Dr. Roland Joseph’s Remarks at the Center for Global Nonkilling (CGNK) Webinar on “Cultivating a Culture of Peace!

Dr. Roland Joseph’s Remarks at the Center for Global Nonkilling (CGNK) Webinar on “Cultivating a Culture of Peace: A Nonkilling Perspective” for the International Day of Peace, September 21, 2024.  

Dr. Roland Joseph

Hello everyone,

Boukan News, 10/25/2024 – Thank you so much, Dr. Anoop Swarup, for your kind introduction. I am glad to be part of this panel with scholars, researchers, professors, and activists from the Center for Global Nonkilling (CGNK) and worldwide. I am also glad to see some of my colleagues here Dr. Katyayani Singh, Dr. Bill Bhaneja, and Swapna Menon. Thank you, Swapna and Professor Singh for coordinating this event.

This year, the United Nations International Day of Peace theme is “Cultivating a Culture of Peace”. Our reflection on this theme focuses on the nonkilling peace paradigm as the world faces geopolitical tensions and protracted or destructive conflicts.

In an article published earlier this year by the International Crisis Group, it is mentioned that there are 10 conflicts to watch throughout this year, including the war between Israel and Gaza, the war in the Middle East, the conflict between the army and paramilitary forces in Sudan, the war between Russia and Ukraine, the conflict in Myanmar since the 2021 military coup, the conflict between the militias of the Amhara and Oromia in Ethiopia, the conflict in the Sahel region with the army juntas ruling Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, gang violence in Haiti, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and the latent conflict between the United States and China. I am sure there are more than 10 protracted or destructive conflicts worldwide.

In fact, in most of the cases mentioned by the International Crisis Group, conflicting parties continue to kill each other. In the Israel-Gaza war which began on October 7 last year, 1,200 people on the Israelian side have been killed during the Hamas attack, and at least 41, 272 Palestinians have been killed by Israel. Most of the victims are innocent people, including children and women, who had nothing to do with Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Even though peace and nonkilling activists, and scholars call on all parties, especially Israel to put an end to this war, that doesn’t stop them from killing innocent people. On October 2023, the Chair of the Center for Global Nonkilling (CGNK), Professor Dr. Anoop Swarup called for an immediate end to the killings in Israel and Palestine. Through this call, the CGNK wanted to draw the attention of all humanists, activists, and scholars across the globe to explore new and creative approaches to address this longstanding conflict. Dr. Swarup said, “It is high time that we cut across all our religious beliefs, faith, and ideologies from across the world and bring the ideology of affirmative nonkilling peace into action.”

The CGNK doesn’t only call on ending the war between Israel and Palestine. This center condemns all kinds of deadly conflict or all killing and violent responses to conflict. As it is mentioned on its website, the mission of the CGNK is to promote change toward the measurable goal of a killing-free world by means open to infinite human creativity. We believe human beings can stop killing each other from homicide to genocide, terrorism, and mass killing in war. We also believe that this will not happen without education based on the principles and values of the non-killing philosophy. In other words, we cannot cultivate a culture of non-killing peace without implementing comprehensive non-killing peace education.

Archibald MacLeish, an American poet, and writer said: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed». Trying to say the same thing but with some different words, it is noted on the website of the CGNK that “since killing begins in the minds of men and women, it is there that the change toward a nonkilling society must begin.” We must continue to equip men and women, including children, with peace skills based on the principles of non-killing for the emergence of a culture of non-killing peace across the world.

Using the notion of nonkilling peace makes sense because even those who use violence and killing as an attempt to address conflict do it in the name of peace. This makes the concept of peace more complicated and complex to understand. For example, most politicians use the Latin adage: “Si vis pacem, para bellum (If you want peace, prepare for war)” to develop killing machines. It is in this sense that I agree with Dr. Bill Bhaneja, author of the book Peace Portraits: Pathways to Nonkilling: A Memoir, cited by Dr. Joám Evans Pim:

“Peace is a much-abused word. It has been misused and misspoken by all sorts of leaders in defense of their insurgencies and wars—Stalin mobilized the Soviet Union in the name of peace, Hitler’s war to colonize Europe was to bring peace and prosperity for Germans, and even Bush’s military intervention in Iraq was to introduce peace and democracy in the region to make America look great again. These wars of the previous century were fought in the name of peace which led to the deaths of around 200 million people, mostly innocent civilians.”

The world needs to embrace nonkilling peace education to cultivate a culture of nonkilling peace! Nonkilling peace education is the alpha and the omega to achieve a non-killing global society. That concludes my intervention. Thank you again, Professor Dr. Katyayani Singh and Swapna Menon, for coordinating this session.

Dr. Roland Joseph is a former Haitian journalist, a member of the Transcend Network for Peace Development Environment, a researcher at the Center for Global Nonkilling (CGNK), and a translator of Glenn Durland Paige’s book, Nonkilling Global Political Science, into Haitian Creole. He is the former chair of the Latin America and Caribbean Working Group (LACWG) of the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) in Florida. He is also a member of the International Peace Bureau (IPB). Dr. Joseph has a BA in Political Science and holds an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution with a concentration in Global Conflict from NSU. His research focuses on non-killing political science, nonviolence, peace, and nuclear disarmament. Email: jrolandjoseph@gmail.com.

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