The Hague Peace Conference:
Results and Next Steps
Of the effort to promote a culture of peace, Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, has said:
For many people in this world right now, things are not as they should be: Some people are wealthy, while their neighbors don't have enough to eat. Many communities live in peace, while war claims innocent lives close by. Some children can communicate with each other across oceans through e-mail, while others are not even able to go to school. And I'm sorry to say, children are still being brought up to hate or fear their neighbors just because they speak a different language or go to a different church ... Things get better when enough people decide that they should get better ... things can change when ordinary people come together in a common purpose.
The Boston Research Center hosted an all-day program, Dialogue on the Hague Peace Conference: Results & Next Steps, in cooperation with the Coalition for a Strong United Nations and the United Nations Liaison Office of Soka Gakkai International. The spring program was cosponsored by dozens of organizations working for a culture of peace and human rights. It offered an opportunity for those who attended the Appeal for Peace Conference in The Hague in early May—the largest international peace conference in history—to talk about proposed actions and to allow those who did not attend a way to respond to the recommendations of the conference.
The Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice in the 21st Century has specified important actions in the areas of: 1) Conflict Prevention, Resolution, and Transformation; 2) Disarmament and Human Security; 3) International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law and Institutions; and 4) Root Causes of War/Culture of Peace.
In his opening address on the history of global peace efforts, International Relations Professor Winston E. Langley observed that 100 years ago when the conference system—of which the Hague conference of 1899 was a part—originated, “the system was based on the thinking that the reason countries so frequently engaged in inter-state violence was because they generally did not meet to speak with each other, except when they sought to conclude wars. If they could meet and confer... during times of peace, they could perhaps solve many of the problems which invited wars.” At the end of his retrospective view of efforts at peacebuilding, Dr. Langley concluded:
“There is no substitute for real disarmament, global security institutions globally agreed on, and a culture of peace to maintain them.”
Panel moderator John Malcolm Forbes, executive director of the World Federalist Association of New England, concurred with Winston Langley's view that we are again at a crossroads in history. “One area where transformation is being sought,” Jock Forbes stressed, “is in the nature of government itself. There were several sessions at The Hague about how a People's Assembly or a World Parliament might be created.” Alluding to the Millennial People's Assembly that will take place in 2000, Forbes reminded listeners that the Assembly “hopes to engage nongovernmental organizations, civil society representatives of many sorts, and representatives of governments at many levels to further pursue the development of a World Parliament. Some of us here will be working in a variety of ways to achieve that goal.”
When panelist Cathy Hoffman of the Cambridge Peace Commission addressed the issue of conflict resolution, she began with the assertion that “the roots of violence lie in two places... messages in the media ... and structures and belief systems that promote superiority and the notion of dominance.” She criticized the racism, sexism, and economic systems that operate on the premise that “only some can prosper and many cannot” and argued that the Hague Conference was remiss in failing to place the issue of racism on the agenda. She urged conference participants to recognize all of the different voices engaged in conflict resolution and to acknowledge the need for reparations and reconciliation. She concluded that “we need to be about action.”
Hiro Sakurai, deputy representative to the United Nations from Soka Gakkai International, indicated that “a culture of peace was one of the most discussed topics throughout the Hague Conference.” He reported to the conferees that the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is now responsible for 26 million refugees and that “one of the difficulties that the refugee agency faces is the so-called CNN effect—that is, when the media stops coverage of a particular situation, the funds stop.” The SGI representative urged participation in a project called Commitment 2000, a signature drive to promote the culture of peace and nonviolence. He concluded his presentation by sharing an e-mail message he had received from an SGI member in Yugoslavia, a message remarkable for the spirit of empathy it exhibits: “Now I hear the big sounds of air attacks and sirens... the SGI members in Yugoslavia are chanting and praying for peace to protect Yugoslavians, Albanians, and NATO soldiers, too, because they also have a family, a mother, a father, and children.”
Miriam Butterworth of the American Friends Service Committee stressed the irony that this important Hague Conference received so little attention from the press: “This was the 100th anniversary of the first peace congress at which 26 or 27 heads of state met. They must have had a lot of clout. The people who were together at The Hague this time, however, eight- to-ten thousand representatives of grassroots civic organizations, had very little clout... It was as if we hadn't existed... nobody at home read anything about what we were doing.”
Miriam Butterworth's final reminder was an urgent one: “There are, as you all know, 500 nuclear weapons still on alert... We have to be very aware and very positive about the need for disarming weapons of mass destruction...It isn't just nuclear weapons. It is also other types of weapons that we have not been willing to abolish, like land mines... I heard somebody [at The Hague] call land mines weapons of mass destruction in slow motion.”
When Dale Bryan, program coordinator for the Peace and Justice Program at Tufts University spoke, it was to explain, in part, how immense an undertaking the Hague Conference had been: “There were over 400 individual sessions planned during the meetings. There were probably as many that were impromptu sessions scheduled in between planned meetings.” He observed that if one looks at all of the Hague agenda, “Education is a component in all of them,” and he repeated the admonition of Professor Jackie Tak of South Africa, that prior to and simultaneous to peace education is the building of schools and provision of nutrition for children to attend schools.
In her commentary, peace educator Elise Boulding remarked, “It is absolutely crazy that there was nothing in The New York Times about the Hague Conference. We've got to become more visible.” Elaborating on this theme, the lifelong activist urged, “The gap between what people want and what political leaders in the U.S. Congress and security people in armies are doing is growing wider. We need to shake each other up by becoming more visible to each other. Our real task is to make visible the actual cultures of peace that exist.”
If there was one theme that was reflected time and again, it was this: peacemaking begins with personal transformation and individual action. The work of peace begins with a single individual.