Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Human Rights

  • New U.S. Guidelines on Nuclear Warfare Should be Released to the Public

    New guidelines for the use of U.S. nuclear weapons were signed by the president in November 1997. These guidelines, which are contained in a four-page Presidential Decision Directive (PDD), have not been released to the public. Aspects of the guidelines, however, were leaked to the press and confirmed by administration officials. What is known about the new guidelines include the following:

    • they were developed entirely in secret without any public, or even Congressional, discussion;
    • they replace guidelines developed in 1981 during the Reagan presidency;
    • they provide that the U.S. will continue to rely on nuclear arms as the cornerstone of its national security for the indefinite future;
    • they no longer include a plan to fight and “win” a protracted nuclear war;
    • they reserve the right for the U.S. to be the first to use nuclear weapons;
    • they retain the option of massive retaliation to a nuclear attack, including by launch on warning;
    • they give the Pentagon increased flexibility to deter or retaliate against smaller states that might use chemical or biological weapons against the U.S. or its allies;
    • they provide for the U.S. to maintain a triad of nuclear forces consisting of bombers, land-based missiles, and submarine-based missiles;
    • they call for the U.S. to retain options to use nuclear weapons against Russia; and
    • they provide for increasing the number of sites to be targeted in China.

    On the positive side, the new guidelines have eliminated the foolish and hopeless idea that it was possible to fight and win a nuclear war. This is an idea that has been thoroughly discredited, even by President Reagan who stated publicly that “nuclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought.” It must also be considered positive that, due to the leak, we now know something about these guidelines, and can respond to what has been released. The negative aspects of these guidelines, however, are substantial. The fact that they were developed without involvement from the public and Congress is in the best tradition of a totalitarian state. On an issue of such major public importance as strategy for using nuclear weapons, it is reprehensible that no attempt would be made to solicit public or Congressional views.

    By indicating that the U.S. will continue to rely for the indefinite future on nuclear weapons for its national security, the U.S. is demonstrating its hypocrisy in relation to its promise in 1995, when the Non-Proliferation Treaty was extended indefinitely, to pursue “systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons….” Further, the International Court of Justice ruled in 1996 that there was an obligation to “bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects….” Indefinite reliance upon these genocidal instruments is not consistent with their ultimate elimination, nor with the obligation to conclude negotiations for complete nuclear disarmament.

    In China there was strong criticism of the new U.S. policy which increases U.S. targeting of China. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman stated, “Now that the Cold War is already over, the international situation has eased a lot. The United States still possesses a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. It stubbornly sticks to its policy of nuclear deterrence. It goes against the trends of peace, cooperation and development in our world.”

    The new guidelines reflect the continuation of U.S. policy to rely upon nuclear weapons as a central instrument of national security. These guidelines have not changed our policies of threatened first use or massive retaliation, which at their core are policies of nuclear genocide. First use, when coupled with launch on warning, commits us to risky, hair-trigger deployment of our nuclear arsenal with potentially catastrophic consequences.

    The Presidential Decision Directive demonstrates a lack of commitment to the elimination of our nuclear arsenal, as called for by international agreements and international law. The new guidelines will undoubtedly be heavily criticized by the international community, particularly by many of the other 185 parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty when they meet in Geneva in April and May 1998.

    It would be appropriate for President Clinton to release in full the four-page Presidential Decision Directive so that the U.S. public can fully consider and debate the policy. U.S. citizens have a right to informed consent on decisions and policies that affect their security and well-being, as this policy surely does. The public and Congress should be involved in the process of determining whether or not the new policy is consistent with basic U.S. values as well as our obligations under international law and the new geopolitical reality brought on by the end of the Cold War. In the same vein, the public should be provided with targeting information for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This information would allow U.S. citizens to be aware of what populations are being threatened with mass murder in our names.

    While it may be appropriate and desirable for the President to keep details of his personal life from public view, the same cannot be said for policies related to nuclear arsenals that affect the life and future of every U.S. citizen as well as every other person in the world.

  • Human Rights, Wrongs, and Responsibilities

    This is the 50th Anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document of vision and decency, which was proclaimed as a “common standard” for all humanity by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. At its heart, this is a document about the equal and inalienable right of every person to live in dignity.

    The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the great documents of the 20th century. In fact, it is one of the great documents of all time. It gives voice to the common aspirations of all humanity to be treated fairly and justly. It includes civil and political rights, and also economic, social and cultural rights. It holds high the value and worth of each individual.

    Despite the importance of this document, however, it is not widely known or appreciated throughout much of the world. Very few Americans are familiar with the document, and fewer still have read it and know of its contents. This is a failure of our educational systems. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be at least as well known to Americans as our own Bill of Rights, which it surpasses in its comprehensiveness.

    No document, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, can solve the problems of humanity simply by its existence on paper. Far from it. Set down on paper, the Universal Declaration represents only the vision and hope of those who proclaimed it. To give life to the document, each generation must work actively and diligently to uphold its principles. To bring the Universal Declaration to life, each of us must work to uphold human rights and oppose human wrongs.

    This is what Mahatma Gandhi did in his nonviolent protests for an end to colonialism in India. This is what Martin Luther King, Jr. and the freedom riders and other civil rights activists did in putting their bodies on the line for equal rights for all citizens in the United States. This is what the mothers of the disappeared did in standing in silent protest in Argentina during its “dirty war.” This is what Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress did in their struggle against apartheid in South Africa. This is what Bishop Oscar Romero did in working for justice in El Salvador, and what Rigoberta Menchu Tum has done in Guatemala. This is what Aung San Suu Kyi and her followers do in Burma today.

    Upholding human rights and opposing human wrongs is the work of all who seek to provide food and shelter for the hungry and destitute, for all who seek justice, for all who seek an end to tyranny and oppression, for all who seek peace and an end to violence, for all who work to rid the world of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

    Human rights demand human responsibilities. The worst atrocities of the 20th century were committed by governments, often against their own people. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a response in part to the genocidal abuses which occurred during World War II. But genocide has not gone away in the latter half of this century. We have only to think of Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda.

    It is our responsibility to build an international community that is strong enough to prevent the commission of genocide from occurring ever again. A step in this direction was taken this past summer in Rome when delegates of more than 100 countries agreed to a treaty to establish an International Criminal Court. This court would hold accountable perpetrators of the most serious international crimes — genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Unfortunately, once again, as with the Landmines Convention in 1997, the United States was not among the countries supporting this important step forward.

    The Fall 1998 issue of Waging Peace Worldwide includes comments on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Richard Falk, Frank Kelly, and Nelson Mandela. The winning essay in our Swackhamer Peace Essay Contest discusses “Human Rights and Responsibilities” is also included in this issue, as well as a proposal for a United Nations Volunteer Force by Tad Daley, comments on establishing an International Criminal Court by Kofi Annan and Benjamin Ferencz, and Senator Douglas Roche’s inaugural speech in the Canadian Senate.

     

  • The Universal Declaration at Fifty: David Krieger interviews with Richard Falk

    DK: As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights how do you assess the progress in implementing its important standards?

    RF: The formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 50 years ago was an achievement that has produced results far in excess of anything that could reasonably have been anticipated at the time it was adopted. It was originally viewed as an awkward response to vague aspirations and public opinion. There was no real feeling of serious commitment surrounding its adoption. It was a prime example of what is often called “soft law.” It was viewed as something that the governments gave lip service to in this declaratory form that was not even legally obligatory and had no prospect of implementation. Many of the participating countries at the time didn’t practice human rights in their own societies, so there was an element of a hypocrisy built into the endorsement of this declaration from the moment of its inception. One has to ask why did something that started with such low expectations of serious impact on the world turn out to be one of the great normative documents of modern times, perhaps of all times.

    The Declaration has been referred to as the most important formulation of international human rights law ever made. I think one of the things that helps explain this rise to prominence was that the citizens associations concerned with human rights found effective ways to take the Declaration seriously, as well, and to exert effective pressure on many governments to take the Declaration or parts of it seriously. This was a very instructive example of the degree to which what states do with respect to normative issues can be very much influenced by the degree of effective pressure brought to bear by civil society, both within particular countries and transnationally. The role of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and other groups, I think, was instrumental in putting the provisions and the impetus of the Declaration onto the political agenda of the world.

    DK: You feel that the progress that has been made in human rights since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could not have happened without strong pressure from groups in civil society?

    RF: Yes, I’m saying that was an indispensable condition for the partial implementation of the Declaration. There were other factors that I think are also important to identify. One of them was the fact that once human rights emerged with this greater visibility, then governments, particularly in the West, found it a useful way to express their identity, their role in the world. It was useful as a means to exert pressure on the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. It was part of the Cold War, a normative dimension that related the conflict to widely shared values. This was the idea that freedom was definitely linked to the promotion of human rights.

    Then came the Helsinki Process in the mid-1970s in which the Soviet bloc was given a kind of stability for the boundaries that emerged in Europe at the end of WWII. In exchange, Moscow accepted a kind of reporting obligation about human rights compliance in their countries at the time. Conservatives in the U.S. criticized the Helsinki Accords harshly because they argued that the agreement was a give-away; they alleged it is legitimizing these improper boundaries and in exchange we get this kind of paper promise that has no meaning at all.

    As events turned out, the Helsinki emphasis on human rights was much more important than the stabilization of boundaries. Reliance on human rights was critical for a process of legitimizing and mobilizing the opposition forces that operated in Eastern Europe, particularly groups like Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, Solidarity in Poland and even the Moscow Trust group in the Soviet Union. It became clear that, in terms of struggles of resistance within particular societies against oppressive states, international human rights norms provided important political foundations for their commitment and their activity. I think this interplay between human rights norms and procedures at an international level and resistance politics in societies governed in an oppressive manner. was a second important strand.

    The third one that I would mention is the anti-Apartheid campaign, which was based on a worldwide normative consensus that Apartheid represented an unacceptable form of racial persecution that was, in effect, such a systemic violation of human rights that it amounted to a crime against humanity. This was reinforced by grassroots activists in the critical countries of the United Kingdom and the United States that put such pressure on their governments that even Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s U.S. felt obliged to go along with an international sanctioning process that was directed at Apartheid, and probably contributed to the peaceful abandonment by the majority of the white elite of Apartheid. This was something no one could have anticipated a decade before it occurred – people thought either Apartheid was so well established, so much in control of the society, that it was not feasible to challenge it, or that the challenge would come about by a very difficult and bloody civil war. I think that mounting this peaceful challenge was a major triumph in terms of peaceful transformation that was aided by a kind of human rights demand that itself can be traced back to the foundations that one finds in the Universal Declaration.

    DK: Do you feel that the successes that have been achieved up to this point can be built upon, and the Universal Declaration will become an even more significant document and guideline for the 21st century?

    RF: This is a matter of conjecture that is hard to be very clear about at this stage because you find that both possibilities seem susceptible of pretty strong supportive arguments. My sense is that there is a sufficient constituency committed to human rights that will continue to invoke the Universal Declaration and the authority that it provides as a foundation for carrying on campaigns of one sort or another. One of the things that emerged in the 1990s was the degree to which transnational women’s groups and indigenous peoples had organized themselves around a human rights agenda. Their presence was definitely felt in Vienna at the UN Human Rights Conference in 1993, and elsewhere, evidently believing that their own objectives and movements as capable of being articulated by reference to human rights demands and aspirations.

    I think there is a political ground on which post-Cold War world human rights can advance further. There are also the important efforts now, outside the West, expressing different concerns but asking the same question: “What do we want the human rights process to become?” These voices are saying, we didn’t participate in the initial formulations. We think the Declaration and its norms are too individualistic or too permissive in terms of the way it approaches the relationship of the individual to the community. This is a common criticism you find in Islam and Asia. How can the Declaration be extended to represent all the peoples of the world and allow them the sense that it not only substantively is reflective of their values, but also that they’ve had some opportunity to participate in the articulation of the norms. I think it is very important that we recognize the incompleteness of the normative architecture that has flowed from the Declaration, if understood as including the International Covenants that were formulated in 1966, and other more focused treaty instruments.

    There is still very important work to be done on creating a more universally acceptable and accepted framework for the implementation of human rights.

    DK: One of the human rights treaties that has been created in the aftermath of the Universal Declaration is the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s nearly universally adhered to. The only two countries that currently have not ratified this important convention are Somalia and the United States. Somalia apparently doesn’t have its government organized well enough to do so, but the United States doesn’t have any excuse. Why is the United States holding out on making this Convention universal, and why is it refusing to give its support to a Convention so broadly adhered to?

    RF: One needs to understand that this pattern of holding out against a nearly universal consensus is not limited to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United States has been playing this obstructive role in a number of different settings, including the Landmine Treaty and the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol on the Emission of Greenhouse Gases. I’m not sure about the real objections to the Convention on the Right of the Child. I know the Pentagon has mounted pressure because of the recruiting age of soldiers and the feeling that it would not be cost effective for them to give up the right to recruit young people under the age of 18, which I think is the age in the Convention. The present recruiting age of American soldiers includes people who are 17. It seem like a small difference to justify a holdout on a treaty that enjoys such wide backing.

    Let me take the opportunity to say that the fact that something is put into treaty form or is in the Universal Declaration is no assurance that it’s going to be taken seriously, either by the human rights part of civil society or by governments. One needs to come to the awareness that when we talk about human rights what we really mean is civil and political rights. Social, economic and cultural rights, which are broadly set forth in the Universal Declaration and are the subject of a separate covenant that was signed in 1966, have received very little implementation over the years. The human rights organizations are by and large devoting all their resources to the promotion of selected items of political and civil rights. For much of the world, particularly the non-Western world, economic and social rights are at least as important, if not more important, than civil and political rights. This is one of the reasons that these organizations are viewed with some suspicion, even the Western human rights organizations that tell governments to be less authoritarian or to increase freedom of participation, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression. I had a conversation a couple of years ago with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, and he was very sensitive to this issue and spoke about it with sincerity and conviction. It’s also, of course, a convenient pretext for not being responsible and accountable in the area of political and civil relations. It is true that for human rights to be broadly accepted as a desirable source of obligation they have to be seriously responsive to the problems of acute poverty and economic and social deprivation as well as to the problems that arise from authoritarian governments and from the absence of democratic practices.

    DK: Do you think that the United States and other Western states are failing in that regard? And, for that matter, also civil society? Have they failed to push for economic and social rights sufficiently?

    RF: Yes, I think there’s no question, especially in the recent period where the Reagan and Thatcher administrations were very clear that they didn’t even regard economic and social rights as a genuine part of human rights. They felt these claims were an importation of a socialist ethos that was inconsistent with the way in which a market-oriented constitutional democracy should operate, and that was basic to the existence of a legitimate form of government. There is that real question. In civil society it’s been partly the feeling that it was much more manageable to conceive of human rights violations as challenges that involved very basic affronts to human dignity that arose out of abuses of governmental power, like the torture of political prisoners or summary executions and disappearances. These abuses captured the political imagination, and they were discreet policies of governments that were in many ways objectionable. Focusing on them seemed to facilitate access to media coverage. It seemed to raise issues that one could get some sort of results in relation to. It didn’t raise the ideological question of whether economic and social rights were somehow an endorsement of a socialist orientation toward policy.

    DK: Of course, preventing torture and disappearances and other abuses of state power is quite important. It’s also a real problem that there is not safety net–that people are continuing to starve to death and to suffer and die from lack of health care and other very basic human rights–the right to be treated with dignity, the most basic right of all. What might we do from this point on to see that those rights are not pushed to the side or neglected entirely?

    RF: There’s no question that by affirming economic and social rights, one doesn’t want to undermine the pressure to prevent the acute violations of civil and political rights. I think there are some new initiatives – there’s a new Center for the Promotion of Economic and Social Rights in New York City, started recently by several Harvard Law School graduates, that is trying to do good work in this area to bring a balance into the human rights picture. It’s not only the sense that one needs to focus on economic and social rights, but also one needs to focus on the structures that generate these violations. There’s a group in Malaysia called JUST, headed by Chandra Muzaffer, that has been very active in trying to show that the global market forces are systematically responsible for the polarization of societies throughout the world, essentially making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The dynamics of globalization contribute to an atmosphere in which even governments feel almost helpless to prevent the impoverishment of a portion of their own societies because of the strength of global capital. It’s important that we understand the thinking that is going on around the world about these issues of economic and social rights.

    DK: How do you feel about the failure of the international community to adequately respond to situations of genocide that have arisen in Bosnia and Rwanda and other places? Hasn’t there been a terrible failure to uphold the right to life for hundreds of thousands, even millions of people?

    RF: Yes, I think it is a revelation of the moral bankruptcy of the organized international community and of a disturbing and recurrent acceptance in this world of sovereign states of the most severe human wrongs being committed as being beyond control or prevention. At the same time, I have some mixed feelings about those who advocate intervention to overcome genocidal behavior without understanding the political and military obstacles that lie on that path. Intervention is a very difficult political process to use effectively as the United States found out in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Cheap, shallow intervention is almost worse than non-intervening. I had many disagreements with friends about the policies that should be pursued with respect to Bosnia during the unfolding of the tragedy there a few years ago. I didn’t see it as beneficial for the United Nations to establish these safe-havens or to make half-hearted gestures because, and I feel in retrospect that this view has been at least vindicated in that setting, that it would create new options for those who were committing the crimes. Unless there was the political will to defend the safe-havens – as the Srebrenica tragedy showed there was not – it would really herd potential victims together in a way that made ethnic cleansing more efficient and more horrible in its execution. One has to be very careful not to embrace a kind of facile interventionism because of our feeling of the utter moral bankruptcy of a world order system that can’t respond to genocide. To jump from inadequacy to futility is to disguise the true nature of the problem and the solution.

    DK: We’ve also experienced a failure of sanctions, which has been particularly evident in relation to the sanctions imposed upon Iraq in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War. This failure has led to the more vulnerable parts of society suffering as a result of the sanctions. What do you see as the answer to this? Do we need to reform the international system? Do we need to have an international security force? If we have problems making sanctions work and problems with intervention, what do we do when we see the worst abuses of human rights occurring?

    RF: It’s a difficult challenge for which there’s no quick fix, in my view, because it’s not accidental that we don’t have adequate intervention. We don’t have a Peace Force that is disengaged from geopolitics and able to act independently. Sanctions of the sort that were imposed on Iraq have these devastating effects on civilian society. It comes out of a rather profound dominance of international political life by geopolitical considerations. In the case of the Iraqi sanctions, there was a sense of incompleteness in which the war was waged and ended, leaving Saddam Hussein in control after depicting him as such a brutal, dictatorial leader. Sanctions were a cheap way for the victorious coalition to somehow express their continuing opposition without incurring human or financial costs of any significance. The fact that the real victims of this policy were the Iraqi people was not really taken into account. I’ve seen Madeleine Albright and others confronted by this reality and they brush it aside. They just don’t want to confront that reality, and tend to say “Saddam Hussein is building palaces. If he were using his resources for his people….” The whole point of the critique is that this is a leader that is not connected with the well being of his people. If we know what the effect after seven years of these sanctions is and yet insist on continuing them, we become complicit in the waging of indiscriminate warfare against the people of Iraq.

    DK: At this point in time, nearing the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and approaching the new millennium, what advice would you offer to young people with regard to human rights and responsibilities?

    RF: The last fifty years shows how much can be done by activists, young people and others, on behalf of making human rights a serious dimension of political life. I think that what needs to be carried forward is a more comprehensive implementation of the human rights that exist, filling in some gaps on behalf of indigenous peoples and the perspectives of non-western society, extending the serious implementation to matters of economic and social rights. We should push hard for this as something that one takes seriously, also for one’s own society. I think Americans particularly are good at lecturing the rest of the world as to what they should be doing, but are generally rather unwilling to look at themselves critically. We could begin the new millennium particularly with that kind of healthy self-criticism, not a kind of destructive negativism, a healthy self-criticism that would allow us to realize that we too are responsible for adherence to these wider norms of human rights; that we really have to rethink the enthusiasm that so many parts of our country have for capital punishment, for instance, in relation to the worldwide trend toward its abolition. I think we have to ask the question, do we really want to endow our state, or any democratic state, with the legal competence to deprive people of life by deliberate design? If we do endow the state with such power, it seems to me we are endorsing a kind of sovereignty-first outlook that has many other wider implications that are not desirable, and that run counter to deeper tendencies toward the emergence of global village realities.

  • Sowing Seeds of Peace

    We are in the season of Hiroshima, having just passed the 52nd anniversary of the bombing of that city by a single nuclear weapon. On the day the bomb was dropped, August 6, 1945, there was a tear in the fabric of the world. It became clear that a chasm had opened between our technological capabilities for destruction and our spiritual/moral precepts of respect for the dignity and sacredness of human life. Of course, war itself has been a breeding ground for undermining respect for the value of human life. But nuclear weapons brought our destructive capabilities to new heights. Albert Einstein, the great scientist who conceived of the theory of relativity, gave voice to the problem confronting humanity when he said, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    The “unparalleled catastrophe” Einstein spoke of included the end of human civilization and the destruction of most life on Earth. During the Cold War each side pursued a strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction and built up arsenals capable of destroying the other side many times over, despite the knowledge that use of these terrible weapons would entail their own destruction as well as the destruction of most life on Earth. This strategy, which has the acronym MAD, is based upon calculations of human rationality. Yet, as we all know, humans act irrationally for many reasons, not least of which are fear, anger, jealousy, hatred, and mistrust. Humans also make mistakes because they lack pertinent information, misinterpret the information they do have, misconstrue the intentions of other humans, or miscalculate their own capabilities or those of others. The strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction was and remains truly MAD.

    The Nuclear Age demands greater efforts to achieve peace and a world free of the threat of nuclear annihilation. The great challenge of our time is to end the threat of nuclear annihilation. The end of the Cold War has made this possible, but entrenched ways of thinking have made it difficult. Even after the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the nuclear weapons states are still relying upon their nuclear arsenals to provide security. But security from whom? Security against what? We need a new kind of security that does not place the human future in jeopardy. We need to learn to think and act in new ways.

    Let me suggest some elements of this new way of thinking.

    1. Think indigenous. Think like a person whose feet touch the land, like one who loves and respects the Earth and all its creatures. Think seven generations. Recognize that all acts have consequences. Protect the Earth that sustains you. Ask yourself what are the consequences for the Earth of each act you take. Corbin Harney, spiritual leader of the Western Shoshone, has reminded us that we have only “One Earth, one air, one water.” Chief Seattle is reported to have said:

    The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the Earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites our family. If we kill snakes, the field mice will multiply and destroy our corn. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the sons and daughters of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

    2. Think like an astronaut. Keep a broad perspective. See the world as one. Recognize that all borders are manmade. They may exist on maps, but they do not really exist on Earth. That is what the astronauts discovered when they went into space and looked back at our small fragile planet that floats in an immensely vast universe. Astronaut Salman Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia described his experience travelling in space with other astronauts:

    The first day, we pointed to our countries. The third day, we pointed to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.

    3. The late Carl Sagan, a space scientist and author of Cosmos and Contact, described the Earth as a “pale blue dot”. He wrote:

    After Voyager 2 passed Neptune, I got a chance to do something I had wanted to do for many years: turn the cameras around and photograph the distant Earth…

    I look at that picture and I see a pale blue dot. One pixel, one picture element, just a dot. I think, that’s us. That’s our home world. Everybody you know, everybody you love, everybody you’ve ever heard of, everybody who ever lived, every human being in the history of the universe lived on that blue dot. Every hopeful child, every couple in love, every prince and pauper, every revered religious leader, every corrupt politician, every ethnocentrist and xenophobe, all of them there on that little dot.

    It speaks to me of fragility and vulnerability, not for the planet, but for the species that imagines itself the dominant organism living as part of a thin film of life that covers the dot. It seems to me that this perspective carries with it, as does so much else we know, an obligation to care for and cherish that blue dot, the only home our species has ever known.

    4. Think with your heart. Learn to stand in the other person’s shoes. Ask yourself how you would feel if you were in that other person’s shoes. Act with compassion. Follow the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don’t be stopped or molded by so-called enemies. Look into the faces, the eyes, the hearts of those who are labeled enemies. Find their humanity. In doing so, you will also find your own.

    5. Think peace. Peace is a process. It requires constant effort to maintain a dynamic balance. I define peace in this way: Peace is a dynamic process of nonviolent social interaction that results in security for all members of a society. Thus, peace is more than the absence of war. Without security, there is no peace.

    6. Think like a seed. Recognize that you have the inherent power of growth. You are not static. A tiny seed may become a majestic tree.

    Potential is realized in many ways, in the seemingly small decisions that one makes each day. When Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, refused to give up her seat in the front of a public bus to a white man, she was realizing her potential. Her simple act of courage, which caused her to be arrested, led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the modern civil rights movement. When Daniel Ellsberg, a Defense Department analyst, risked imprisonment by turning over the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, thus exposing secret reports on the Vietnam War to the American people, he was realizing his potential as a human being.

    Let me contrast this way of thinking with what I believe are the main characteristics of the old way of thinking. It is short-sighted without due regard for consequences; technology centered, seeking technological rather than human solutions to problems; high-risk, and often propelled by testosterone; rooted in secrecy, which is maintained by official classification of information in the name of national security; and often arrogant, bureaucratic, and hierarchical. In short, it is thinking and behavior which divides rather than unites, dominates rather than shares, and destroys rather than heals. This is the thinking which underlies war, nuclearism, disparity, environmental devastation, and human rights abuses.

    Which kind of thinking do you choose? It is an important question because the world of tomorrow will be rooted in the thinking of today. And your thinking and your acts will help to form the world of tomorrow.

    Forty years ago when Josei Toda called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons his thinking was ahead of its time. But he sowed a seed of peace that has taken root. He referred to nuclear weapons as an “absolute evil.” Nearly four decades later, the International Court of Justice issued its opinion that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be generally illegal under international law. The Court said that any threat or use of nuclear weapons would be subject to the rules of international humanitarian law. This means that nuclear weapons cannot be threatened or used if they would fail to distinguish between combatants and civilians or if they would cause unnecessary suffering to combatants. In issuing this opinion, the President of the Court, Mohammed Bedjaoui, wrote, “Atomic warfare and humanitarian law therefore appear to be mutually exclusive; the existence of the one automatically implies the non-existence of the other.” He also referred to nuclear weapons in a manner similar to the way that Josei Toda had referred to them in 1957. He called them the “ultimate evil.”

    In many ways we have been too complacent in tolerating this absolute evil in our world. As citizens of the world, we must confront this evil and demand an end to the nuclear weapons era. I have the following suggestions for you:

    1. Increase your awareness. Inform yourself. One place to start is the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s or other similar web sites. The Foundation’s web address is https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com. We also have a free electronic newsletter, The Sunflower, which provides information on the abolition of nuclear weapons and other issues relating to peace in the Nuclear Age. You can sign up for this at the Foundation’s web site. We are publishing a booklet in our Waging Peace Series on Creating a Nuclear Weapons Free World, A Guide for Students and All Concerned Citizens. You can order a copy from our Foundation.

    2. Exercise your citizenship. Speak out. Make your voice heard. If necessary, protest. Demand information, and fight against government secrecy. You have a democratic right to informed consent on government policies. The late ocean explorer, filmmaker and environmentalist, Jacques Cousteau, said, The time has come when speaking is not enough, applauding is not enough. We have to act. I urge you, every time you have an opportunity, make your opinions known by physical presence. Do it!

    3. Sow seeds of peace. You can sow seeds of peace in many ways — by a smile or a kind word, by caring and sharing, by compassion, by demonstrating in your daily acts that life matters, that the Earth matters, that you are committed to creating a safer and saner future.

    4. Support Abolition 2000. This is a worldwide network of over 700 citizen action groups around the world working for a treaty by the year 2000 that calls for the prohibition and elimination of all nuclear weapons in a timebound framework. Sign the Abolition 2000 International Petition, and help circulate it. There is also an Abolition 2000 Resolution for Municipalities and one for College Campuses. You can help in having these enacted in your municipality and on your college campus.

    5. Grow to your full stature as a human being. Think about not only your rights, but your responsibilities as a human being fortunate enough to be alive at this amazing time in history. Recognize that you are a miracle, that all life is a miracle, and treat yourself and all life with the respect due a miracle. One important responsibility of each generation is to assure that the chain of life is not broken. This responsibility is heightened in the Nuclear Age, and thus more is demanded of us all. My greatest hope for each of you is that you will fulfill your promise and potential as human beings, and be a force for peace in a world that is crying out to be healed.

    I would like to end with a story about sunflowers. When the former Soviet Union split apart, Ukraine was left with a large nuclear weapons arsenal. Ukraine agreed, however, to become a nuclear weapons free state, and to send all of the nuclear weapons left on its territory to Russia for dismantlement. When Ukraine completed this transfer in June 1996, the Defense Ministers of Ukraine and Russia along with the Secretary of Defense of the United States commemorated the occasion in an extraordinary way. They scattered sunflower seeds and planted sunflowers on a former Ukrainian missile base which once housed 80 SS-19 nuclear-armed missiles aimed at the United States. Secretary of Defense William Perry said, “Sunflowers instead of missiles in the soil would ensure peace for future generations.”

    Of course, sunflowers alone will not be enough. But sunflowers are a great symbol of hope. They are bright and beautiful. They are hardy and healthy. They make us smile, and they can nourish us. They represent everything that missiles do not. They are life and they affirm life. Nuclear armed missiles, on the other hand, are technological instruments of genocide. They are symbols death and the mass destruction of life.

    Sunflowers have become the symbol of a world free of nuclear weapons. They are a powerful symbol, but they are not enough. To achieve a world free of nuclear weapons will require a great effort of citizens united from all parts of the world, and particularly an effort by young people who will inherit tomorrow’s world. I urge you to be part of this effort, and one day we will plant sunflowers to celebrate the end of the nuclear weapons era on our planet.

    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Captain Cousteau’s Legacy: Rising to Our Full Stature as Human Beings

    Jacques Cousteau was larger than life. He was a man who lived fully. He was a resistance fighter during the Second World War, the inventor of the Aqua-Lung, a world famous explorer of the oceans, filmmaker, and writer. Captain Cousteau was at home in the water, and he brought the wonder and mystery of the oceans and its creatures into the lives of people everywhere. He took to calling our Earth the “water planet,” acknowledging the extraordinary treasure that makes life possible and makes our planet unique in the known universe.

    Captain Cousteau’s vision encompassed the planet and the future. He once wrote, “There are no boundaries in the real Planet Earth. No United States, no Soviet Union, no China, no Taiwan…. Rivers flow unimpeded across the swaths of continents. The persistent tides — the pulse of the sea — do not discriminate; they push against all the varied shores on Earth.” For Captain Cousteau there was only one planet Earth, and only one humanity. He spent a good part of his life fighting to preserve our planet for future generations.

    In 1989 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation presented its Distinguished Peace Leadership Award to Captain Cousteau. On the day that he was scheduled to be in Santa Barbara to receive the award, the Concord which he boarded in Paris was delayed on the runway for hours due to an equipment problem. When Captain Cousteau realized that he would not be able to make his connection in New York to be in Santa Barbara in time for the event, he deboarded. That evening more than 700 members and guests of the Foundation heard Captain Cousteau speak to them from Paris over a speaker telephone at the Red Lion. Many were disappointed by his absence.

    When I told Captain Cousteau how much he was missed at the banquet in his honor, he said that he would come to Santa Barbara the following weekend to be with us and receive the Foundation’s award. I remember being surprised when I met Captain Cousteau at the airport by the straightness of his bearing (for a man nearly 80 years old), by his abundant energy (after a long flight), and by the warmth of his manner.

    We arranged for Captain Cousteau to speak in the sunken gardens of the Courthouse. A large crowd came out to greet him on a beautiful sunny afternoon.

    In his remarks, Captain Cousteau spoke of the dangers of nuclear accidents and expressed anger at the manner in which these accidents were treated by technocrats. “A common denominator,” he said, “in every single nuclear accident — a nuclear plant or on a nuclear submarine — is that before the specialists even know what has happened, they rush to the media saying, ‘There’s no danger to the public.’ They do this before they themselves know what has happened because they are terrified that the public might react violently, either by panic or by revolt.”

    He concluded his speech saying that “The problem is to get rid of the arrogance of technocrats. We want to know the truth when an accident occurs. And we want to fight. We want the right of all people to decide on what risks they will or will not take, to protect the quality of life for future generations.”

    He received a tremendous outburst of applause, to which he responded, “The time has come when speaking is not enough, applauding is not enough. We have to act. I urge you, every time you have an opportunity, make your opinions known by physical presence. Do it!”

    In 1995 I wrote to Captain Cousteau to thank him for his outspoken opposition to French testing in the Pacific. He wrote back setting forth eight points in the antinuclear position taken by the Cousteau Society. These included opposition to “any development of atomic weapons, including any kind of test, either in the air, underground or in specially equipped laboratories.” Another point in Captain Cousteau’s letter called for outlawing “any nuclear activity from any country…as we have outlawed chemical or bacteriological warfare.” He said that nuclear bombs were “criminal,” and that we must all struggle to outlaw them.

    Captain Cousteau spoke out for many causes — the Earth, the environment, his beloved oceans, future generations. His Bill of Rights for Future Generations was signed by millions of people throughout the world. The first Article of this document stated, “Future generations have a right to an uncontaminated and undamaged Earth and to its enjoyment as the ground of human history, of culture, and of the social bonds that make each generation and individual a member of one human family.”

    Men such as Jacques Cousteau are rare. They are treasures, teaching what is real and important. We were privileged to have Jacques Cousteau among us — as we are privileged to have other great peace leaders among us, including many others who have received the Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. If we fail to listen to these leaders of vision, we will bear a heavy burden of responsibility for the devastating destructiveness that our technologies make possible; and the burden of future generations will be even greater.

    The life of Captain Cousteau reminds us that we may all rise to our full stature as human beings, and stand straight and proud of our humanity and of the legacy we leave to the next generation. But we cannot reach this stature by complacency, indifference, or blind obedience to authority or dogma. We must think for ourselves, and believe, as Captain Cousteau did, that a better future is not only necessary but possible — if we are willing to work for it.

    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Letter to Heads of State of the European Union

    The following letter to Heads of State of the European Union, calling for the creation of a European Cultural Assembly, was sent by Lord Yehudi Menuhin, the great violinist, conductor, and humanitarian who received the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 1997 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

    In my opinion there is one element missing in the general concept of the European Union — It is the representation of the rich diversity of European Cultures.

    The peoples aspiring to national sovereignty must be offered the alternative of cultural autonomy. We cannot afford a proliferation of atom bombs and terrorists, nor can we deny any group its own distinctive identity, its needs, traditions and habitat.

    The powers of globalization in science, in communications, in commerce, the need to combat global menaces– disease, pollution, drought, famine– through more effective and broader cooperation amongst peoples must be compensated by cultural affinities conceived on the scale of the human being.

    Until now the sovereign state acted as the responsible monolith for both functions; now they must each be represented on the European stage by

    1) the European Parliament, 2) the Assembly of Cultures.

    To this end I am engaged in establishing a representation of cultures at the level of a greater Europe. The representatives, either designated or chosen, would have to enjoy the confidence and trust of their group, but they would also have to speak with the aim of reaching agreement..

    The discussions, conducted in the presence of a member of the European Court of Justice, would result in resolutions or in further discussions, in arbitration or legislation. The discussion concluded, the individual would return to home and habitual work.

    The mission, if successfully accomplished, would entitle the spokesman or woman to become a member of the full meetings of the Assembly of Cultures. Full meetings of the Assembly would be held once or twice a year in Brussels or Strasbourg. The Cultures would also remain in constant touch with each other. This would lead to a renunciation on the part of any given culture, of sovereign national and territorial ambitions. Gradually national police and military requirements would take on a European character, as great world powers would no longer be required to defend a self-reliant Europe.

    My foundation in Brussels is already furthering this project with an office and a qualified gentleman in charge.

    Europe would thus have another chamber of representatives: the one elected by the citizens– the European Parliament– and the other as a counterweight — a forum of the different cultures.

    Both houses would fully consider each other’s attitudes and propositions.

    As I see it, Mr. Prime Minister, this is the next stage in the constant evolution and development of our democracies.

    I am convinced that an Assembly of Cultures can play a decisive role in the emergence of a genuine European conscience, which would constitute the best defense of its peoples and of the community. The inclusion of cultures in Eastern Europe would release a process of acclimatization whereby good neighborliness and trust would permeate our Assembly of Cultures of greater Europe, preparing them gradually for fuller membership in the Community, a membership for which they are not qualified as yet, either economically or, even more importantly, psychologically.

    We cannot include in the evolved community of western Europe wherein territorial ambitions have been outgrown, those other peoples whose mentality still reverts to territorial control and expansion. They are still psychologically unevolved and unprepared for European Union.

    This evolution could be immediately begun with cultural contacts and expressions in every field, including the political, of which evolution neither the political Parliament of States, which are never completely free of mistrust, nor the economic dictates of profitability in a free market are capable. (See my letter to the Governor of Moscow.)

    Up until now our European Union has not shouldered its role of Guardian of cultures which would protect a human being, his heritage, his rights, his creativity.

    Europe will not survive on its past record alone, however great are its contributions to democracy, to the arts, the sciences and the social sciences; only when it will finally give a shining example of a balanced, rich, diverse, multicolored and harmonious society may other powers wish to emulate it rather than destroy it.

    Also, whilst keeping our powder dry, our hands and our minds and doors must be open, generous and sharing.

    For these reasons, Mr. Prime Minister, I would ask you with a full heart to support the principle of the creation of this representation of Cultures, and I would be very happy if among the many issues you will discuss you could agree upon two points:

    1)that the European Union should be called ‘The European Union of States and Cultures’

    and

    2)that the European Union declares itself the ‘Guardian of European Cultures.’

    In setting your sight high, even upon the unattainable, you will attract the vast majority of people to your side, for you will have given them to understand that vision and that a future do exist; that clear and inspiring, noble purposes can still be pursued — and not only garages to repair outworn, outdated mechanisms, reflexes and obsessional thoughts, narrow, timid, and vulgar.

    As Prime Minister you are spokesman for and to all your people — rich, poor, old, young, of all colors and denominations — and of all political parties, for, of course, as soon as you confine yourself to one political party or to an alliance you will be opposed by others, several of which may have valid attitudes and arguments.

    Will you allow me to say that neither the purposes, nor the measures, nor the problems, nor all that which may link these problems together, are presented with clarity and against their backgrounds of weights and forces, which it would be essential to do if you really want to convince a people, critical, experienced, tested and tried, a people of essentially good character, yet wary and cynical.

    The measures which you feel obliged to take consist in part of responses to financial and economic problems, which relate to social and civil ones, which in their turn are connected to Europe, to foreign affairs, but very specially to the quality of education, to health, physical and intellectual, to a creative, moral code based on a consensus of values, heritage and traditions, which are at the very heart of a civilization, however complex it may be.

    Your own poor, suffering, aged, young, sick, the sad unemployed, all the frustrated, the malcontents, the drugged, the ill-informed and violent, this living tinder cannot be ignored– a multitude rarely considered by political parties, except gingerly at election time.

    Solemn personal promises will not suffice.

    May I suggest that the very words are : to work towards a civilization founded on a positive reciprocity, on the balance of right with responsibility, and on duties and obligations incumbent on all.

    As a rule I would say that rights belong to those at the mercy of others and who lack an official voice.

    Thus, for instance, children (who, within their capacity, safety and well-being should also exercise responsibility) or the sick, or trees, would have rights in respect of their helplessness, while, on the other hand, others by virtue of authority, knowledge, skill, experience and influence should carry the responsibilities; thus, the passenger has rights, where the chauffeur has specific responsibilities; the patient has the right, the surgeon the responsibility.

    Our task is to build a civilization of positive reciprocity. An education for reciprocity would concern itself with the teaching from earliest infancy of the voice, by song and speech, with everything which is absorbed and learned by example and imitation– dance, mime, a body language, a use of hands, mind, heart and fantasy, in crafts, arts, in thoughts and speech, in poetry, in compassion, in wonder. In this way the abstract studies, beginning with reading and writing, can more easily sprout on a humanely fertilized soil or soul.

    As you know, this is exactly the description of what I pursue through the works of my Foundation (The International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation) (the project is called MUS-E) in the more difficult schools (violent and prejudiced) in Europe. We now have a formal working arrangement with the Ministers of Culture and Education in Spain and Portugal. This improved society based on reciprocity, on the mutuality of services, on the recognition of our interdependence and upon our desire to learn, would tend largely to reduce our exaggerated dependencies on money itself.

    I would maintain that everyone, including the unemployed, have the right to a lifelong education, to music and opera, to theater and to sports, as well as to the basics of life– even holidays (a “change of air”) — provided in part by special electronic credit cards, by mutual services and the venues, facilities, theaters and schools, provided by the state, by private funds, and maintained by the people with free time. The financial field of action could thereby be substantially reduced. People would have the obligation to live without hurting their neighbor, whilst enjoying a reciprocal liberty and serving, as they can and may be inclined to, the needs of others. On such a basis a healthy capitalism could flourish, never exceeding the limits imposed by pollution, by the abuse of nature, of our mother earth, of our resources, never breaking all bounds in the sale of arms, drugs, children, nor in poisons of all sorts which apparently share our economies.

    I would propose that salaries be related not only to the employer’s resources but also to a given, regional, national (a European) income. Thus salaries would adjust to the given well-being of a country.

    We must rethink basic rights and responsibilities. These are all to life, ours and all other lives and all life upon which we depend, and not to money alone.

    Forgive me if I allow myself to seize one of those rare moments of historical opportunity to urge you to engage upon a renewal of options and at the same time a return to certain codes pronounced some two thousand and more years ago.

    Respectfully,

    Yehudi Menuhin

  • The Human Right to Peace Declaration

    Lasting peace is a prerequisite for the exercise of all human rights and duties. It is not the peace of silence, of men and women who by choice or constraint remain silent. It is the peace of freedom – and therefore of just laws – of happiness, equality, and solidarity, in which all citizens count, live together and share.

     

    Peace, development and democracy form an interactive triangle. They are mutually reinforcing. Without democracy, there is no sustainable development: disparities become unsustainable and lead to imposition and domination.

     

    In 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations and UNESCO and the United Nations Year for Tolerance, we stressed that it was only through a daily effort to know others better – I am the ‘other’! – and respect them that we would be able to tackle at source the problems of marginalization, indifference, resentment and hatred. This is the only way to break the vicious circle that leads from insults to confrontation and the use of force.

     

    We must identify the roots of global problems and strive, with imagination and determination, to check conflicts in their early stages. Better still prevent them. Prevention is the victory that gives the measure of our distinctively human faculties. We must know in order to foresee. Foresee in order to prevent. We must act in a timely, decisive and courageous manner, knowing that prevention engages the attention only when it fails. Peace, health and normality do not make the news. We shall have to try to give greater prominence to these intangibles, these unheralded triumphs.

     

    A universal renunciation of violence requires the commitment of the whole of society. These are not matters of government but matters of State; not only matters for the authorities, but for society in its entirety (including civilian, military, and religious bodies). The mobilization which is urgently needed to effect the transition within two or three years from a culture of war to a culture of peace demands co-operation from everyone. In order to change, the world needs everyone. A new approach to security is required at world, regional and national levels. The armed forces must be the guarantors of democratic stability and the protection of the citizen, because we cannot move from systems of complete security and no freedom to systems of complete freedom and no security. Ministries of war and defence must gradually be turned into ministries of peace.

     

    Decision-making procedures and measures to deal with emergencies must be specially designed to ensure speed, co-ordination and effectiveness. We are prepared for improbable wars involving the large-scale deployment of inordinately costly equipment, but we are not equipped to detect and mitigate the natural or man-provoked disasters that occur repeatedly. We are vulnerable to the inclemency of the weather, to the vicissitudes of nature. The protection of the citizen must be seen as one of the major tasks of society as a whole if we really wish to consolidate a framework for genuinely democratic living. Investing in emergency help and relief measures and – above all – in prevention and the long term (for example, in continent-wide water distribution and storage networks) is to be prepared for peace, to be prepared to live in peace. Currently, we are prepared for possible war, but find ourselves surprised and defenceless in our daily lives in the face of mishaps of all kinds.

     

    The United Nations system must likewise equip itself with the necessary response capacity to prevent the recurrence of atrocities and instances of genocide such as those which today afflict our collective conscience – Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liberia, Somalia and Rwanda…

     

    There is today a general desire for peace, and we must applaud the clear thinking and strength of mind displayed by all the warring parties in the accords that have been reached in El Salvador, Namibia, Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, Guatemala and the Philippines. These agreements fill us with hope but also sadness, when we think of the lives sacrificed on the long road to the cease-fire, and of the open wounds, so difficult to heal. Thus, as we revive the concept of the ‘construction of peace in the minds of men’, we now call on all adversaries who still put their trust in weapons to lay down their arms and seek reconciliation.

     

    Condemnation will not suffice. It is time for action. It is not enough to feel outrage when we learn of the number of children exploited sexually or at work, of refugees or of those suffering from hunger. We must react, each of us to the best of our abilities. It is not just a matter of looking at what the government is doing. We must part with something of ‘our own’. We must give, give of ourselves. We must stop imposing models of development, models for living. The right to peace, to live in peace, implies jettisoning the belief that some are virtuous and correct while others are wrong, and that some are always giving while others are always in need.

     

    It is clear that we cannot simultaneously pay the price of war and the price of peace. Guaranteeing lifelong education for all would enable us to: control population growth, improve the quality of life, increase civic participation, reduce migratory flows, level out differences in income, assert cultural identity and prevent the destruction of the environment through substantial changes in energy use patterns and urban transport; promote endogenous development and the transfer of knowledge; foster the swift and effective operation of justice, with appropriate machinery for international co-operation; provide the United Nations system with appropriate facilities to tackle transnational problems in time. None of this can be achieved in a context of war. What is needed, then, is to reduce the investment in arms and destruction in order to increase investment in the construction of peace.

     

    The distillation of traditions, thoughts, languages, forms of expression, memories, things forgotten, wishes, dreams, experiments, rejections, culture finds its supreme expression in our everyday behaviour. Infinite cultural diversity is our great resource, which is underpinned – this is our strength – by universal cultural values that must be passed on from the cradle to the grave. Family members – especially mothers – teachers, the media, everyone must help to spread the ethical principles, the universal guidelines that are so necessary today for haves and have-nots alike: the latter because they have a right to the basic minimum standards that human dignity demands; the more fortunate because material goods fail to deliver the expected pleasure. Where there is no longing, possession brings no enjoyment. In education, tools are useful. But nothing can replace the friendly words of a teacher, or the caresses and smiles of parents. The only real education is education by example . . . and love.

     

    Learning without frontiers – whether geographical, or frontiers of age or language – can help to change the world, by eliminating or reducing the many barriers that today impede universal access to knowledge and education. Education must help to strengthen, reclaim and develop the culture and identity of peoples.

     

    Globalization carries with it a danger of uniformity and increases the temptation to turn inwards and take refuge in all kinds of convictions – religious, ideological, cultural, or nationalistic. Confronted with this threat, we must ’emphasize the forms of learning and critical thinking that enable individuals to understand changing environments, create new knowledge and shape their own destinies’. Indigenous peoples must be placed on an equal footing with other cultures, participating fully in the drafting and application of laws. Peace means diversity, a blending – of ‘hybrid, wandering cultures’ as Carlos Fuentes put it; it means multi-ethnic and multilingual societies. Peace is not an abstract idea but one rooted firmly in cultural, political, social and economic contexts.

     

    Above all, this profound transformation from oppression and confinement to openness and generosity, this change based on the daily use by all of us of the verb ‘to share – which is the key to a new future – cannot be achieved without our young people, and certainly not behind their backs. We must tell them – they who represent our hope, who are calling for our help and who seek in us and in external authorities the answers to their uncertainties and preoccupations – that it is in themselves that they must discover the answers, that the motivations and glimpses of light that they are seeking can be found within themselves. Although at times it may be difficult, given both their consternation and our own, to present the situation to them in those terms, our position as lifelong teachers and learners obliges us to say to young people, as Cavafy put it in a poem: ‘Ithaca gave you the journey . . . She has nothing left to give you now’. Each according to his own plan. Each according to his own way of thinking. Free from self-serving outside interference, especially when it robs the young of their own ‘core’, the intellect, talent and resourcefulness which are the most precious individual and collective treasure of humankind. Sects and the escape provided by drug addiction are the clearest symptoms of this pathological state of mind that is our great problem today. Indeed, education means activating this immense potential and using it to its fullest so that each may become the master and architect of his or her own destiny. We cannot give to youth what we no longer possess in youthful vitality but instead we can offer what we have learned through experience, the fruit of our failures and successes, of the burdens, joys, pain, and perplexity and the renewed inspiration of each new moment.

     

    Let youth hold high the banner of peace and justice! So convinced am I of the relevance of this goal to the proper fulfilment of our mission that I have proposed to the General Conference that it designate ‘UNESCO and youth’ as a central topic for discussion at its next session. That will be an appropriate moment since the General Conference will be considering for adoption the ‘Declaration on the Safeguarding of Future Generations’.

     

    At all the United Nations conferences, regardless of the subject under consideration (environment, population, social development, human rights and democracy, women, housing), there has been a consensus that education is the key to the urgently needed change in the direction pursued by todays world, which is increasing disparities in the possession of material goods and knowledge, instead of reducing them. To invest in education is not only to respect a fundamental right but also to build peace and progress for the world’s peoples. Education for all, by all, throughout life: this is the great challenge. One which allows of no delay. Each child is the most important heritage to be preserved. UNESCO may at times give the impression that it is only interested in preserving stone monuments or natural landscapes. That is not true. Those efforts are the most visible. And the heritage thus safeguarded the least vulnerable. But we must protect our entire heritage: the spiritual, the intangible, the genetic heritage – and, especially, ethics. These are the basic, universal values that our Constitution sets forth with inspired clarity. If we sincerely believe that each child is our child, then we must radically change the parameters of the ‘globalization’ currently under way. And the human being must become the beneficiary and main actor of all our policies and strategies.

     

    A system collapsed in 1989 because, concentrating on equality, it forgot liberty. The present system focused on liberty, will know the same fate if it forgets equality – and solidarity. The din made as the ‘Iron Curtain’collapsed drowned out the tremor that ran through the foundations of the ‘winning’ side in the Cold War. We must, then, for the sake of both principle and self-interest, redouble in every field the fight against exclusion and marginalization. We must all feel involved. We must all work to ease the great transition from the logic of force to the force of reason; from oppression to dialogue; from isolation to interaction and peaceful coexistence. But first we must live, and give meaning to life. Eliminating violence: that is our resolve. Preventing violence and compulsion by going, as I said before, to the very sources of resentment, extremism, dogmatism and fatalism. Poverty, ignorance, discrimination and exclusion are forms of violence which can cause – although they can never justify – aggression, the use of force and fratricidal conflict.

     

    A peace consciousness – in the interests of living together, of science and its applications – does not appear overnight, nor can it be imposed by decree. First comes disillusionment with materialism and enslavement to the market, and then a return to freedom of thought and action, sincerity, austerity, the indomitable force of the mind, the key to peace and to war, as affirmed by the founders of UNESCO.

     

    Science is always positive, but the same cannot always be said of its applications. Advances in technology and knowledge can be used to enrich or to impoverish the lives of human beings; they can help to develop their identity and enhance their capacities or, on the contrary, they can be used to undermine the personality and coarsen human talent. Only conscience, which is responsibility – and thus ethical and moral – can make good use of the artefacts of reason. Conscience must work in tandem with reason. To the ethics of responsibility we must add an ethics of conviction and will. The former springs from knowledge, and the latter from passion, compassion and wisdom.

     

    We are now approaching the end of a century of amazing scientific and technological progress: we can diagnose and treat many diseases which cause suffering and death; we communicate with extraordinary clarity and speed; we have at our disposal instant, limitless information. However, antibiotics and telecommunications do not compensate for the bloody conflicts which have cut down millions of lives in their prime and inflicted indescribable suffering on so many innocent people. All the obscenities of war, brought home to us nowadays by audio-visual equipment, do not seem able to halt the advance of the huge war machine set up and maintained over many centuries. Present generations have the almost impossible, biblical task of ‘beating their swords into ploughshares’ and making the transition from an instinct for war – developed since time immemorial – to a feeling for peace. To achieve this would be the best and most noble act that the ‘global village’ could accomplish, and the best legacy to our descendants. With what satisfaction and relief should we be able to look into the eyes of our children! It would be also the best way to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in 1998.

     

    Other ‘rights’ have been added since 1948. These should all be taken into account, and to them should be added the right which underlies them all: the right to peace – the right to live in peace! The right to our own ‘personal sovereignty’, to respect for life and dignity.

     

    Human rights! At the dawn of the new millennium, our ideal must be to put them into practice, to add to them, to live and breathe them, to relive them, to revive them with every new day! No one nation, institution or person should feel entitled to lay sole claim to human rights, still less to determine others’ credentials in this regard. Human rights can neither be owned nor given, but must be won and deserved afresh with every passing day. Nor should they be regarded as an abstraction, but rather as practical guidelines for action which should be part of the lives of all men and women and enshrined in the laws of every country. Let us translate the Declaration into all languages; let it be studied in every classroom and every home, all over the world! Today’s ideal may thus become the happy reality of tomorrow! Learning to know, to do, to be and to live together!

     

    In these first days of the new year – a time for taking stock and making plans – I appeal to all families, educators, religious figures, parliamentarians, politicians, artists, intellectuals, scientists, craftworkers and journalists, to all humanitarian, sporting and cultural organizations and to the media to spread abroad a message of tolerance, non-violence, peace and justice. Our aim must be to foster understanding, generosity and solidarity, so that with our minds more focused on the future than on the past, we may be able to look ahead together and build, however difficult the conditions or inhospitable the setting, a future of peace, which is a fundamental right and prerequisite. Thus, ‘We, the people’ will have fulfilled the promise we made in 1945, our eyes still seared by the most abominable images of the terrible conflict that had just ended – ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’, ‘to construct the defences of peace in the minds’ of all the peoples of the Earth.

  • Hans Bethe’s Appeal to Scientists to Cease Work on Nuclear Weapons

    On the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Hans Bethe, a senior Manhattan Project scientist, issued the following statement.

    As the Director of the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos, I participated at the most senior level in the World War II Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic weapons.

    Now, at age 88, I am one of the few remaining such senior persons alive. Looking back at the half century since that time, I feel the most intense relief that these weapons have not been used since World War II, mixed with the horror that tens of thousands of such weapons have been built since that time – one hundred times more than any of us at Los Alamos could ever have imagined.

    Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills.

    Accordingly, I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons – and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons.

  • Graduates: Take Global Responsibility

    “I pledge allegiance to the Earth, and to its varied life forms; one world, indivisible, with liberty, justice and dignity for all.”

    We need more people to take the pledge, and live their lives as though the Earth and its myriad of creatures mattered.

    We all know at some level that the world–this beautiful, unique world we inhabit–is in a precarious state, and not enough is being done to save it. The environment is under attack. The quality of our air and water is deteriorating, the ozone layer is being depleted as are our forests, desertification is expanding, and global warming continues. Too many people are starving and too many are hungry; too many are homeless and without adequate medical care; too many children die of preventable diseases. While some people live in obscene abundance, others barely survive and many don’t survive. Population is on an exponential rise, leading to a doubling of global population in the next 50 years. Throughout the world human rights are routinely abused by governments that torture and murder their own citizens. Wars rage on, and nuclear weapons threaten to spread to nations that seek to flex their technological muscles as the existing nuclear weapons states have done for decades.

    What is to be done about all of this? The choices are these: ignore the problems, allow yourself to be paralyzed by fear or despair, or roll up your sleeves and take responsibility for changing the world. The first two choices are akin to giving up–giving up your humanity. The only hope for making a difference is to choose responsibility–global responsibility.

    Responsibility is an underrated concept. Without responsibility very little would get done. With responsibility, almost anything is possible.

    Global responsibility can become a way of life characterized by awareness, beliefs and commitment–the A-B-C of global change. The starting point is awareness of the serious problems which confront us. Awareness comes from education, in class and out. Beliefs reflect values, for example, the belief that change is possible, that you can make a difference, that all persons are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Commitment is what impels you to action, the willingness to give of yourself, to sacrifice, to make a difference in the world.

    Each generation has a responsibility to pass the world on in tact to the next generation. We are stewards of the abundance and beauty of our unique planetary home. Our generation and the one before us haven’t done such a good job–we’ve lost control of too many powerful technologies and been too greedy and power-seeking. I believe that your generation can do better. In fact, your generation must do better, for yourselves and for posterity.

    If your commitment to global responsibility should falter because you think the task is too big or you don’t have enough time for it or for a thousand other reasons, remember that you are the link to the future. Without your active involvement, there may not be a future. If each of us does not personally accept global responsibility, we have no right to expect someone else to accept it. Is it fair to ask that others pull our weight for us?

    We all believe in human rights, but without human responsibility there cannot be human rights. They are two sides of a coin. In today’s interlinked and interdependent world, human rights demand global responsibility.

    John Donne, writing some four centuries ago, reminded us that “no man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; everyman is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine….” In today’s language we should say, “No human is an island….” We are all in this together, all five and a half billion of us. We are all one species, all relatives, all members of the human family–egardless of our race, color, gender or creed. We can join with John Donne in recognizing that “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde….”

    We share a common responsibility for safeguarding this unique planet where life flourishes, this small blue dot in a vast universe which is our home. The threats we face demand that we put aside selfishness, and step forward to accept responsibility for creating a peaceful and just world. We can do better than solving our problems by means of technological violence, and we can do more for each other. We can take seriously that “all men [and women] are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights….”

    We can live by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which recognizes that “the inherent dignity and… the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world….” We can accept personal responsibility for upholding these rights. We can speak out and act in behalf of our unique Earth and its many life forms that cannot give voice to the impending disasters that surround us. We can take responsibility– global responsibility — for creating a better world. Now is the time to begin.

  • A Nonviolent Political Agenda for a More Humane World

    https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/wagingpeaceseries/maguire.pdf