age of twelve she had felt the call to help the poor, and a few years later decided to work in India. At the age of eighteen she joined the Irish order of Loreto and went to teach in their girls' school in Calcutta. After sixteen years she felt a new call, to work in the Calcutta slums. There she started a new order, the Missionaries of Charity, committed to serve the poorest of the poor, which soon spread to many other countries.

Working for people who were not of her race, religion or nationality, Mother Teresa had transcended all barriers. "With her message she is able to reach through to something innate in every human kind--- if for no other purpose than to create a potential, a seed for good." "She promotes peace in the most fundamental manner," Sanness concluded, "by her confirmation of the inviolability of human dignity."

Reference

• http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/peace/heroines/index.html

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Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan – The Nine Nobel Women (4,5)

When Egil Aarvik, vice-chairman of the committee presented the postponed 1976 prize to Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan in 1977, he began his speech with a graphic description of the tragic accident that had occurred the previous August on a street in Belfast in Northern Ireland. A car out of control, its driver an Irish Republican Army (IRA) gunman shot dead fleeing from British soldiers, smashed into a family out for a walk. Two of the children were killed outright, the third was mortally injured, and the mother critically injured.

This senseless killing of innocent children produced a wave of revulsion against the violence which had been sweeping Northern Ireland, with Catholic IRA members using murder and terror to drive out the British, Protestant extremists doing the same in response, and many innocent victims killed as a consequence. The movement was led by Betty Williams, a housewife who came upon the scene after she heard the shot, and Mairead Corrigan, the young aunt of the dead children.

Aarvik told how the two women led marches in which Protestants and Catholics walked together in demonstrations for peace and against violence. That so many people in Northern Ireland had recognized that violence cannot bring social justice, Aarvik declared, gave hope that this could be "the dawn of a new day bringing lasting peace to the sorely tried people of Ulster."

Williams and Corrigan "have shown us what ordinary people can do to promote peace." They had the courage to take the first step. "They did so in the name of humanity and love of their neighbour; someone had to start forgiving. ... Love of one's neighbor is one of the foundation stones of the humanism on which our western civilization is built." It is vitally important that it "should shine forth when hatred and revenge threaten to dominate." Theirs was "a courageous unselfish act that proved an inspiration to thousands, that lit a light in the darkness..."

Unfortunately, that light was dimmed in Northern Ireland until very recently. The Peace People, the organization which emerged from the movement, declined in numbers and influence. Betty Williams emigrated to the United States, where she teaches in a university and has become a stirring lecturer on peace. Mairead Corrigan Maguire has continued to work with the Peace People in Belfast and has also effectively carried her message of nonviolence into other countries. Quakers in the seventeenth century thought of themselves as "God's ordinaries." When ordinary people rise to face challenge, they may go far beyond the ordinary.

Reference

• http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/peace/heroines/index.html

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Emily Green Balch – The Nine Nobel Women (3)

Emily Greene Balch was a colleague of Jane Addams' in the effort to stop the First World War, her partner in the work of WILPF, and successor as its leader. In 1946 she herself shared a prize with the YMCA leader, John Mott. It came to her as the result of a successful campaign organized at the request of WILPF by its member, Mercedes Randall, who did a remarkable job of bringing Balch's indisputable qualifications before the Nobel committee and securing a large number of prominent supporters.

Committee Chairman Gunnar Jahn gave a far fuller description of Balch's activities than Koht had devoted to Addams. He told of her landmark research on Slav immigrants to the U.S., of her twenty-year teaching of social economics at Wellesley College, which ended when she was dismissed because of her pacifist activities during World War I. In her next career, she was at the center of WILPF's international work, serving for a time as its secretary-general in the Geneva headquarters, and continuing to be a familiar figure at the League of Nations.

Jahn was impressed with her practicality, her effort to improve international political relations by promoting international cooperation in other fields, and by her control of the facts in all her proposals. As an example he referred to her work to secure the withdrawal of the U. S. troops from Haiti in 1926 after eleven years of occupation. She went to Haiti with a delegation, showed great skill in investigating the situation, wrote most of the report, and fought to get the recommendations accepted by the government. Eventually they were all carried out and the troops withdrawn.

Jahn referred to Balch's difficult decision in World War II, as an absolute pacifist who had joined the Quakers, to support the U.S. war effort to vanquish the evil which Hitlerism represented. She could not be unaffected by the fate of her WILPF colleagues and Jewish friends.

Jahn commended Balch for her gradualism, as compared with the Utopianism of less patient peace workers. She continued to develop imaginative proposals for slow international progress through functional cooperation and came to be regarded by American peace activists as their intellectual leader.

Reference

• http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/peace/heroines/index.html

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Heroines of Peace – The Nine Nobel Women (2)

Jane Addams

The Norwegian Nobel Committee had waited so long to give the Prize to Jane Addams, that she was ill and unable to go to the award ceremony or to come later to present a Nobel lecture. In fact, on the very day of the award, December 10, 1931, she was being admitted to the hospital in Baltimore. ln failing health in her last years, Jane Addams died four years later.

Professor Halvdan Koht gave the presentation speech for Addams and her co-recipient, Nicholas Murray Butler, both of whom were absent. Since Koht was a specialist in American history, he must have known what an unlikely pairing this represented, for during the First World War, Butler had strongly denounced those, like Addams, who had opposed the war.

Koht paid due tribute to the war-time leadership of the International Congress of Women which met at The Hague in 1915 and led to a spectacular effort to end the war. He explained her opposition to the entry of the United States, which may well have kept an earlier Nobel committee from giving her the prize, in this way: "She held fast to the ideal of peace even during the difficult hours when other considerations and interests obscured it from her compatriots and drove them into the conflict."

Toiling for peace during the war and for a true peace afterward, she spoke for the pacifist women of the world. For some reason Koht did not give specific mention of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the organization she helped found and continued to lead. As she asked, the WILPF is on her tombstone along with Hull House, the famous settlement house she established. Fortunately, Koht's omission of WILPF is rectified in the official Nobel Foundation Directory.

Koht went on to say, "Even when her views were at odds with public opinion, she never gave in, and in the end she regained the place of honors she had had before in the hearts of her people."

This was very true. The Chicago City Council for example proclaimed that "she was the greatest woman who ever lived."

Koht spoke of how Goethe, Henrik Ibsen, and Björnson had all seen women as representing "the highest and purest moral standards of society." Koht felt that women have a special role as peacemakers, speaking of "that love, that warm maternal feeling which renders murder and war so hateful to every woman." Addams herself wrote that as a life-giver and a life-nurturer, woman has a special feeling about war and peace. To Koht, "Jane Addams combines all the best feminine qualities which will help us to develop peace on earth."

Without superlatives, perceptive observers, in whose hearts Addams may not have lost a place of honor, have given her the highest praise. William James declared that "she inhabited reality," and to Walter Lippman, "she was not only good, but great."

Reference

• http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/peace/heroines/index.html

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