Thursday, February 16, 2012

Peace Lessons from around the World


"Peace education is a participatory holistic process that includes teaching for and about democracy and human rights, nonviolence, social and economic justice, gender equality, environmental sustainability, disarmament, traditional peace practices, international law, and human security."

I stumbled on a great resource: Peace Lessons from around the WorldThis collection of sixteen lessons, from Albania, Cambodia, Philippines, Kenya, India, Nepal, US, Catalunya (Spain) and South Africa, is based on the Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century (UN Ref. A/54/98) They should be adoptable and adaptable to any culture and will serve to stimulate values and skills for a culture of peace. Included are suggested guidelines on how to make a peace lesson. Additional peace lessons will be available with our online-edition at www.haguepeace.org

The Hague Appeal for Peace is an international network of organizations and individuals dedicated to the abolition of war and making peace a human right. The Global Campaign for Peace Education was launched at the Hague Appeal for Peace conference in May 1999. After the conference, Hague Appeal for Peace took the responsibility of coordinating the Campaign.

Cora Weiss, 2012 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is the President of the Hague Appeal for Peace, has been well known as a peace activist since the early ‘60’s, when she was a co-founder of Women Strike for Peace which played a major role in bringing about the end of nuclear testing in the atmosphere. She was a leader in the anti-Vietnam war movement, organized demonstrations, including the largest one on November 15, 1969 in Washington, DC. As Co-Chair and Director of the Committee of Liaison with Families of Prisoners Detained in Vietnam, she organized the exchange of mail between families and POW’s in Vietnam which revealed and names of those alive and arranged for and accompanied some returning POW pilots. For ten years Ms Weiss was a volunteer teacher in the NY City public school system.

As a Trustee of Hampshire College, she started the campus campaign to divest stocks in companies doing business in South Africa. She has a long record of support for the United Nations, starting in the 1950’s when she hosted colonized Africans who were petitioning for the independence of their countries. She has devoted most of her life to the peace movement, the movement for the advancement of women, and the civil rights movement.

She is President of the International Peace Bureau, (Nobel Laureate 1910). Ms. Weiss participated in the Nobel Centennial Symposium held in Oslo, Norway in December 2001. She is also Joint-Principal of the Peace Boat’s Global University, an Advisory Board Member of Peace Child International’s Millennium Action Fund, and Honorary Patron of the Committee on Teaching About the United Nations. As President of the Hague Appeal for Peace, she is leading a campaign dedicated to the abolition of war. It seeks to re-focus our minds on the vision of a world in which violent conflict is publicly acknowledged as illegitimate, illegal, and fundamentally unjust. To implement that vision, the Hague Appeal for Peace has launched a Global Peace Education Campaign. Check out the links...