Communiqué from the Second People’s Summit for Ministries and Departments of Peace Victoria, BC, Canada – June 19-22, 2006

The Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace gathered at Royal Roads University, Victoria, Canada, to advance the establishment of ministries and departments of peace in governments worldwide. Government and civil society delegates from Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, India, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Palestine, Philippines, Romania, Solomon Islands, Spain, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States united to develop an effective global and national architecture for peace.

In plenary sessions and working groups, Summit participants established the foundations for local, national, regional, and international campaigns that will work towards conflict resolution and peace- building. "The role of governments in this initiative is crucial, in partnership with civil society," said Franklin Quijano from the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process in the Philippines. Fred Fakari’i, undersecretary in the Department of Reconciliation, Unity, and Peace in the Solomon Islands, noted that "Together we have the capacity to build the architecture that will make peacebuilding effective."

Following an intensive two days of training and the two-day Summit attended by 40 participants from Austrlia, Canada, Holland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Palestine , Spain, UK and US, we presented our launch Declaration at a packed public meeting in the Grand Committee Room of the Houses of Parliament on 19th October. ThIs was hosted by John McDonnell MP and chaired by Diana Basterfield, co-founder of the UK ministry for peace.

The meeting opened with video greetings from US Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Marianne Williamson. Dot Maver spoke on behalf of the US Peace Alliance. Canada's representative, Saul Arbess, shared the Canadian working group's perspective. Dot then answered angry questions from the audience about various aspects of U.S. policy by acknowledging the pain expressed. She offered hope by saying that many people in the United States and around the world share that pain and sense of urgency, and reframing the situation in relation to the need to create infrastructures for peace based on the peace building and conflict transformation efforts and resources already underway and available around the world.

 

June 19 - 22, 2006, Victoria, B.C.

Organized by the International People’s Initiative for Departments of Peace

Hosted by the Working Group for a Federal Department of Peace-Canada

Background: The second Summit is strategically situated to follow a similar meeting held in London, England, of national groups seeking Ministries for Peace / Departments of Peace (MfPs / DoPs), Oct. 18,19, 2005, and immediately precedes the World Peace Forum in Vancouver, June 23-28, 2006.

The Working Group has made progress towards achieving our goal in Canada and these three events will greatly accelerate the outcome of creating a Department of Peace in Canada. Working internationally with companion groups in the US, the UK, Australia, Japan, Italy and elsewhere increases the probability that one of these countries will create a Mfp / DoP with the others hopefully following suit.

By Scilla Elworthy

How can the crisis over Iran be resolved without resort to violence? Scilla Elworthy looks at the possibilities for creative action at citizen level.

Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer and Nobel peace laureate, writes in her new autobiography Iran Awakening : "Bellicosity and brinkmanship are what have brought us to where we stand now, but they remain ingrained habits for both sides….The threat of regime change by military force, while reserved as an option by some in the western world, endangers nearly all the efforts democracy-minded Iranians have made in these recent years."

Even the threat of force gives the Iranian government a pretext to crack down on the opposition and undermine the civil-society groupings that are slowly forming. It also, in Ebadi's words, "makes Iranians overlook their resentment of the regime and move behind their unpopular leaders out of defensive nationalism."

What are your thoughts on the movement to establish Ministries and Departments of Peace in governments worldwide?

TUTU: It’s an extraordinary idea and, it fills one with a great deal of excitement and exhilaration, and it sounds crazy, but then I think it was crazy when Gandhi said we’re going to work so that eventually India is free. It must have been crazy when Martin Luther King Jr. also said we’re going to make civil rights a real issue in the United States, and maybe when Nelson Mandela and others said one day apartheid will be no more, that we need those like yourselves who dream dreams and say, “It is possible. It is possible for people to know that war is not natural.”

People have been able to live peacefully together, but if they live peacefully together after war, why should they have war first before they can realize that it is a great deal better. War is not nice to children, it’s not nice to people, it’s not nice to the environment.

And so I say go for it. This is marvellous. Go for it and really be crazy and say, one day we’ll ask, “Why were we so stupid for so long because of something so obvious?” Saying let us put our massive investment that we are putting right now in instruments of death and destruction, let us put them into something that is creative, that is life-enhancing teaching kids that there are ways of resolving differences that don’t need to be violent. You can sit down and ultimately say, “You know, actually, an enemy is a friend waiting to be made.”

Photo and interview by Mark Tompkins
For the Peace Alliance
At the Quest for Global Healing
May, 2006, Bali, Indonesia

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