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Appeal to international community
from Roundtable of institutions
who have won the Nobel Prize for Peace
(excerpts)
Peace is not only the absence of armed conflict, it is also dynamic set of relationships of coexistence and co operation among and within peoples, characterized by the respect for the human values set forth particularly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the concern to provide the greatest possible well being for all.
Peace is increasingly threatened each day by the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction, by the great economic and social inequalities which divide mankind, and by contempt for basic human rights and the dignity of the individual.
Peace requires ever greater efforts to overcome these threats. It is only possible in a world in which the observance of international law replaces violence, fear and justice, states voluntarily agree to limit their national sovereignty in the general interest, and in which states employ existing procedures for the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. To build such a peace, everyone must feel a responsibility and should be educated in that sense from childhood...
Finally, the Roundtable asks the mass media to employ to a greater extent their skills and immense resources towards building and maintaining peace, to foster a spirit of equity and solidarity among peoples and to draw attention to the personal and collective sacrifice inherent in the pursuit of those ideals.
[Issued by representatives of Institute of International Law, International Peace Bureau, International Committee of the Red Cross, Friends Service Council, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, League of Red Cross Societies, United Nations Children's Fund, International Labour Organization, and Amnesty International.]
Geneva, April 1978
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ing a world at peace. The Appeal issued from that meeting is published here as a box.
Special attention was paid in the meeting to the role of education and the media for peace. In education, emphasis needed to be put on its quality and content. It should take into account particularly the role of women who teach their children the elements of social life and can develop in them a spirit of peace. Teaching should rise above nationalistic traditions and the military feats of the past and should present all of the various civilizations and address the major problems confronting mankind such as world hunger and the arms race.
The mass media, it was said, has a determinant role to play by drawing the attention of public opinion to the work for peace of international organizations. It is, therefore, important that international organizations provide useful and usable information to the press on a systematic basis.
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