“Dignity and Development: Building on the Accomplishments of the Culture of Peace”   I have often pondered the use of the word dignity in the United Nations Charter, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenants, Constitutions and many other formidable documents that have withstood the test of time. We are all familiar with the passage: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”   It is not only repeated and referred to in many UN texts and binding documents, but continues to be quoted and referred to until this day. Why is that? What is it in this word or concept that is so attractive, so broadly inclusive? It touches the core of human aspirations. I asked myself many times, do others feel the same elation, the same hope when they read those words? It is very spiritual to the religious and still meets the criteria of the non-religious whose vision or goals may be different. It is, in a word, life without human rights violations or the fulfillment of the Koran or the Bible and other sacred scriptures.   Surely many have shared the thought, “why was inherent dignity chosen”?  With what assurance could this be claimed and recognized as the root from which all rights are derived (as stated in the International Covenants)- and yet without which, where could a hope for a future “freedom, justice and peace in the world” be found? Are these terms just lofty rhetoric or are there processes and principles involved that can be applied and replicated whereby every individual can tap into their inherent dignity. Even the drafters who had carefully chosen those words had probably not entirely done so themselves.                 The term dignity has been used loosely, referring to a demeanor or poise or sometimes in describing royalty or someone who seems above a situation, but is this the dignity that stands as a coveted aspiration for all of human kind? It is possible to cultivate an air of dignity without having tapped into any innate dignity whatsoever. And as I have personally witnessed, it is also possible for someone to have true dignity in a situation that seemed to have no shread of anything normally associated with dignity. I will describe a very striking example.   Two years ago, WFWPI held a women’s peace initiative, bringing together more than 1200 women from 5 continents over a two week period to reach out to local women in Israel and Palestine. We wanted to try, in a humble way, to reassure and remind women and mothers there of their important role in winning the long-term war against hate and injustice. We organized 2 weeks of activities in conjunction with local women, including “education for peace” seminars, visits to schools and other institutions that promote peace. We marched together through the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem to the Wailing Wall and then to the Temple Mount where we were allowed to pray inside the Al Aqsa Mosque, and then inside the Dome of the Rock. This is a very rare privilege and was deeply moving to the participants. We continued along the “Via Dolorosa, ” traditionally honoured as the pathway of Jesus as he carried his cross to Golgotha ending at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We were all continuously chanting “Peace, Shalom, Salaam Alaikum.   We held our traditional “Bridge of Peace” ceremonies between the women of Israel and Palestine and conducted a rally in Peace Park in the old town of Jerusalem, inviting performers and speechmakers from both sides of the conflict. Each morning, we would go out into the neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv as well as in the Palestinian refugee camps in groups of  3 knocking on doors to meet and speak with the women. We were usually generously invited into their homes, drinking many cups of strong Turkish coffee or tea, listening deeply and hoping that when we left, they were more empowered and encouraged not to give in to despair. We were aware of the fact that we could not change their situation through our visit, but we knew that we could remind them that women around the world really did care. The role that women and mothers play in their families and communities in terms of winning that real battle against the propagation of hate and resentment is not to be underestimated. We later continued a signature campaign based on these key points in which more than one million women around the world signed on to.   In one of my days of outreach, I met a young Palestinian woman named Miriam in one of the refugee camps near Jerusalem. Her family was very poor and as with many women there, she was hidden underneath a veil, except for her bright and penetrating eyes. Her large extended family sat on the floor in the bare room, watching with curiosity while we spoke. I felt that they were offering us the best of the very, very little that they had. I remember thinking at the time that she has dignity and had managed to create a dignified home in spite of the dire circumstances. I explained to her about our program and one tear dropped from her eye. She then began to tell us about her work as a teacher in a one-classroom school with Palestinian children of all ages. They arrive each morning, she explained, filled with anger, telling explicit stories they’d heard on television or overheard from relatives about street battles and death. They exchanged tales about what they will do when they are old enough to retaliate. She said that she has to spend half the day trying to create an atmosphere conducive to learning. Even though she herself is loosing a battle with breast cancer because she doesn’t have the treatment that she needs, she cannot miss a day because the children need her so much. She is trying to help them to know the experience of peace founded in forgiveness and understanding. She’s afraid if she doesn’t come even one day, they may loose that fragile hope of a culture of peace that she has labored to create for them. She also told me that she has the strength to continue because her mother did the same in her family.   Through this experience, I was reconfirmed in my conviction that tapping into an innate dignity is a process that has to do with replacing one’s small concept of self as a self-sustaining and independent person with a concept of my large interdependent self who needs and is needed by others, and who has worked hard to make themselves so. It has to do with knowing one’s value to the larger whole. It has to do with being aware of the needs of others, of being “a part of”, not “above”- as should be the case in royal families who have been entrusted with the lives of their citizens. We may be trying to create dignified livelihoods for all people, but if it is not possible to offer a means to reach that internal state of “having dignity” for those people, there will be no sustainability.   If there really is an inherent dignity, then it is possible to get there and a means to do so should be included in the “journey”. After researching into the lives of a select group of people that seem to me to be approaching this state, who reflect this in their integrity and deep compassion and often profound religious conviction, I’ve noted a common element. They are invariably people “living for others”, sacrificing and investing for the well being of others in their daily lives. People who emanate dignity are people who are constantly aware of the needs of others and busy responding to them. They are people who give and forget that they have given. It requires effort, training, involving the mind, the will and the heart.   It is so important that we can concentrate our best energies on the developmental processes and a methodology of building a culture of peace, a culture of heart. Although we tend, especially in policymaking at the United Nations and between or within governments, to build our strategies on the logic of the brain, forgetting that the logic of the heart or the logic of love is the core motivation and unifying factor in our lives. A transformation towards a culture of peace has to be led by transformation of heart. We can provide people with houses but if it doesn’t feel like home, peace cannot take root. And similarly, if we hold onto a vague vision of the “human family” without really working on our ability to care deeply about one another, we will live in constant frustration and un-fulfillment   The very good news is that it is not random process, a question of luck. The “journey” is well marked, if we are looking for it. Once we realize through our experience that “to be great is to be good”, we know intuitively that this is the best gift that we can pass on to our children, our world and finally it is the pillar of our own development no matter talents we might choose to develop.  Consider how thoughtfully this has been planned. We are born into families, an ideal environment to learn to practice “living for others”. That relationship between parent and child is the highest and most critical relationship. It is the  way that lineage is bequeathed and some religions say, it is so fundamental because it, in fact, reflects the relationship between the creator and humanity and by experiencing those positions fully, one is tapping into that primal force. We know that it is of course very difficult to achieve that if parents have not been able to create a secure and nurturing environment. We know likewise that the disappointment children experience when not growing up in such an environment and not feeling that unconditional love of parents may affect self-esteem and behavior throughout life.   Yet the fact that families are too often not fulfilling their potential does not mean that they do not hold a key to the solutions that we are looking for. We may need to re-think the paradigm. Families are the place where ideally, the four realms of love can be learned and experienced; parental, conjugal, children’s and sibling. There is an order to it. We need to trust that  someone is there for us before we can give. That period is critical in arriving at a stage in which we can take responsibility for others, be it our children, spouse or fellow community members. If immature children become parents, they can not possibly create an environment of peace and heart that can launch a child on a path of good development and liberation of his/ her capacity to contribute, to discover their innate value. They will probably not create future leaders that we can entrust our world too, and very likely not provide us with responsible citizens that we can work side by side with.  So much of our experience in life can be traced back to that parent/ child relationship, for better of worse. Would not our conflict prevention strategies or development goals have much greater effect if we would put our best minds and hearts together to consider how to prepare our youth for life as a couple and heads of a family. It is not just prevention and long-term though, which we often put aside for the erupting emergencies. This is an emergency that is smoldering and it is preventable.    In the year 1995, the United Nations consecrated much effort towards the family. I and many of my colleagues at the time had contributed to that work with hope that the findings would in turn influence the future direction of policy. It was reconfirmed in that year that there is no better haven for children in time of conflict, that there is no more economical solution for the care of individuals throughout their formative years, there is no better environment for the promotion of trust, honesty, integrity and love than a good family.  Unfortunately, it still seemed that, at best, family was re-instated that year as a very useful institution, but not recognized as the paradigm and methodology for world peace, which is it’s rightful status. We did not work hard enough.   I fell in love with culture of peace because it was such a holistic vision that recognized the necessity for a global  “a change of heart” that began with a spirit of volunteerism. It was the idea that the world will be a culture of peace no sooner than each one of us learns how to reach that inherent dignity that we have hidden deep inside. It can not just be imposed from above, but requires universal participation. Fortunately, it’s contagious. Someone, even a stranger is generous to you and you feel empowered to pass it on.  Everyone involved in the various campaigns, projects and declarations during the Decade of A Culture of Peace tapped into a momentum that was something wonderful -and very real.  There were many women NGO’s active in the process and of the conferences that I know about the primordial role of “creating a culture of peace in the family” figured in their conclusions.   We all know that is not easy. I am constantly challenged to return to my husband and family of seven children (between 6 and 18 years) and apply the principles that I am always talking about. How to nourish and encourage  a child’s natural desire to be good, to make a valuable contribution, to be free to develop our talents and personality in meaningful relationships. There is value in being reminded about what we want to do, to try a little harder. There is great value in knowing that others are investing in a similar way towards a similar goal. The Culture of Peace Programme created that momentum, but when the programs end and perhaps we stopped trying so hard, It is a crucial moment to keep trying. It is easy to settle back into old habits and ways of thinking. “Well maybe things didn’t change so much, nor did I, for that matter.”    We move back into emergency mode (or indifference) and dismiss prevention and building a culture of peace as a luxury or too unrealistic. There are still many who disagree, but our voices have again become fragmented. WFWPI held their 9th Women’s Conference for Peace in the Middle East in Greece with the theme, “Building a Culture of Peace for our Children” last year and we found that the spark to re-ignite the issue was very easy to light.   I want to finish with one more thought. The Women’s Federation for World Peace is very passionately involved with a civil society initiative called the Ambassador for Peace Movement, representing most cultural, religious, ethnic and professional backgrounds, It is moving in the same direction as Culture of Peace. They circle around and support the successes of each other. We all need to be encouraged in reaching our innate dignity, sometimes more so in the “developed” than in the “developing” world. We need to recognize ourselves changing and developing and being appreciated for the good affect that we have on our world. We need that place in the human family, as we do in our birth family. Sometimes our most positive childhood memories or even our deeply felt religious convictions are not enough to see us through the confrontations to our aspirations of a culture of peace. Cultivating lifestyles of “living for the sake of others” together is a tangible step, a personal training that is at the same time in reality creating a culture of heart and peace around us. I would like to quote a few lines from the letter that we send to our newly nominated Ambassadors for Peace in Switzerland:   “To date, there are more than 100,000 Ambassadors for Peace worldwide and this letter is being sent to you because we have come to understand the outstanding efforts that you are making in your field and the example that you are living as a Peacemaker, perhaps without fully realizing it. All Ambassadors for Peace are, by definition committed to the mandate of living for the sake of others- the key component, in our view to a culture of lasting peace. We hope that you will be further empowered in our knowledge that we are all contributing to a global transformation. Our sincere desire is to raise awareness about all the good actions being taken on by men and women and to enhance the networking capacities and thereby accelerate the benefits.  To ensure a peaceful future, the peace process needs to be led by individuals and groups exemplifying outstanding insight, character and wisdom, eventually becoming the norm and standard for all human relations.” International Conference «  Quelles Perspectives pour une Paix Durable » April 21, 2006, UNESCO Paris

Carolyn Handschin WFWPI UN Deputy director, Geneva

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