Pacem in Terris Symposium

Senator Douglas Roche was elected to Parliament four times, serving from 1972 to 1984 and specializing in the subjects of development and disarmament. Canada’s Ambassador for Disarmament from 1984 to 1989, he was elected Chairman of the United Nations Disarmament Committee, the main UN body dealing with political and security issues, at the 43^rd General Assembly in 1988.

He was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 1998. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, past Chairman of Canadian Pugwash and Chairman, Middle Powers Initiative, a network of eight international non-governmental organizations specializing in nuclear disarmament. In 1995, he received the United Nations Association’s Medal of Honour and the Papal Medal for his services as Special Advisor on disarmament and security matters. In 1998, the Holy See named him a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. In 2000, he received the Pomerance Award for work at the United Nations on nuclear disarmament. He holds six Honorary Doctorates.

Senator Roche’s latest book is The Human Right to Peace (Novalis, 2003)

“Pacem in Terris” was a seminal influence in the development of my thinking about a culture of peace.

Even now, after forty years, the words of this great encyclical ring out with clarity, conviction, and a prescient vision of our life in the 21^st century.

People have “the right to live,” Pope John XXIII affirmed. They have “the right to bodily integrity… to food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and social services.” People are living in the grip of constant fear of war and violence. “Nuclear weapons must be banned.” “True and lasting peace among nations cannot consist in the possession of an equal supply of armaments but only in mutual trust.” “In this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice.” The United Nations must “adapt its structure and methods of operation to the magnitude and nobility of its tasks.”

And my final quote from Pope John is a passage that speaks directly to me in my role as a legislator: “The attainment of the common good is the sole reason for the existence of civil authorities.” And then: “No state can fittingly pursue its own interests in isolation from the rest.”

With his powerful message addressed to all humanity, Pope John gave us a road map for peace. His words foreshadowed the Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, which elaborated on the joys and hopes, the grief and anxieties that we all have irrespective of religion, race, or culture. His words inspired me to devote my public life to working for peace with social justice for all.

So overpowering is the culture of war that it discourages many from even thinking that they could be instruments of change. A deep cynicism and mistrust are deeply imbedded in populaces. Many who do speak up for change are dismissed as idealists. Yet despite a political and societal climate that supports the entrenched “culture of war” status quo, there are significant signs that a “culture of peace” is being born. Already the ideas of a culture of peace have taken shape and been given a structural basis. We have the United Nations and its agencies to thank for the progress made thus far.

The idea of a culture of peace to overcome – in a non-violent way – the culture of war was first taken up
at a conference of scholars in 1989 at Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast. They projected a “new vision of peace” constructed “by developing a peace culture based on the universal values of life, liberty, justice, solidarity, tolerance, human rights and equality between men and women” – the very ideas contained in “Pacem in Terris.” The conference emphasized that violence is not an endemic part of the human condition.

UNESCO then began to formulate a culture of peace as a set of ethical and aesthetic values, habits and customs, attitudes toward others, forms of behaviour and ways of life that draw on and express:

A culture of peace was defined as an approach to life that seeks to transform the cultural roots of war and violence into a culture where dialogue, respect, and fairness govern social relations. In this way, violence can be prevented through a more tolerant common global ethic. The culture of peace uses education as an essential tool in fostering attitudes supportive of nonviolence, cooperation and social justice. It promotes sustainable development for all, free human rights, and equality between men and women. It requires genuine democracy and the free flow of information. It leads to disarmament.

The culture of peace is, at its core, an ethical approach to life. It recognizes that the world is experiencing a fundamental crisis. Though this crisis is often expressed in economic, ecological or political terms, it is fundamentally a crisis of the human spirit. It is a crisis of all humanity which, in the journey through time, has reached the point where we are capable of destroying all life on earth just at the moment when the recognition of the inherent human rights of everyone is beginning to take hold. A choice in how we will live, which path we will follow, is illuminated. The culture of peace offers the vision of a global ethic toward life in full vibrancy; the culture of war offers the prospect of misery and annihilation.

When he was UNESCO Secretary-General, Federico Mayor dedicated himself to three initiatives to develop a culture of peace: a proposal for an International Year for the Culture of Peace (2000); a proposal for a U.N. Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace; and an initiative of the Nobel Peace Laureates’ “Campaign for the Children of the World” that would eventually become the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World (2001-10).

The centrepiece of this work is the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace adopted by the U.N. General Assembly September 13, 1999. It is perhaps the most comprehensive programme for peace ever taken up by the United Nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Annan pointed out that, while each of these areas of action have long been U.N. priorities, “what is new is their linkage through the culture of peace and non-violence into a single coherent concept

… so that the sum of their complementarities and synergies can be developed.”

Implementing such an extensive Programme of Action is a long-term challenge. This is why the U.N. called for partnerships to develop among various actors (governments, civil society and the U.N. system) towards “a global movement for a culture of peace.” The Programme would be aimed at not only the 2000 International Year for the Culture of Peace but at the decade that followed.

The culture of peace should not be considered the technical solution to every world problem; rather, it supplies the moral foundation for a better individual and global order, a vision which can lead people away from despair and society away from chaos. However, just as the Programme was starting, chaos struck in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Since September 11, a deep sense of fear has pervaded the general populace. We have been violently attacked. We have been told that we do not know where the next attack is coming from. We must be ready. We must prepare ourselves for this new kind of aggression. If preemptive attacks are necessary, so be it. War against this unseen enemy must be fought. Media relentlessly feed us images of destruction and ceaselessly convey the message that the military’s might is now necessary to protect us. The culture of war was given a great gift by the terrorists of September 11.

In this environment, the culture of peace can hardly be heard, let alone obtain the political attention and government funding to make an impression on electorates. In addition to being fearful, many are cynical about peace ever being achieved in such a turbulent world. The arms manufacturers, who mount such powerful lobbies in the legislative halls of Western countries, discount the elements of peace as so much naiveté. To challenge militarist thinking is to run the risk of being considered unpatriotic. The fences enclosing creative thinking are indeed high.

But the machinery of war has not in the past built the kind of world in which people everywhere can achieve human security. Why can it be expected to do so in the new conditions? Rather, it is the slow, painstaking construction of a new culture of peace that offers hope for a better future. The values of such a culture are well worth the time it takes to develop them. The momentum of history, buttressed by new life-enhancing technologies, is on the side of the culture of peace.

The work already accomplished in the United Nations system to develop the concept of the human right to peace is one of the world’s best-kept secrets. The human right to peace is a fundamental right of every human being and is, in fact, the major precondition for all human rights. The time has come to emphasize that the peoples of the world have a sacred right to peace.

That very sentence – “the peoples of our planet have a sacred right to peace” – was inserted into the first operative paragraph in the Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly November 12, 1984. One does not need to be reminded of the countless

deaths in wars that have occurred in the almost two decades following it. Such a recounting does not invalidate the U.N. Declaration, it only underlines the point that this right needs to be better understood before procedures are developed to enforce it under the rule of law.

The intimate linkage between human rights and peace was first recognized in the Preamble and Articles 1 and 55 of the U.N. Charter, and Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the two Covenants on Civil and Political and Economic, Cultural and Social Rights. The Preamble to the Charter, in stirring language evoked by the ashes of World War II, affirms that the peoples of the United Nations are determined “to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours.” Article 1 proclaims as the first purpose of the U.N. the maintenance of international peace and security.

Written a few years later, the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “The recognition of 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.” These documents affirm the right of states to peace through a “peace system,” with the primary goal being the preservation of peace and a respect for human rights as essential to the development of friendly relations among nations.

In 1997, UNESCO developed a draft Declaration on the Human Right to Peace. The Declaration’s aim was to broaden the human dimension of peace and divide the right into three interrelated components. The first defines peace as a human right, understanding that all human beings have a right to peace inherent to their humanity. War and violence of any kind, including insecurity, are considered “intrinsically incompatible” with the human right to peace. The section calls on states and members of the international community to ensure its implementation without discrimination.

The second section elaborates on this task by making it a “duty” for all global actors, including individuals, to “contribute to the maintenance and construction of peace,” and to prevent armed conflicts and violence in all its manifestations.

The third section elaborates the “Culture of Peace”-- the means by which the right to peace is to be achieved. As we have seen, the culture of peace is a strategy that seeks to root peace in peoples’ minds through education and communication, and a set of ethical and democratic ideals.

The power of this draft Declaration is in its challenge to the hypocrisy dominating the world order today. But it failed, at the time, to take hold in a number of countries.

Efforts are continuing at the U.N., but they still lack the backing of major states. In 2002, the U.N. Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee adopted a resolution calling for the promotion of the right to peace. The resolution would have the U.N. affirm that the peoples of the planet have a sacred right to peace, and resources released through disarmament measures should be devoted to the economic and social development of all peoples, particularly those in developing countries. Although the resolution had 90 votes in favour, a hefty 50 negative votes (mostly Western countries and the new East European members of NATO) were cast against it, and 14 abstentions were registered. Such division renders the resolution practically inoperable.

When language is softer, the idea of moving away from war as a means of resolving conflict meets less resistance. For example, in 2003, the U.N. General Assembly concluded five months of negotiations by adopting by consensus a resolution on the prevention of armed conflict. The resolution called on parties to a dispute threatening international peace to make the most effective use of new and existing methods for peacefully settling disputes, including arbitration, mediation, the International Criminal Court, and other treaty-based arrangements, thus promoting the role of international law in international relations. It reaffirmed the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security. And it called on Member States to support poverty eradication measures and enhance the capacity of developing countries; to comply with treaties on arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament; and to strengthen their international verification instruments and eradicate illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. The resolution was hailed as a landmark in efforts to move the world body from a culture of reacting to crises to one of preventing them from reaching critical mass.

Though shying away from any implication that the prevention of armed conflict sets the stage for a full-scale discussion of the “right to peace,” the resolution contains within it important elements of the culture of peace. Far from being anodyne or just another resolution, it is infused with an obligation to the victims of violence and challenges states to move from rhetoric to reality in preventing violence. It is a significant step forward by the U.N. in preparing the way for the right to peace.

The subject of the human right to peace has clearly entered circles of discussion at the U.N. Some hold that it is already a component of developing international law. This is a signal moment because a full discussion of the right to peace puts a new spotlight on the age-old question of the abolition of war itself. In the new era of weapons of mass destruction, the viability of war as a legal means to resolve disputes is clearly over. War today can lead to the obliteration of humanity. Unfortunately, the world community, held in check by the forces of the culture of war, is a long way from outlawing war. The debate on the human right to peace, therefore, is a step forward. As it is pursued, it will force the political system to face up to its responsibility to at least avoid war.

The debate inevitably will centre on the deeply controversial question of the future of nuclear weapons. The International Court of Justice has already given its view on this matter: it says nations have a legal obligation to get rid of them. While the abolition of nuclear weapons will not by itself guarantee peace, it is an elementary fact of the 21^st century that as long as nations brandish nuclear weapons there can be no peace.

The proponents of nuclear weapons do indeed know which way the debate on the human right to peace is headed. That is why they will use every argument they can think of, every political device they can find, and every form of intimidation they can invent to derail the debate. They derailed the debate in UNESCO. They have rendered nuclear weapons abolition resolutions at the U.N. inoperative. They have used the tragedy of September 11 to scare the populace into believing that only gigantic amounts of weaponry can head off the terrorism of the future. They have already precipitated the erosion of civil liberties under the guise of combating terrorism.

These proponents of militarism as the route to peace appear to operate today from the commanding heights of public opinion. But against this insidious thinking that war equals peace is rising a new army – not of soldiers but of highly informed, dedicated, and courageous citizens of all countries who do see the perils ahead. There is a blossoming of both understanding and action in the new phenomenon of an alert civil society calling governments to account for paying only lip service to their human rights commitments. Buttressed by the dynamic means of electronic communication, they are bringing new energy to the global quest for peace.