Annual Report 2007-8

Annual Report 2007-8

Annual Report 2007 - 2008

There are three strands to the work of the ministry for peace campaign, two in the UK and one internationally through the Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace.    Within the UK our busiest strand last year was the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues, which we established at the very end of 2006 and aims to bring together Parliamentarians, HMG and NGOs to discuss issues of peace and conflict.  (See separate report below.) 

Our second strand is the ministry for peace campaign itself.  After our AGM in April 2007 we decided to concentrate our efforts on consolidating the APPG.  Even so, mfp remained busy and held  a number of public meetings in Parliament: 

·         ‘Slave Britain:  the twenty-first century trade in human lives’ and the  Poppy Project - support and housing to women who have been trafficked into prostitution – June 2007

·        ‘The Rising Tide of Peace?  A Major Review of Key Developments and Achievements in Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation’ by Kai Brand Jacobsen – November 2007

·        ‘Peace Building – Can Women Reach The Parts That Men Can't?’ – April 2008 ·        ‘How Do We Transform Political Violence Into Constructive Cooperation? – May 2008 (Conversation Café)

·        ‘What Is The Role Of Young People In Building Peace?’ (conversation café) – 2 July 2008

 Additionally, one of our committee members, James Eckhardt, attended the third summit of the Global Alliance of Ministries and Departments of Peace in Japan in September 2007.  And Irving Rappaport and Eddy Canfor-Dumas attended the 8^th Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Rome in December 2007 and contributed to the final draft of their Charter for a World Without Violence.

May 2008 was a busy month because we held our first Conversation Café – a large, themed interactive discussion; we hosted a successful week-long training, in conjunction with Kai Brand-Jacobsen of PATRIR, on peace-building and mediation, which attracted participants from many countries and we also helped with the launch of the campaign to establish a Minister for Peace in the Northern Ireland Executive. The event was held in Stormont and was arranged by Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire, supported by her sister Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams.  The initiative was welcomed by Alliance Party leader David Ford and received a lot of broadcast media coverage.  We can take a little credit for it at mfp, however, as it followed a visit we made in 2007 to Mairead in Belfast, during which we explained the concept of ministries and departments for peace. 

We now have a good link to the Nobel Peace Laureates, eight of whom have expressed support for the campaign – Mairead, Jody, Betty Williams, Shirin Abadi, Wangari Maathai and Rigoberta Menchu, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu.

So why is this idea attracting growing support from figures such as these?  We believe it's because more and more people see a need for an agenda to reduce violence both domestically and internationally and they see how Ministries and Departments of Peace can help deliver that agenda.   Increasingly too, people are seeing that this is not 'hippy-dippy' idealism but part of the hard-nosed, concrete and practical reality needed to build and sustain peace.

Above all, perhaps, people are starting to see that the idea is becoming real. Three Ministries for Peace or their equivalent already exist: The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process in the Philippines, established in 2001, is in effect a Ministry for Peace. It is tasked with the implementation, coordination, monitoring and integration of all government peace initiatives and the participation of civil society in the pursuit of a just and lasting peace in the Philippines. A Ministry of National Unity, Reconciliation, and Peace was established in the Solomon Islands in 2002, following a civil war there. And a Ministry for Peace and Reconstruction was established in Nepal in March 2007, to implement the peace deal between the Maoist insurgents and the Government of Nepal.  The process of setting up the Ministry was helped by the efforts of a Nepalese member of the Global Alliance who visited London in May 2008 and was introduced by us to officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.  

To come right up to-date, the US website change.org, set up by the Obama campaign, asked the public to list the top ten policies they wanted him to introduce should he win the election.   The second most popular policy was the establishment of a Department of Peace and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, has now resubmitted his Bill to Congress to take this forward.   

So the world is changing.  And we have ambitious plans to build on the advance – and the contacts – we made in 2007-8.  For example, when the Foreign Office Minister (and former Deputy Sec Gen of the UN) Lord Malloch Brown addressed the APPG in January 2008 he started his talk with these words: ‘Congratulations on organising this group and to the ministry for peace for providing its Secretariat.  I am somebody who doesn’t have ambitions in British government beyond my present job, but if I did I’d like to be the first Minister for Peace.’ 

The third strand of mfp’s work is the Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments for Peace, which was co-founded by mfp together with the US and Canadian campaigns back in 2004. There are now over 35 country campaigns and two years ago the first regional grouping came together, the African Alliance for Peace.    So far there have been Summits in London, Canada and Japan where we pool our campaigning experiences and strengthen our support for one another.   In September 2009 we are meeting in Costa Rica where President Arias is about to create a Ministry of Justice and Peace.  He will be hosting a reception for the delegates.   

So, to conclude, we believe that ministry for peace is gradually extending its reach and influence, and we would like to thank everyone who has helped, donated money or time, attended our meetings or supported mfp in any way during the past years.  And a special thanks, as ever, to John McDonnell MP, who has been with us since the start.  

Best wishes

Diana Basterfield and the mfp team, Ahlam Akram, Trish Dickinson,  Eddy Canfor Dumas, Elizabeth Dowse, Vince Dowse,James Eckhardt, Eirwen Harbottle, Ruth Ludgate, Jim McCluskey and Irving Rappaport  

                        __________________________________________________

Report (to June 2008) on The All Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues

• raise the profile of these issues in both houses of Parliament through well-informed debate and questions to government ministers
• explore practical ways for these issues to be reflected in government policies and structures both at home and internationally.
• bring Parliament closer to civil society groups already concerned with issues arising from conflict
• keep MPs and peers informed about the existing approach of the government with regard to conflict

The idea to form the APPG came about in April 2006 in a discussion with Baroness Jenny Tonge.  She suggested that to make contact with and influence parliamentarians, we could launch a new APPG specifically dealing with non-violent conflict management and transformation. Eddy Canfor-Dumas, Chair of mfp, approached numerous MPs and peers to see who might be interested in such an APPG and by the end of that year, 48 had expressed interest in or support for the idea (only 20 are needed to start a new APPG). On 21 Dec 2006 the APPG on Conflict Issues was officially registered with Simon Hughes MP, John McDonnell MP, Gary Streeter MP as co-chairs from the three main parties, and Kelvin Hopkins MP as Secretary. From mfp Eddy Canfor-Dumas, Irving Rappaport, and Elizabeth Dowse formed the secretariat.

The inaugural meeting was held on 6 Feb 2007, at which Sir Jeremy Greenstock (UK’s former Ambassador to the UN during Iraq war) and Professor Mary Kaldor of LSE addressed the subject of ‘The Changing Nature of Conflict’.  Both stressed the need to learn and deploy new non-violent ‘soft power’ skills to complement or replace old style military ‘hard power’ if we are to provide for present and future human security needs. In November 2007 a small group of Advisors was formed to steer the future direction of the APPG, which includes ministry officials, members of the armed forces, NGOs and the media.Between Feb 2007 and June 2008, thirteen events were held in Parliament (see www.conflictissues.org.uk for recordings and transcripts of these meetings).

Past speakers have included: –

·        former Foreign Secretary Lord Hurd talking on the ‘Power of Mediation’ to address conflict non-violently

·        Hilary Benn, then Secretary of State for Intenrnational Development, launching DfID’s new policy paper,  ‘Preventing Violent Conflict’

·        Lord Paddy Ashdown on the highs and lows of peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and the strategies required to avoid another Iraq-style disaster there

·        Rear Admiral Chris Parry, then head of the MoD's think tank, who presented the latest research on the main drivers for global conflict over the next thirty years.

·        Lord Malloch Brown, Foreign Office Minister, and Gareth Thomas, Under-Secretary of State at DfID, on how the Government is seeking to co-ordinate policy towards conflict prevention, transformation and resolution across a number of government departments

·        Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University on ways in which the UK can avoid future wars resulting from depleting oil resources.

·        Gabrielle Rifkind and Scilla Elworthy, of the Oxford Research Group and of Peace Direct, and co-authors of ‘Making Terrorism History’, spoke about their extensive work in Israel-Palestine and Iraq over the last two years and of the need to talk with Hamas

·        Geoff Schulz, former US Secretary of State, and Sam Nunn, former Chair of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, spoke about ‘Towards a Nuclear Free World’. This meeting was requested by Baroness Shirley Williams and was especially significant as both of the speakers were former pro-nuclear ‘hawks’ now turned ‘doves’. The meeting was co-hosted with the APPG on Global Security and Non-Proliferation.