Viet Nam Human Rights
War No More
13/2/20
75 years ago following the end of the Second World War and the first time any state has dropped an atomic bomb, not once, but twice, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 51 countries from all continents met to create the United Nations.
Its primary purpose, as stated in the Charter says: "We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…" Of course, it is also dedicated to human rights for all and equal rights for men and women and nations large and small and more...
But peace, prevention of war, is its "most profound purpose," Ambassador William vanden Heuvel said when he suggested we organize this conference on "War No More".
It is to this purpose, to save humanity from war, that the Committee on Teaching About the UN with the co- sponsorship of the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the UN, has dedicated its conference which will convene on February 28, 2020. https://teachun.org/conference/2020-un/.
We honor the UN on its 75th anniversary and call for the full implementation of this purpose.
It is often said that as long as there are people there will be war. But it hasn't always been that way and certainly war is not inevitable.
Indeed, not only has the UN called for saving succeeding generations, but the Charter also calls for "…the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources…" (Art 26); the First Committee is dedicated to Disarmament.
It goes on, "… (Art 2.3) All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means…" and (2.4) states, "All Members shall refrain from the threat or use of force…"
Some say that as long as there is a right of self-defense (Art 51) there shall be war. We will see what the lawyers and experts including Liechtenstein's Ambassador Christian Wenaweser and James Ranney, international law professor, say in their conversation.
Have you heard of Bertha von Suttner, the young poor Princess who answered an ad from Alfred Nobel for a housekeeper. In short, she left his employ having persuaded him to turn the profits from his invention of dynamite to support a Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1905 Bertha became a Nobel Peace Laureate for writing the best-selling, "Lay Down Your Arms", (Die Waffen Neider) probably the only novel written about disarmament, and for organizing the world's first International Peace Congress.
It resulted in banning hot air balloons, mustard gas and dumdum bullets. Did she anticipate climate change?
Getting rid of war has been a hope for generations. Eleanor Roosevelt said that that, "the idea of war is obsolete". Abolishing war has been a serious multinational effort.
Following the first World War and the League of Nations, the Kellogg Briand Pact, 1928, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/kellogg was signed by all "major states" including the foreign ministers of the US and France, who agreed not to… "resort to war to resolve disputes or conflicts of whatever nature.''
The Pact could not prevent or stop wars of "self-defense" and had no enforcement capacity.
Lord Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, who said that nuclear weapons threaten the "continued existence of mankind", also called for the end of war. War, in the age of atomic bombs, "is the most serious problem that has ever confronted the human race," said Lord Russell. Thus, the Russell Einstein Manifesto of 1955 was signed by the world's leading scientists including Marie Joliot-Curie.
In 1999, on the centennial of the world's first Peace Congress, the Hague Appeal for Peace convened 10,000 people from over 100 countries in The Hague and called for Peace is a Human Right and it is Time to Abolish War. Archbishop Desmond Tutu told us, "If the world could get rid of Apartheid, why not war?" www.haguepeace.org
UN Secretary–General Kofi Annan addressed the HAP conference, urging everyone, "Don't despair, don't deny and by all means don't ever give up".
The Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century with 50 Articles going from a Culture of War to a Culture of Peace, became a UN document, A/54/98.
It created the Global Campaign for Peace Education which states, "A Culture of Peace will be achieved when citizens of the world understand global problems, have the skills to resolve conflicts, and struggle for justice non-violently.
"War No More" takes its name from the drawing, Nie Wieder Krieg, (War Never Again) 1924, by the German artist and peace activist, Kathe Kollwitz. Her son was killed in the first World War. https://archive.org/details/warnomorefinalitalics2
The apocalyptic twins, nuclear weapons and the climate crisis, are the existential threats destined, if not reversed, to cause the war no one survives. As long as there is armed violence between states, or groups, no amount of good governance, democracy, human rights or development can be sustained.
Positive Peace, says the Institute for Economics and Peace, not only looks at the risks of violence but at what builds peaceful and resilient societies.
We urge everyone to imagine what the Future they want looks like. What can you take away from this conference to work on to make your future happen? What can we ask of the Member States to make a World Without War?.
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All comments [ 20 ]
The way things stand war is too easy. It is too easy to send someone else’s children to fight and die.
It’s time to change the rules so that those who wage war, particularly illegal war, will have appropriate consequences.
It’s time to end the double standards, and to replace might makes right with the rule of law. It’s time to demand that our leaders find peaceful ways to resolve conflicts.
Require the leaders who promote and support war to personally participate in the hostilities. This would provide a critical threshold of personal commitment to war by requiring some actual personal sacrifice of leaders.
Show the faces and tell the stories of the children of the “enemy” until we can feel the pain of their deaths as though they were the deaths of our own children. It is much more difficult to slaughter an enemy who one recognizes as being part of the human family.
All leaders who commit egregious crimes must be held to account under international law as they were at Nuremberg, and they must be aware of this from the outset.
It is the responsibility of citizens in a democracy to exercise control over their leaders who threaten to commit crimes under international law, and impeachment provides an important tool to achieve this control.
Citizens should also demand that Congress exercise its power of the purse to prevent war, including not giving financial support to a president attempting to bribe other countries to participate in an illegal war.
Since the ‘war to end all wars’ the world has seen the ‘peace to end all peace’ lead to the horrors of the second world war, proxy wars through the Cold War and, today, violent conflicts that increasingly affect civilians disproportionately and cross the red lines laid by the laws of armed conflict.
The machinery of war and the available firepower has increased dramatically.
The risks of a third world war are enormous.
If we add in all the means and methods of warfare − conventional, nuclear, cyber, drones, and so on − we have the military potential to destroy ourselves entirely.
In the past 100 years, we have, however, learned a great deal about how to prevent conflict.
International bodies have been established to implement disarmament and security treaties and civil society expertise has been channeled through universities and think tanks
Since the end of the Cold War, the numbers of armed conflicts have dropped dramatically.
Many factors have supported the reduction in armed conflicts including the withering of proxy wars, UN sponsored peace processes and economic development.
Over recent years, despite common perceptions, we do seem to have learned how to create, keep and enforce the peace.
The laws of armed conflict and human rights laws along with the international criminal court, war crime tribunals, economic and military sanctions and domestic justice commissions serve to protect civilians.
No approach or system is perfect, of course, but we understand how resource scarcity, environmental change, economic stress, refugee flows and racism all fuel the engendering of conflict.
It is time that we put aside complacency and become more realistic about war and peace and ourselves.
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