Statement from Echo Event Organizers in Aberdeen

Statement given by Echo event organizer Lynne Tammi at the Aberdeen Echo event

October 18, 2007

Peace Won't Come From the Barrel of a Gun

“A culture of peace will be achieved when citizens of the world understand global problems, have the skills to resolve conflicts and struggle for justice non-violently, live by international standards of human rights and equity, appreciate cultural diversity, and respect the earth and each other. Such learning can only be achieved by systematic education for peace”. Hague Appeal for Peace – Global Campaign for Peace Education (1999)

Whilst wars and conflicts are not limited only to the Middle East it is important to recognise the impact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the recent hostilities in Lebanon have had not only on the region but also on the rest of the world. Hostilities affect the immediate rights of citizens to health, well-being and education as basic infrastructure is destroyed, as they lose friends and family members, and as they live in fear. Moreover, history shows us that hostilities frequently result in increasing alienation and division within communities, countries and regions leading at best to an un-easy and fragile peace or at worst (and more often the case) to further hostilities.

Whilst the negative impact of conflict and hostilities, are without doubt, cross generational it is important to consider the impact they have on children and young people; their innocence and security lost in the name of war.

“Yasmin, 13, lives in the Gaza Strip. She says her life used to be beautiful, without the fears she has on a daily basis now. “I can’t go swimming, I can’t go anywhere, can’t look at the Internet because of the electricity shortage,” she says. “I can’t even take a bath because of the water shortage.”

Shuki, 14, lives in Kiryat Shmona in the north of Israel. “You used to walk around freely,” he says. “It was a calm city.” His parents sent him to Jerusalem to stay with relatives where there’s less threat of violence. Still, he notes: “Every small sound around Jerusalem makes you jump, even though you know you’re in a safe place.”

Dialogue among different cultures and nations, knowledge of others and their differences, respect, with emphasis on the humanitarian and shared values among nations are the basis of building and supporting peace in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.

Civil society’s participation, particularly children and young people, in any “constructing of the peace” is crucial; as is a recognition by all protagonists that the road to peace is paved with knowledge and understanding of the past, and hope and forgiveness for the future.

If we are to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe we must pressure our governments to take all steps within their power to assist civil society in the process of constructing the peace in the Middle East.

For surely, If it was possible to find peace in Europe in the past through the creation of the European Union and other initiatives, despite the great hostilities between nations in the past and the more recent country level conflicts such as those in The Balkans, the IRA/UK, ETA/Spain, then it has to be possible to find peace elsewhere in the world, in the future.

I’ll finish with a quote from Little’s Living Age: The Four Empires, 12th December, 1857

The past of all of us poorly bears inspection: it is better for us to bury our recriminations and endeavour to be wise for the future. Suggestions little in harmony with the feelings towards our late enemies in which we have indulged so liberally may seem at first not easily tolerable but the hostility of nations is not as the quarrels of individual persons and ceases, or aught to cease, when the immediate differences are composed. It were easy to write much on such a subject; but it is enough for the present to have sketched an outline, and details are beyond our purpose."

Wise words, written 150 years ago but still as relevant today. We all have a duty to be wise for the future.

Whatever our own personal views on a preferred outcome we do not have the right to impose that view on the people of the region, that right lies with them and them alone.

It is however, our duty to support them in their quest for consensus, their quest to reach a solution that will ensure a peaceful and secure future for all.