Conflict Prevention

This week's topic is about what can be done by third parties to stop conflict becoming violent. Some useful fellow has calculated how much taxpayers' money could be saved if the West intervened in conflictual situations before they became genocidal rather than after. In practice the 'international community' likes to be real sure there's a BIG problem before they intervene, unless there happens to be other considerations beyond the merely humane. There is a problem, you see, with International Law. You are not meant to go messing in someone else's country unless they ask you to, unless, unless you think you ought to. Well, back in the 90s the government of newly unilaterally independent Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Macedonia to its friends) was worried about the Former Yugoslav Republic (Serbia to its enemies) taking military action. The UN sent its first ever preventative deployment force and war never happened (as it did with Croatia and Bosnia). Did the UN save the day? Or was it a waste of money because the Serbs were never going to attack anyway? Nobody knows. It was some kind of a success, anyway. There was also concern about friction between the Macedonian majority and the Albanian minority in Macedonia. They didn't want to be treated like a minority. (Who does?) They wanted equal language and education rights. The Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) sent their High Commissioner for National Minorities, Max Van Der Stoel, to troubleshoot. And he did. Not a lovey-dovey type apparently, but he did the job. Squared away the problems at the diplomatic level: kept Macedonia on the international agenda and got the leaderships of the two groups talking. At the grass roots level i an NGO called Search for a Common Cause (and others) did the business. In one journalism project a Macedonian journo reported on Albanian affairs for a while and vice versa. Intervention at three levels: military, diplomatic, grassroots. Score two for prevention: one war between states and one between ethnic groups averted. Max scored a triple by smoothing things over in the Baltic States as well. Then comes the bad news. Rwanda and now Darfur. The prevention people reckon there are early warning signs of when group rivalries are going to turn nasty: group incentives for collective action, a group history of lost power, active economic or political discrimination, group capacity to undertake violence (strong identity, availability of weapons, supportive diaspora). Anyhow they missed Rwanda and now they are missing Darfur. (They, we, whatever.)

I realise I sound too off-hand discussing these tragic conflicts. But my mind is on other things. I have to do my presentation today and I want to do a good job. After the break my friend goes first with her presentation about Darfur. The most memorable information is about the economically symbiotic relationship that used to exist between the now warring groups. By arrangement the nomadic group used to take the farming group's cattle away with their own for one of the seasons of the year: feeding them but being entitled to drink their milk. However climate change, economic stress and government mismanagement combined to sour this relationship and it became conflictual. OK, now for me. As discussed with Irene, mine will be...

Presentation on Prem Rawat

This week the topic is “Conflict Prevention”. Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall tell us about ‘operational’ and ‘structural’ conflict prevention; Burton about the difficulties of prediction and the dangers of ‘games without end’; Bruce Jentlesen about ‘preventative statecraft’, the art of making military threats. Thomas Ricks (the author of Fiasco) says there is a rule of thumb that you require one soldier per 50 inhabitants to bring peace; Paddy Ashdown in his Swords and Ploughshares, at great length, concurs. But what kind of ‘peace’ are they talking about? Although I disagree with Luttwak’s conclusion in his essay in Turbulent Peace that peace can only occur when one party to a conflict is utterly defeated, he has a point when he says that humanitarian intervention has had the effect of freezing conflicts, not of bringing peace.

Many talk of peace; how to define it; how to bring it; how to build it; how to keep it; how to enforce it. Few talk about what peace really is; how to feel it; how to know it; how to enjoy it; how to spread it.

My talk today, then, is about one man. Prem Rawat, (Maharaji as he is known to many.) He is a man who travels the world teaching peace. He teaches it to people who live in many countries, who speak many different languages, practice many different religions, hold many different political beliefs but all of whom have come to recognize the need for peace in their own lives. His talks are attended by senior politicians and prison convicts, by successful businessmen and subsistence farmers from small villages, by religious people and atheists and by ordinary and extraordinary people like me and you.

If I may quote Pierre Weil, the internationally renowned peace educator of whom we heard earlier in the course, speaking in October last year on the occasion of Prem Rawat gaving an address at his University of Peace in Florianapolis, Brazil: “On behalf of the University of Peace, I grant you the title of Ambassador for Peace. You don’t need a certificate, because your mission is to help people find where peace is, to help open a spring of peace in their hearts. But many people need to know who the Ambassadors for Peace are, they need to know whom to look for, search for—that is why we are giving you the title of Ambassador for Peace.” The Vice-Rector Roberto Crema added: “We welcome Prem Rawat’s presence as one of the greatest representatives of the peace movement in the world. More than his ideas, his actions are the concrete expression of a world of peace that we can know now.”

I quote Pierre Weil, because he is part of the ‘Conflict Resolution’ community. But I could equally well have quoted Franco Marini, the President of the Italian Senate; Emilio Colombo, former president of the European Parliament; Paco Gallegos,the Mayor of Quito, Ecuador; Kofi Annan the former Secretary General of the UN; George Pataki, the governor of New York; Governor Richardson of New Mexico and many other civic leaders. I will quote the Vice-President of India, Shri Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, who after introducing one of Prem Rawats’s events in India in July last year said, “I am amazed at the magnitude of this event and at how many people are deeply moved by Prem Rawat’s call to peace. I’m convinced that the people of India and our brothers from other countries need to embrace in their hearts Prem Rawat’s call to peace. For the last 40 years, as a messenger of peace, Prem Rawat has been making a constant effort to teach a lesson of peace to people. I would like to express my heartfelt feeling towards him, as a most trusted and respected person who takes a message of joy to society, and society puts it into practice. Doing so is the greatest success there can be in life. I want his message to reach the people around the world.”;

These and many other accolades have been showered on Prem Rawat in the past months and years both for his work teaching peace and for his humanitarian initiatives throughout the world in partnership with the UN, the Red Cross and Oxfam. The Lord Mayor of London received him this month at the Mansion House and best wishes for his humanitarian work came from Prince Charles and Tony Blair. I had the privilege of attending an event where Prem Rawat spoke that evening in the Guild Hall.

So I have introduced Prem Rawat as someone who works for peace. As the Vice President of India said, he has been working for peace incessantly for the past 40 years, since he was a little child. He has personally visited 250 cities in 50 countries on every continent and has students in 88 countries listening to his message in 70 languages.

It has been my pleasure and privilege to have known Prem Rawat for 33 of these years. I have worked out that over the years I have travelled to at least 46 different cities around the world to participate in his events. My enjoyment of the inner peace he teaches has been the most constantly good thing in my life: it is as sweet today as it was the first time I was shown how to feel it. For much of this time it has been a largely private, personal experience for me but I am delighted that now, in this special time, more and more people are at last finding out about Prem Rawat and his message – in all kinds of ways.

So the big question: what is his message? There is no point in me giving you a second-hand version when, thanks to technology, you can listen to direct from Prem Rawat himself on satellite TV, the internet or on DVD. (In Calcutta, it is true, and in 17 other Indian universities, you can study Prem Rawat’s message as part of the curriculum in a course called: ‘Performances, the Self-Discovery Program’ based on talks he has given at Harvard, Berkeley and other internationally renowned universities). I am going to show a short DVD and hand out some DVDs afterwards. I can also offer a selection of DVDs from my own collection and a recent biography to lend..

So I would like to read three short quotations from Prem Rawat:

The first is from the address he gave to a Rotary International meeting, in Malmo Sweden July 7, 2006:
Understand that if you don't feel peace, you may not be able to give it to anyone. If you want to quench the thirst of another, the least you need is water. Without water, you cannot quench somebody else's thirst. The water of peace flows within you. I'm not talking about creating something, but about discovering what already exists inside of you.

And then a couple of responses from him in an interview published on the TPRF.org website:
We live in a world at war. Is it realistic to hope for world peace?
When I was a child, I used to be enamoured with the idea of ‘world peace’, and it was a great thought to have. Then, as I started travelling throughout the world and meeting people, I realized there was no such thing [as the world]. It is not the world that needs to be fixed; it is people. When people are at peace within, there will be world peace.

Where can peace be found?
It is within every individual. And it is up to each individual to say, “I want peace in my life.” Societies do not have peace. Societies do not exist; governments do not exist—just people. Peace is a simple thing. It can be felt by the individual. When we forget the meaning of being at peace and only grab onto formulas for creating peace, we have problems.

Some people, like the seven million viewers of his award winning programme ‘Palavras de Paz’ (Words of Peace) in Brazil, simply enjoy watching his broadcasts on TV. Some people just appreciate the fact that his Foundation is delivering well targeted humanitarian initiatives. A large number of people are interested in learning his way to peace for themselves. (How to do this is explained at the end of the Designed for Joy DVD. It is free of charge, by the way.)

The idea of bringing peace one person at a time may seem impractical to many mainstream thinkers in ‘Conflict Resolution’, such as our friends Jentlesen, Burton and Luttwak, referred to earlier, but now you know that there is at least one person who not only says ‘Peace is Possible’ but also has the ability, the resources and the commitment to attempt to make that possibility a reality.

Finally to quote from a talk at Salamanca University
"I have a dream that all civilizations, all people on the face of the earth will soon live in peace. To those that say, 'Isn't that reaching too far?' I say, 'If that is true, then it is the only ideal worth having.'"

Any questions? Silence. How did you first meet him? Uni...

I show the short DVD of Prem Rawat at a Rotary International conference in Malmo, Sweden (also previewed by Irene). There is more of a rapport than there was during my presentation, thank God. Prem Rawat makes a joke about a lion and an elephant and though the audience in Malmo stay stony silent (serious business, peace) my class mates get it quickly and there is a ripple of female laughter. We run a little over the end of class time, and Irene thanks them for staying. Good old Irene. I have some DVDs to give away. Most people take one. One classmate wants all I've got, for her friends. She is from a country in conflict. She knows the value of peace.

Now I have a few days to pull together my final essay: "The Meaning of Peace". Irene liked my piece about Edward Said's Culture and Resistance. A lot. So now I have to try to keep the standard up.