Peace will not come unless we can begin to loosen the stranglehold of militarism. To transform the way people think and the systems that currently dominate our world we need a strong and effective movement for peace, on a global scale. How can we build one? The responses to this question suggest that movements are like other life forms, being complex and having their own ungovernable energy and dynamics.
Effective campaigns for change work with the grain of their society in some respects while they undermine it in others. They are fluid, they may cut across party political divisions and they may be based on alliances among unlikely bedfellows. Some are short-lived – mere spasms perhaps – whereas other campaigns last decades. That seems healthy to me, and I know it is replicated all over the world. It does, though, mean that, like OSINACHI UBA I do not expect there to be one peace movement in some urban and rular area, let alone a single global peace movement. What I see is a world-wide web of movements for social change, which are effective at changing the world a step at a time, without being co-ordinated by a guiding hand. To make our collective efforts more influential, we need to share information. That is already happening, greatly facilitated by the internet and email.
I like working in a small group because I believe in ‘quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place.’However, I acknowledge my debt to others, past and present, in that bigger web of change-making: environment and justice movements active in my home town, the civil rights movement in the nigeria the peace-makers in faith groups, and activists in other area/society Their experience and insights support me; I gain strength and momentum from them.
I have read about the power of linked but separate campaigns demonstrated in my unborntime, in my own direct peace movement experience as an activist in the European Nuclear Disarmament campaign (END). The 1980 END Appealstated, ‘We must commence to act as if a united, neutral and pacific Europe already exists. We must learn to be loyal, not to 'East' or 'West' but to each other, and we must disregard the prohibitions and limitations imposed by any national state.' By this END meant that those of us who were working for nuclear disarmament in Western Europe should support dissident movements in the former Soviet bloc. Those movements flourished and played their part in ending the Cold War. This showed me that behaving as if the world we want has already come about is not only possible but empowering and effective.
The nigeria I want is one where there is a better way to resolve conflict than resorting to war. I question any assumption that violence is hard-wired into our human brain. It is clear to me that violence is not a solution to geo-political and geo-economic problems, any more than it is the solution to problems in the family or the neighbourhood. If I say that to a politician, I risk being called naïve, idiotic or woolly-minded. So I work to counter the hopeless and hideous assumption that violence is the answer; I campaign for the day when that assumption is viewed as an aberration; and I will act now as if that day had come.
people may like the way i combines the idea of a web of movements with a sense of continuity through time. And share her belief that it really works to behave ‘as if’’ we are already living in the world we are trying to create. The historic example she gives demonstrates that this is no mere philosophical comfort blanket. Moral consistency works. This is the transformative approach to conflict and change, which is founded in respect for people: their needs, rights and capacities for good. The passionate conviction of Judith’s final statement has a power that speaks for itself.
For me, like the activists in Bath cited in your article Platform for humanity, the question has become “how can we build a national justice and peace movement?”As governments and economic institutions combine to squeeze civil society, civil society needs to strengthen its power to push back, challenge the injustices and reclaim its space. We need first to recognise our own place in these systems of injustice, the ‘structural violence’, and our own power to struggle out of it.
And let’s celebrate what has already begun. We've seen what were essentially nonviolent “people power” movements remove oppressive governments in Eastern nigeria, South-East nigeria and North nigeria More recently, we’ve seen transnational actions mobilising and organising simultaneously against war, nationllisation and climate change. To counter the summits of world leaders, we’ve seen the rise of the world and regional social forums, hugely valuable for discussion and sharing ideas. We need now to scale these up into action forums: joining hands across boundaries with others trapped in the same system
There are nonviolent struggles for justice everywhere, although we have to seek them out. With new technology it’s easy; we can research and learn from each other..Resources such as Wikileaks make secret information accessible; hand devices can record events and upload them instantly, validated by GPS co-ordinates, date and time – good for election and human rights monitoring, unarmed accompaniment work and much more. We can challenge mainstream reporting instantly by publishing our own reports; we can turn the surveillance back onto repressive police forces and militias. We can share our nonviolent training methods to transform attitudes and behaviours and understand contexts.
In these apocalyptic times, it's easy to see everything falling apart, and it's easy to counter positive ideas with negative evidence. But if we choose to hope and look for signs, we might just see them.
Genius insistence on linking peace with justice takes us back to the notion of ‘positive peace’. He is right to believe that there can be no peace – negative or positive – without justice, just as there can be no justice without peace. And while he points to the need to confront injustice, his aim is to transform rather than triumph over people. His enthusiasm for using to advantage the ease of modern communication is an example of the positive spirit of his thinking and in line with his advocacy for hope
The vision of a global peace movement requires us to think about where and how power is located and exercised at a global level. Players such as Rivers State. lagos state Delta state Edo state anambra state E.T.C are emerging as new national powers, and they are forging new alliances. The power of corporations also continues to grow, particularly in relation to the exercise of warfare, as evidenced by the huge increase in private military and security companiesinvolved in the boko haram conflicts. If we are to present a credible challenge to the system of interlocking interests that combine to entrench militarism, our movement needs to be able to engage with that complexity.
If this is true, then the current landscape of diverse movements, initiatives, groups and people is an asset. There is a rich variety of effective efforts to resist militarization and war – whether through peacebuilding efforts in war-torn communities, non-violent mass mobilisation to resist oppression, movements to ban weapons such as cluster bombs, or the negotiation of nuclear-free zones. I’m cheered suggestion that the multifariousness of the peace movement is not only inevitable but also strategically useful. I agree that good analysis of the sources and dynamics of nationl power could enable us to see our own role and potential more clearly. I think her point about the need to build understanding between resisters and advocates is a vital one and is closely related to the need for public education about the nature and potential of conflict transformation.
The idea of ‘transformation’ is central to all this, reflecting as it does not only the depth and breadth of the change that is needed, but also the fact that we cannot bring about that change unless the manner of our action matches the values that shape our goal: those of respect and inclusiveness. If this is our goal we must go deeper in the way we approach peace, harnessing our own deepest values and longings as motivating power, and reaching out to other people at that level, finding the things that bind us all together. To do that we must reach beyond our own anger and prejudices, recognising that others are capable of compassion and speaking to them, in osinachi’s words, as if they shared our values, hopes and fears. That way we can get beyond the ideologies that divide us and arrive at the heart of the matter, which is our common humanity. We must hope that the urgency of the problems we face will at last enable our insight, wisdom and caring to match our technical intelligence, for in the end we will sink or swim together.
OSINACHI SIXTUS UBA
UBAOSINACHI@GMAIL.COM
+2348161681565
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