Peacemaking

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize went to US president Barack Obama after he’d done nothing for peace. The prize this year went to Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos days after he failed to achieve peace. On 3 October, he lost a referendum on a peace agreement by 49.8 to 50.2 percent.

As PN went to press, peace efforts continued in Colombia.

Campaign Nonviolence is a US project focused on a ‘week of actions’ every September. In a larger sense, it is ‘a long-term movement for a culture of peace and nonviolence free from war, poverty, racism, environmental destruction and the epidemic of violence’.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Campaign Nonviolence is its emphasis on practising nonviolence towards ourselves as well as others.

John Dear, a renowned US Christian pacifist and key thinker behind Pace e…

On 26 June, Seifeddine Rezgui, a 23-year-old student, murdered 38 people at a beach resort in Sousse, Tunisia. 30 of the dead were British nationals. Subsequent news reports have noted Rezgui received training at an Islamic State (IS – also known as ISIS) base in western Libya.

Speaking to the BBC a few days later, David Cameron argued IS…

After some deft public relations interventions in September and November, Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is not expected to make any serious moves before the March 2014 local elections.

In April, we speculated that Erdogan was spurred to initiate peace talks with the PKK by the mass nonviolent uprising of Turkish Kurds last autumn, sparked by a Kurdish prisoners’ hunger strike that began last September (see PN 2556, and 2552-2553). It may need another…

Members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) were arrested and beaten by police for organising marches in Harare, on 19 September, and in Bulawayo on 20 September.

Demonstrators waved placards, sang songs, and presented Zimbabwe’s new government with a list of demands, according to SW Radio Africa. While onlookers applauded the women, police tried to disperse the crowds and injured many protesters with baton strikes.

The marches celebrated the International Day of Peace,…

Millius Palayiwa, director of Fellowship of Reconciliation
Photo: Jordana Jarrett

The current director of England’s Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) was born in what was then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, the middle child of parents who sacrificed for their children’s prosperity. For 40 years, his father worked as a ‘kitchen-boy’ for a white man, making only £8.10 a month. His father agreed to work without pay if the man would pay for all seven children to attend primary…

Wales in Scotland Photo: twitter user @ScrapTrident

At the Wales Peace Institute conference in Aberystwyth on 23 March, she said: ‘Wales has a close affinity with Flanders where so many young Welsh men were killed. The Flemish government has made the spreading of peace one of the most important aims of the 1914 remembrance project. The overwhelming majority considered it a government duty to inform people of the horrors and madness of the First World War,…

Polymath John Gittings – a Guardian journalist and associate editor of The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace, is a Sinologist, literary critic and classicist. He crams his considerable knowledge of history, art, literature, and languages into this personal review of peace through the ages, arguing for a ‘peace discourse’ to counter our current one obsessed with the glory of war and the culture of death.

Indeed, for Gittings ‘The study of peace can be as exciting as…

‘The ideal of the Olympic Truce can itself be a sign that if it is possible to live without conflict for today, it might be possible to live without conflict tomorrow. But I need to invest in this peace, by laying down my own arms, and by joining hands with my neighbour, especially those I am most fearful and suspicious of.’ said Bishop Stephen Cottrell, speaking at a service in June at Chelmsford cathedral, welcoming the opportunity of peace-making through the Olympics.

This was one…

The White Book, which can be signed by anyone, contains a simple declaration: ‘Yr wyf i, drwy dorry fy enw yn y Llyfr Gwyn, yn ymrwymo i weithio dros heddwch yn y byd.’

‘By signing my name in the Llyfr Gwyn, I commit myself to work for peace in the world.’

PN spoke to renowned poet Mererid Hopwood, the first woman ever to win the bardic Chair at the National Eisteddfod of Wales (in…

Though women have often manufactured weapons and serviced armies—and in an age of nuclear weapons are equally targeted— it is historically rare for women to be in combat. The twenty million members of the world's armed forces today are overwhelmingly men. In many countries all soldiers are men; and even in those countries which admit women to the military, commanders are almost exclusively men. Men also dominate other branches of enforcement, both in the public sector as police officers and…

According to the South Korean government's estimate, the amount of food needed to feed the North Korean population for the grain financial year of 2003 (November 2002 - October 2003) is 6.32 million tons, up 60 thousand tons from last year. North Korea's total production of grain this year, however, is only 4.13 million tons. Even with the 510 thousand tons provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the 250 thousand tons provided by the South Korean government, the hunger stricken…

The 31 October 2000 was more than just a Halloween celebration for thousands of women watching the UN Security Council on that day. Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) was an unprecedented event—a unanimous adoption of the first resolution on women, peace and security. Among other features it calls for the prosecution of crimes against women; increased protection of women and girls during war; more women to be appointed to UN peacekeeping operations and field missions; and more women in…

PN: What is your background in relation to Darfur?

ADW: I travelled extensively in Darfur when I first went as a PhD student in 1985. I wrote my first book on famine in Darfur. Subsequently I've spent almost all of the last 22 years working on the Horn of Africa.

PN: What are the origins of the Darfur crisis?

ADW: The underlying factors are the economic and political marginalisation of Darfur, including both Arabs and non-Arabs. Darfur…

“Can they not see what they are doing? They will cause the war to continue”. John-Bosco1 looked at me, pointing to the day’s copy of the New Vision newspaper open on the café table. It was hard to know how to answer this question; I had been struggling with it for months.

John-Bosco was a night watchman with a family growing up amidst the conflict. He was one of the first people to welcome my wife and I to Gulu, Northern Uganda, when we arrived in 2001.

Now it was…