Issues for the World Peace Forum

Plans are in full swing to hold the 12th World Peace Forum in Toronto, Canada April 19 -22, 2018, organized by the Schengen Peace Foundation.



This year the program is "Leadership for Peace" — conflict resolution, connecting peacemakers to women, stability and peace, and finding common global values.

I will not be able to attend the Toronto Peace Forum. So I emailed to my peace network, some of whom are attending, a set of issues that I believe would make the Peace Forum more dynamic and relevant:

• A paradigm shift from a war economy and culture to one based on nonkilling peace.
• Support the United Nations to get rid of 'the scourge of war' and confirming that life is a human right and that nonkilling is the way of the future.
• Disarmament is the road for getting rid of weapons of mass destruction and beginning a new era of normalizing civilized life.
• Propaganda. Recognizing that wars have been started by misinformation. Because the media and the politicians have an important role in preventing wars, how do we encourage them to be professionally responsible?
• Education. Bringing up children of goodwill requires good schools, full health coverage, housing, transportation, and a healthy environment; and continuing education for everyone.
• Respect our neighbours including nations, via bridge-building, diplomacy, international laws, and Departments of Peace. Avoid regime change,  military bases abroad. Get to know the stranger.

Several people replied by email.
Also see comments at bottom.

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From Steve Staples:

Thanks Koozma. First I had heard about it.
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From Gord Breedyk:

Thanks Koozma, I will look for opportunities to make those points. We aren’t sure what the “Forum” will be like, never having attended before. However, we felt we couldn’t pass it up, since it is so close There are four of us from Civilian Peace Service attending.
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From Bill Bheneja:

Thank you Koozma for pointing these excellent peace themes so succinctly.

Saul and I attended one of the earliest Peace Forums in Vancouver in 2006, one of the many workshops/seminars there was on Department of Peace; it was in connection with Second Global Summit of Departments of Peace conference being held in Victoria, we had several high level speakers including US Congressman Denis Kuccinich and Dot Maver.
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From Peter Stockdale:

I agree.
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From Murray Thomson:

Very good, Koozma, Champion of Nonkilling (I hate the word but love its meaning)! Stay nonkillingableforever.

Reply from Bill Bhaneja:

Thank you, Murray. It was great to be out with the like- minded. 100 years ago, people hated the word Nonviolence, except a few like Tolstoy and Gandhi. 100 years from now when we become sick of deliberately taking human lives, Nonkilling will be the word. That sounds so high minded!

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As I post this article on April 4th, I am reminded that 50 years ago Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on this day in the USA by a lone gunman. Because King made a radical indictment of US empire, militarism, capitalism and racism, the main stream media demonized him. Here are King's words of wisdom which organizers of the World Peace Forum need to take to heart by speaking truth to power:

'We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. . . . When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.' — the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., April 4, 1967.

King's legacy is a moral reminder to all of us that we must persevere against the forces of evil not just with words but with deeds for nonkilling peace — or face human extinction. The 12th World Peace Forum is an opportunity to address this challenge. The question is: Will the participants dare to do so?