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Peace Education
J. de Venecia: Peace as a Community of Sharing
Written by Hon. Jose de Venecia, Jr., Chairman, CDI-Asia Pacific
Friday, August 8, 2008
on "Toward a New Paradigm of Leadership and Good Governance for Development and Peace"
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, September 8, 2008
I’m pleased—and honored—to add my welcome to those already expressed here for all the participants in this Leadership Conference organized by the International Peace Federation and the Mongolian People’s Federation for World Peace. And I wish you God’s grace as you begin your quest for a new paradigm of leadership and good governance for all our countries.
In our time, good government starts with democracy—and few nations have won their democratic rights more credibly than the Mongolian people, who have just installed a new representative government with a solid parliamentary mandate.
The new Mongolian democracy won its freedom without bloodshed less than two decades ago—mainly through the efforts of its young patriots, who staged hunger strikes on Ulaanbaatar’s central square, and demonstrated there for political ‘openness’ (glasnost) and economic ‘restructuring’ (perestroika) in winter weather as low as minus 30 degrees Centigrade.
Democracy must work for ordinary people.
Like all new countries, Mongolia today seeks stability and modernization—peace that is more than just the absence of conflict; and development that leaves no one behind among its people.
In the ecstasy of liberation, we had all believed democracy to be the irresistible wave of the future. We had also thought that now that we had our freedom, development would follow—inevitably and irrevocably. But now we realize that liberty does not always and everywhere result in prosperity. Democracy is not enough. Democracy is only the beginning.
Only when democracy works for ordinary people—only when democracy serves their needs, wants, and hopes, only when democracy has a genuine moral dimension—only then does liberty result in prosperity. Indeed, in many of the new democracies, even in the older democracies, we have needed veritable moral revolutions to overcome corruption and ineffectual government. For together we can and must cleanse our politics of its corruption, our economies of its cronyism and its inefficiency, and national society of its material poverty and its spiritual anxiety.
Society must also have a moral foundation.
Over these years, we have also come to realize that if human society is to mean something more than the ceaseless assertion of individual rights and the endless pursuit of self-gratification, then society must have a moral foundation.
And society needs a moral foundation—a moral, spiritual revolution because—beyond the forms of democracy—individual human beings will find meaning for their lives only in service to their fellows, and in a transcendent relationship with their Creator.
One human family under God
In our time, the global community has come to realize that every state is threatened by anarchic forces in the world system; and that poverty and injustice and the extremism that it breeds, oppression, and despair anywhere in the world must become the concern of all.
Because the social, ecological and moral problems we face are global in their implications, we must also “globalize” our moral values and ethical standards, if we are to deal adequately with them. We must accept that we’ve all become responsible for one another. For, as Dr Moon constantly reminds us all, we’re “one human family under God.” Under this first principle, this enduring principle, one’s nationality, ethnicity, language—even one’s religion—becomes immaterial: just as the colour of one’s skin or the shape of one’s nose is immaterial. All that matters is that we’re all alike in being blessed children whom the Almighty, in His own good time, would gather together and bring into His heavenly kingdom.
Peace among the great religions
As part of the world community's anti-terrorist strategy, the United Nations, individual governments, and religious-civil societies at every level have begun to promote interfaith dialogues intensively. Understanding among the great civilizations has become the only basis for global peace that will endure. It has been said, there can be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions, and there can be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions.
We had the privilege to present in 2003 to the United Nations General Assembly the Philippine Resolution, supported by the Universal Peace Federation, recognizing the value of Interfaith Dialogue, which the U.N. unanimously approved, followed in 2004 by joint resolutions of the Philippines, Pakistan, Indonesia, and others, which led to the 2005 U.N. Resolution creating a Focal Point in the Office of the U.N. Secretary General to coordinate these dialogues, to the 2006 U.N. General Assembly Resolution, which now combined the Interfaith, Inter-civilizational, Inter-cultural Dialogues which included the Alliance of Civilizations initiative of Spain and Turkey.
Of course, our first and unchanging proposal was to create an Inter-Faith Council within the U.N., to replace the Trusteeship Council, since there is almost no more trust territories left for it to oversee.
In September 2006, the Philippines and the U.N. organized under our initiative, the first Interfaith Summit of 13 nations at the U.N. in New York, attended by Presidents and Prime Ministers. Now the Universal Peace Federation and His Majesty, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Saudi Arabia, separately, but of the same mind, have been holding successful Inter-Faith Dialogues in various parts of the world.
Today, we ask the government of Mongolia and the Universal Peace Federation and the delegates gathered here to continue our historic effort to finally secure U.N. approval for the establishment of an Interfaith Council in the U.N., to go beyond the approval of a Focal Point in the office of the U.N. Secretary General, and in the interim, for the General Assembly to write an Interfaith Mandate in the mission order of the Trusteeship Council.
I accept that understanding among the great civilizations is the only basis for global peace that will endure. And I agree that to this purpose we must mobilize churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques—Buddhists, Hindus, Confucians, and Jews, no less than Christians and Muslims—as well as political parties and the whole of global civil society.
Mongolia's strategic global role
Today, Muslim-Christian and Sunni-Shiite dialogues are going on in Western Europe and in the Middle East. I believe Mongolia and the Universal Peace Federation, you and I, are well-placed to initiate Buddhist-Muslim, Buddhist-Hindu and Buddhist-Confucian Interfaith Dialogues—in Southern Thailand, in Sri Lanka, and in Tibet, where these faiths are all engaged, and support the Christian-Muslim and interfaith dialogues in various parts of the world.
Mongolia’s strategic location with its hundreds of years of powerful and glorious history also makes it a splendid bridge between East and West, particularly at this time, when the center of global economic gravity is tilting toward the Pacific Rim countries.
We in East Asia and in ASEAN—the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—will certainly want Ulaanbaatar to take a more activist role in Asian regional groupings such the Asian Parliamentary Assembly, The International Conference of Asian Political Parties, and the ASEAN Regional (political and security) Forum.
Immediately, I believe Mongolia and the Universal Peace Federation, enlisting perhaps the Asian Parliamentary Assembly, meeting in Jakarta November 26-29, and earlier, the International Conference of Asian Political Parties, meeting in Islamabad on October 23-26, can help lead the Asian democracies in perhaps initiating and mediating a dialogue or informal talks between Russia and Georgia to defuse a conflict that could have far-reaching implications in the Asian heartland.
The Asian organization of centrist Asian parties, which practice the politics of the center…principles of Centrist Democracy—the CDI Asia Pacific—is available and determined to join this initiative and call on Russia and Georgia to set aside prejudice and hatred and excessive nationalism and begin a dialogue of peace and reconciliation.
Our democratic principles in East Asia and Central Asia are now deep-rooted and we must not be made to make a choice between Russia, the U.S., and the European Union.
Our task at CDI Asia Pacific, the Universal Peace Federation, ICAPP, and APA is indeed to look for openings, signs, and glimpses of possible solution so that we might be able to contribute even in the smallest of ways as peace-makers as neighbors for we are all the children of God.
Peace as a community of sharing
In sum, peace in our time is a community of sharing that we must seek in collaboration—not only through diplomacy or military power but through regional associations of civil society, religion, business, the media and culture. And the peace we seek is not just the armed peace between wars but the peace of “every man living under his vine and his fig tree.”
As international leaders sitting down to reason together, all of us have the duty of breaking the barriers of race, religion, nationality and culture that still set us apart. That is why our multi-sectoral approach to peace and development, our pluralistic, comprehensive, collaborative, integrative approach to enlist government, the executive, legislative, and judiciary, the Armed Forces and the Police Units, and the Local Governments, religion, civil society, the private sector and the business community, the arts, sports, the sciences, the students and the teachers in the universities, the farmers, the shepherds, and the workers, and the media, and events like the Global Peace Festival now being held in Mongolia and in various parts of the world, one after the other, ably organized and coordinated by the Universal Peace Federation, are a formidable and inspiring manifestation that indeed we are God’s children belonging to “one human family under God.”
May the Holy Spirit come upon our midst here in Ulaanbaatar and manifest His Power—so that in everything we do we shall have victory!
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