Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: conflict resolution

  • University Students Create Peace Leadership Chapter

    The Nova Southeastern University chapter of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Peace Leadership Program has successfully completed its first cycle! The cycle lasted a total of 8 sessions with each session focusing on the application of specific leadership skills in promoting peace at the interpersonal, intergroup and international level. Although the program was marketed to various disciplines in the undergraduate school, the majority of participants were currently enrolled in the Conflict Analysis and Resolution graduate program at NSU. Each session included a skill building training, participation in a related activity, a lively discussion on a current domestic or international conflict and a presentation made by one of the participants. The format of the sessions encouraged participants to learn leadership skills, brainstorm peaceful resolutions to current conflicts, and practice leadership through presenting on a topic they felt passionately about.



    Back row from left to right: Safeer Bhatti (USA), Lauren Marx (USA), Farouk Raheemson (Nigeria), Grace Okoye (Nigeria), Keyvan Aarabi (Iran/USA), NWANNE DORIS ELEKWACHI (Nigeria), Stacy-Ann Palmer (Jamaica/USA).


    Front row from left to right: Bobby Huen (China/USA), Athena Passera (Trinidad/USA), Ian Dozier (USA), Roxan A Anderson (USA)


    The participants in cycle 1 hailed from Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the U.S and typically had a variety of academic and professional backgrounds. The diversity of the group provided a spectrum of cultural and intellectual perspectives that produced a remarkably high quality of social and political discourse during the sessions. One of the most powerful experiences throughout the cycle occurred during session 5 when the students participated in an international negotiation simulation. The simulation divided the participants into two groups with one group representing Israeli interests and the other Palestinian interests in a dispute over water resources in the West Bank. During the simulation students were asked to perform as leaders, navigating diverging goals, emotional flare-ups, and deep seated feelings of mistrust to reach a peaceful resolution. The final resolution reflected hours of negotiation and brainstorming. This activity helped students understand the complexities in international conflicts, the often incompatible interests of leaders and the power of creativity in brokering a peaceful resolution.   


    As the founder and lead facilitator of the NSU chapter of the NAPF Peace Leadership Program I had a the opportunity to promote the message of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation while given the freedom to find creative mediums to educate and motivate future peace leaders. Paul Chappell provided me with the mentorship and support I needed to successfully promote, conduct and complete this cycle. My experience helped me to build upon my own skills as a public speaker, teacher and leader for peace. In addition to imparting knowledge, I also learned an incredible amount of information from the participants. In the first session the group watched the NAPF video titled The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence. Following the video, I asked each student, if they were the leader of their respective country, to state the position they would take on nuclear arms. The answers varied, and I learned the challenges of changing the dominant role that deterrence plays in nuclear discourse. Listening to the rationale behind each student’s position helped me to learn the impact that prevailing social dogma and acculturation has on the formation of opinions on nuclear weapons.


    The first cycle of the NSU Chapter has been successfully completed with a total of 10 students graduating and the group is currently working on doing philanthropy work by donating their time to helping those in our community. A wonderful product of this cycle was the creation of a cohesive group that is unified by the shared goal for peace. One aspect that made my role easier was having the support of all of the group members and, in particular, having Lauren Marx as a co-facilitator and co-developer. The second cycle is about to begin with a new group of students and a new set of perspectives through which to understand and develop leadership for peace. I will learn from this experience and work towards making each new cycle a better version of the first. The NAPF Peace Leadership program has just begun its impact in South Florida. I am committed to pushing ahead by beginning the second cycle at NSU and actively working toward starting new chapters at other universities here in South Florida. I am eternally grateful for this opportunity to work with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, including Paul Chappell, Rick Wayman and Dr. David Krieger, to help promote their mission toward a more peaceful nuclear free world.  

  • Peace Proposal: Bring in the Children

    We receive many positive proposals for peace from friends and readers of the Sunflower and our wagingpeace.org web site. I want to share some of them from time to time with a broader audience in the hope that they may spark your ideas and actions. Here is one from Janie, a mother in Philadelphia. She begins by observing that “the world seems to be falling apart” and notes that the format of international meetings hardly changes and the results are generally minimal. “What are we to do?” she asks.

    She answers her question this way: “When things don’t work out with a child, a new tactic is in order, and various tactics are attempted until the right one surfaces and the final breakthrough is accomplished.” Based on her experience, she makes the following proposal:

    “Why doesn’t someone initiate at the next world conference for anything (nuclear disarmament, environment, peace in the Middle East, etc.) that each representative brings to the meeting a grandchild (under the age of about 7 years) and if no grandchild fits this category then a grandniece/nephew or any child that one is extremely fond of?”

    “I think the results would be alarming, surprising,” she writes. “Representatives to these meetings come with their egos, agendas, power, etc. No wonder nothing much is achieved. Get some children in there and what will happen right off the bat is that no one’s heart remains with quite the same hardness and impenetrability. The egos become a little less, the feeling of nationalism decreases a notch. My religion, your religion doesn’t quite hold the power it had. Why? Because the hearts of children have the power, tremendous power to melt the heart, anyone’s heart.”

    She concludes: “So that’s my contribution to conflict resolution, the peace process, disarmament put the future generations before these people, put their very own loved ones, vulnerable ones, sweet and innocent ones in their face and maybe things could get moving to secure a world that they deserve. I am so very serious about this. Is it not worth a try?”

    Of course, it is worth a try. We need leaders who think and act as if they are in the very presence of future generations. We need leaders who are able to shift their thinking and actions from representing powerful corporate interests to representing people and particularly the children who, after all, are the future. We need leaders who, like the native Americans, think of the seventh generation in the future when they make decisions.

    The problem, of course, is how to get a great idea like Janie’s implemented. It seems clear that it would change the tone and tenor of international meetings concerned with peace, disarmament, human rights, the environment, etc. It is difficult to move entrenched leaders, particularly those that seem indebted to vested interests. Perhaps the best way to implement an idea like this is for the children themselves to make their voices heard and to demand a seat at the table.

    I encourage you to talk this idea over with friends and family, including your children and grandchildren. Perhaps we should withhold our votes from leaders who do not make decisions as if in the presence of future generations and who would not be willing to bring children into the halls of government and to international meetings to determine whether it is possible to live in peace with our planet and each other.

     

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