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Editorial
September 14, 1997
| WE support the appeal made by twenty Nobel Peace Prize Laureates to the United
Nations to declare the years 2000 to 2010 as the ``Decade for a Culture of Peace and
Non-Violence.'' At the recent press conference launching the appeal, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said his country could be an example of conflict resolution in conflict-torn nations. The end of apartheid, he said, can show others that people who used to have a problem resolved it by ``sitting down and saying peace is cheaper than conflict.'' Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland stressed that ``the challenge facing us now as we move into the third century is to begin to solve our problems through dialogue and negotiation - through the ways of non-violence - because wars are obsolete. And as we abolished slavery and other things, we can, too, abolish war.'' The Laureates proposed that during the decade, non-violence be taught at every level of society, ``to make the children of the world aware of the real, practical meaning and benefits of non-violence in their daily lives, in order to reduce violence, and consequent suffering, perpetrated against them and humanity in general.'' Other Laureates who joined in the appeal include Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Aung San Suu Kyi, Betty Williams, Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo, the Dalai Lama, Elie Weisel, Fredericy de Klerk, Jose Ramos Horta, Joseph Rotblat, Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Norman Borlaug, Oscar Arias Sanchez, Shimon Perez, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Yasser Arafat. We hope that the member-states of the United Nations will heed the appeal of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. We all have the responsibility to safeguard the safety and well-being of our future generations by ensuring that peace will prevail within and among nations.
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