Thursday, September 10, 2009

2009 Global Alliance Summit for Ministries and Departments for Peace



The Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments for Peace is a community of dedicated individuals, organisations and autonomous campaigns, supporting their national governments to significantly invest in the development of skills and infrastructure dedicated to the peaceful resolution of conflict.

Robert C. Koehler, in his Common Wonders Blog writes:

“Peace is not something which exists independently of us, any more than war does,” says the Dalai Lama at gasummit.org. “Those who are responsible for creating and keeping the peace are members of our own human family.”

These words are deceptively simple, as is almost everything written about the complex, global social structure that we generically call “peace.” We’re in the midst of creating peace: a new human or trans-human structure, comparable in its complexity to the molecular complexity that suddenly mutated into cellular life nearly 4 billion years ago.

The Dalai Lama’s words were addressed to serious citizens indeed: the attendees and others interested in the 2009 Global Alliance Summit for Ministries and Departments for Peace, which will be held in Costa Rica Sept. 17-21. This is the global movement to demand that all governments recognize peace and nonviolent conflict resolution as not only legitimate but crucial processes, and actively encourage and pursue them by creating cabinet- or ministry-level offices at the highest level devoted to that end.

While there are movements in dozens of countries calling for the establishment of ministries or departments of peace, Costa Rica recently became only the third country that has actually done so. The others are Nepal and the Solomon Islands, nations tiny enough for the cynics not to notice, perhaps, but immense among the community of nations in their courage and vision. If we are searching for evidence that humanity has a future, this is part of it.

How a Bill Becomes Law