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In making its report, which included guidelines for building a culture of peace as reprinted here, the participants stressed that 'many programs to overcome violence are under way already and need to be supported'. The role of the World Council, they pointed out, should be to listen, identify, challenge, stimulate, link and help sustain local, regional, and national church initiatives'.
International peace-building organizations
International Alert was founded in the mid 1980s as a non governmental organization to link the related fields of human rights and conflict resolution. Following the death in 1991 of its dynamic leader, Martin Ennals, a new phase of activity began in 1992 with the appointment of Kumar Rupesinghe as Secretary General, who brought both academic and international experience to the task.
The organization engages in a wide range of activities and programmes which contribute to a culture of peace, including fact finding missions to areas of ethnic conflict, training seminars on early warning and conflict transformation, and development of mechanisms for effective preventive diplomacy. Programmes are ongoing in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Latin America and the former Soviet Union.
International Alert emphasizes peoples's participation in peacemaking. This was the theme of a conference sponsored by the organization in Manila in July 1993 which brought together citizen activists from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. The participants saw citizen-based peace-building as different from a western model which emphasizes state and high-level actors Citizens, once mobilised, can play that role, especially if they are supported by international networking.
Recently the organization has been especially active in Africa. The Conference on Peacemaking in Africa sponsored by International Alert in Addis Ababa, in September 1994 drew participants from a wide range of organizations, including the Organisation for African Unity which was represented by its Secretary-General Dr Salim A. Salim. In his keynote address Dr Salim stressed the need in Africa for conflict prevention, management and resolution which International Alert has helped to elaborate. UNESCO's Culture of Peace Programme also took part in the conference.
A conflict resolution training workshop in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1994, co-organized by International Alert, drew political actors from both sides of conflicts in Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia, Togo and Zaire. Under the skilled leadership of trainers from the Nairobi Peace Initiative and the Mennonite Central Committee, the participants were able to transcend their differences and draw upon their experiences, perceptions and definitions of conflict to establish proposals for conflict resolution. Agreeing upon a joint appeal for peace, the participants went home with a mission of conflict resolution and the establishment of African networks to support it.
The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) is applying the methodologies of conflict resolution which have been refined in South Africa in recent years (see earlier section on government initiatives). Therefore it is fitting that there is now a UNESCO chair for a culture of peace at the University of Durban-Westville, South Africa, held by Vasu Gounden, the Director of ACCORD. The chair is dedicated to preventive diplomacy and includes a school, development of a curriculum, case studies and handbooks, and training courses for diplomats.
Citizens, if supported by international networking, can play the role of peace-building which is often left to state and high-level actors.
The methodologies of conflict resolution which are central to a culture of peace have been refined in South Africa, and therefore it is fitting that there is now a UNESCO chair for a culture of peace at the University of Durban-Westville, South Africa.