FW: [MO-NP] Nonviolent Peaceforce Convening Event Press Releases,1

["mc.foto" <mc.foto@libero.it>]

----------
Da: "Nick Mele" <nickmele@attbi.com>
Data: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 12:45:17 -0000
A: MO-NP@yahoogroups.com
Oggetto: [MO-NP] Nonviolent Peaceforce Convening Event Press Releases, 1

NEW GROUP SEEKS TO REALISE OLD DREAM
 
Over 130 peace workers from 47 countries are meeting for five days
outside New Delhi to create an unarmed alternative to military
peacekeeping forces.  Mahatma Gandhi was trying to create such
a "peace army" when he was killed not far away 55 years ago.
   
The participants include a former head of state, Sheikh Hasina, who
now leads the opposition party in Bangladesh; parliamentarians;
conflict resolution specialists; former diplomats; and veterans of
nonviolent interventions in conflicts across the globe.  Israelis
and Palestinians, black and white Zimbabweans, Serbs and Croats are
working together to create the Nonviolent Peaceforce.
                   
                 
The Nonviolent Peaceforce project is the latest effort to create an
unarmed civilian alternative to military intervention in conflicts.
Mahatma Gandhi had begun organizing a conference to create what he
called "Shanti Sena", literally Peace Army, when he was cut down by
an assassin's bullet.  The current effort began at the 1999 Hague
Appeal for Peace Conference and is the first
 
major citizen's initiative to achieve the goals of the UN's Decade
of a Culture of 
Peace and Nonviolence.  Seven of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates who
persuaded the United Nations to proclaim the Decade have endorsed
the Nonviolent Peaceforce, including Lech Walesa, Oscar Arias and
the Dalai Lama.
 
At the opening session, noted Gandhian Rajiv Vora quoted Mahatma
Gandhi, whose life and writings are the source for most nonviolent
activists throughout the last century:  "Nonviolence is as old as
the hills."  Vora clearly sees nonviolence as an idea whose time has
come. He heralded the Nonviolent Peaceforce as the first citizen's
initiative of the United Nation Decade of a Culture of Peace and
Nonviolence.
 
The nonviolent heritage and its applicability to contemporary
conflicts were  constant themes on the opening day of the
conference.  In her opening address, former Prime Minister of
Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina reviewed the history of war and the history
of nonviolence through concrete examples.   She concluded "We must
forge a world wide grand alliance for peace." Gandhi's granddaughter
Ela, herself a Member of the South African Parliament, told
participants she saw the Nonviolent Peaceforce "as the necessary
intervention to stop the cycle of war and violence."
 
Over the next three days, the 130 delegates will choose a governing
board representative of all six populated continents, ratify a bare-
bones constitution and decide on the site of the Nonviolent
Peaceforce's first mission.




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