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There is no way to peace, peace is the way

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Janne Poort - van Eeden
Diependaalse Drift 31
NL-1213 CN Hilversum
the Netherlands
tel. +31.35.6242127

New group seeking to realise old dream

Over 130 peace workers from 47 countries met for five days (November 28-December 2) outside New Delhi and created an unarmed alternative to military peacekeeping forces. Mahatma Gandhi was trying to create such a "peace army" when he was killed in a place not far away, 55 years ago. IFOR, a member of the International Tolerance Network, is one of the founding members of the Nonviolent Peaceforce.

The participants included 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."

At the launch of the Nonviolent Peaceforce, the 130 delegates chose a governing board representative of all six populated continents, ratified a bare- bones constitution and decided Sri Lanka to be the site of the Nonviolent Peaceforce's first mission.

Read also: Profile in our Newsletter 'Podium'

Link to the 'Nonviolent Peaceforce'