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H. Rajaonarimampianina: Address to Peace Summit 2023, Session IV-A
Written by H.E. Hery Martial Rajaonarimampianina Rakotarimanana, president, Madagascar (2014-2018)
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Address to Peace Summit 2023
May 2-5, 2023
Honorable Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, honorable leaders of the Universal Peace Federation, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, not a day goes by when war, conflicts and confrontations are not talked about on TV or on social media. This is why it is really heartening to participate in this summit where we are talking about peace. Once again, many voices have come together here in Seoul to talk about peace and its benefit for nations and all of humanity. We will have discussions to find solutions.
We are witnessing new forms of barbaric battles and murderous wars, [external] or internal to states or nations, and in several countries and regions of the world. There are wars of civilization and religion, often based on obscure competition and cultural influences, or even on an old identity, aspirations or fundamentalist references fueled by radicalization and extremism of all kinds. When we are talking about world peace, we are talking about universal peace. But we also have to talk about peace at the level of religion and political practice. We have to adapt universal laws to practical situations.
I remind you that at this level, when I gave training seminars to young members of my political party, I often told them that we must not respond to hatred with hatred and to violence with violence. It is at this level of politicians who will make the political decisions of tomorrow that a culture of peace must be inculcated.
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On the ground, we have deaths of men, civilian and military, accompanied by indescribable distress for the population, destruction of infrastructure, et cetera. Elsewhere in many countries there is inflation, famine, energy problems, raw material shortages, population displacement, et cetera.
The world’s [issues] becomes the matters of leaders. We become the business of leaders, a handful of people with the powers conferred on them through elections. It is at this level that a political education of the population is important so that they can follow the life of the nation and what the leader is doing. Beyond political education, there is general education at all levels of society. The basis of education must be at the level of the family at home. If wars are the prerogative of men, a search for lasting peace should also come from the will of men.
We must have people, organizations and movements that live and talk about peace. It is much more difficult to establish a culture of peace than a culture of wars. Peace leads us to many questions about the coexistence of religions, sustainable development and mutual prosperity, and peace and security between nations and between individuals. Ladies and gentlemen, I had to measure the damage, difficulties and devastation caused by all this deconstruction of values, all this loss of references and all these new threats to people and humanity.
I would like to insist on the need for, or rather the usefulness of, reconstructing a few references to universal ambitions, but above all, the urgency of establishing some commonly accepted modalities or at the same time regulating and liberating, normalizing and energizing, and pacifying and vitalizing relations between states and nations, such as through exchanges between all components of society.
As for the question of worship and the ambitions of universality of each religion, obedience must not be either the negation of living together or the refusal of the other in terms of their practice and faith, nor the promotion of political interference. Ladies and gentlemen, all the challenges that we can cite today can only be understood in the context of the continental level. So we need to have a reflection on culture and the moral foundations of the collective. We need to look into the spiritual roots.
None of the development ambitions, such as shared prosperity or even the productive preservation of natural resources and environmental wealth, could be achieved in the long term without these references, which are the subject of our discussion today, and the establishment of a strong culture of peace. All of us gathered at this summit are called upon to contribute to the advent of peace, to reconciliation between states and people. The important thing is to know how to communicate with, understand and respect each other and find common ground, with the base of it being a search for community well-being in a framework where mutual respect reigns between individuals.
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We can see a fracture among generations. There are many young people in Africa, and with the way we think about wisdom, the problem today is with technological advancements, social media, et cetera. Living in a unique world with all these technologies, young people start to marginalize elders. [Without] the culture of wisdom, of elders, they have difficulty expressing their heart. So we have difficulties at the family level, whereas a family should foster peace for humankind.
The problem of Africa is how to convey this culture of wisdom. We are a continent with an oral tradition, so we have to find solutions. I repeat again, we have to go back to family values because it is there that we will have this culture of peace and wisdom again. We say that young people run very quickly. So we have to show the way, and we need the elders for that. There must be complementarity between the elders and young people and young people and the elders. For me, this is what we should develop and put together for the future. I am talking about the wisdom of wisdom, but the greatest wisdom is, of course, to fear God.
I thank you for your friendly attention. Thank you very much.
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