Rotary World Peace Symposium 2009

Last month I had the opportunity to travel to Birmingham, England to attend the 2^nd World Peace Symposium, a bi-annual event that brings together current and alumni of the Rotary World Peace Fellowship program and prominent peace workers from across the world for a few days to discuss our work, current and important issues in our respective fields, and to network with each other. Although it was only two days long, I met more than enough current and past fellows to learn that we are all doing exciting, indispensable work in the peace field. Being surrounded by such energetic activists definitely injected some more positive energy for me to keep pushing towards making my own dent in pushing the world in a more peaceful direction!

One of the most exciting parts of the Peace Symposium was attending discussion panels with fellows and other workers. One I attended was on the role of development in peace-building that discussed some of the issues that I looked at in some of my courses at ICU, especially the relationship between economic development and peace and the impact the concept of human security is having in the world of development and peace-building. I am glad others, like me, are asking and researching some of these same questions, since the more people working on these issues should bring answers to these problems more quickly! I also attended a session on religion and approaches to conflict resolution, which was surprisingly less contentious and more interesting than I initially thought. I went into this session thinking that it would focus on the problems between religion and conflict resolution and how to dissociate the two for meaningful progress; yet, to the contrary, the panel’s participants instead focused on how religion and religious values can be used positively in conflict resolution by bridging common values and using them as a base to build trust in relationships.

Another exciting part of the Peace Symposium was having the opportunity to listen to a speech given by Archbishop Emeritus Desmund Tutu, the South African cleric, Nobel Peace Prize and Ghandi Peace Prize winner who has been a staunch fighter for peace and defender of human rights. Along with his past work in ending apartheid in South Africa, he is also one of the few prominent Africans fighting to end HIV/AIDS on his content and other places in the world being decimated by the disease. Archbishop Tutu’s speech was poignant, funny and uplifting. (He was shockingly funny to me – I don't know why, but I never expect peace workers or the clergy to be of such good humor. But I guess they should be to see pass some of the atrocities and intractable problems that come from working in this field!) Although he acknowledged the hard work that comes with peace work, he also talked about the vital importance of our work as Rotary World Peace Fellows and the ultimate joy we can get out of working on behalf of others and for peace and justice. Below is a short clip from his speech that day:

Lastly, I made many new friends, particularly past fellows from ICU, who up until then I only knew by email address and the occasional stray letter that came for them in the mail. I enjoyed listening to their experiences at ICU, even if some of the concerns they had about the program are similar to the ones I have now. But even more so than learning about the exciting and important peace work other alumni are currently doing, I really enjoyed learning about what past ICU fellows are doing now, since our connections are so much closer because of studies at the same school and life in Japan. Below is a picture of my new ICU alumni fellow friends:

A pretty strong showing of ICU Peace Fellows, don’t you think?!

I’m slowly but surely catching up with all that’s been happening here in Japan and with my Rotary fellowship. The next few updates will be about my first days at my summer internship at Peace Boat Japan!

JRG