HONOURING THE FATHER OF PEACE STUDIES

Johan Galtung from Norway, universally recognized as "the father of peace studies", who recently turned 80, has been awarded the Korean DMZ Peace Prize for 2010. The award ceremony will be held in Seoul on 7 December 2010. The selection committee cited "his long-lasting work for world peace and Korean reunification".

MIDDLE EAST: SELF-DEFENSE OR WAR?

Bombs are falling again on innocent civilians in Lebanon, Gaza, and northern Israel. Why? It is necessary to go back in history to understand what is happening today, write Johan Galtung, a Professor of Peace Studies and Founder and Co-Director of TRANSCEND: A Peace and Development Network (www.transcend.org), and Dietrich Fischer, Director of the European University Centre for Peace Studies (www.epu.ac.at) and Co-Director of TRANSCEND. The problem is the vicious cycle of repeated mutual retaliation characteristic of wars, and underlying it the unresolved conflict between Jews and Arabs. This problem cannot be solved by de-escalation in the choice of targets and level of destruction. A ceasefire is urgent to end the immediate suffering, but it will remain only temporary as long as the underlying conflict is not solved. Israel should consider how to make peace rather than war. One way out might be a Middle East Community modeled after the European Community of 1958, with Palestine fully recognised. It would be in Israel\'s and its Arab neighbor\'s interest to learn from that success story. People of good will should come together in the midst of the present crisis to elaborate what a peaceful Middle East could look like.

A CHINESE APPROACH TO BEATING POVERTY

Given the recent G-8 summit\'s focus on reducing poverty in Africa, it is worth calling attention to a successful anti-poverty programme in China, write Fred Dubee, a long-time advisor to the UN Global Compact and a graduate of the European University Centre, for Peace Studies (EPU) in Stadtschlaining, Austria, and Dietrich Fischer, Academic Director of EPU. Both are members of TRANSCEND, a peace and development network. In 1994, the China Society for the Promotion of the Guangcai (glory) Programme was founded by a group of ten concerned, dedicated, and brilliant young Chinese entrepreneurs, the authors write in this article. In contrast to other poverty relief projects, the Guangcai Programme encourages social responsibility among private entrepreneurs. It facilitates investment in sustainable development projects in China\'s less-developed areas, thus bringing to disadvantaged groups the fruits of economic development. When Deng Xiaoping changed the laws in China in 1994 to encourage private enterprise, they knew they would become very successful, because they had good business plans, and opportunities abounded. But they also realized that if they did not share their success, they would arouse the envy of the public and local officials. For this reason, and because they wanted to help their fellow citizens, they set out to create a multitude of small and medium enterprises to help generate jobs and income, especially in the poorer regions of China.

THE REAL THREAT IS NUCLEAR TERRORISM

If the world continues on its current course, the terrorist bombs in London should be considered a mere foretaste of far worse future catastrophes, writes Dietrich Fischer, Academic Director of the European University Centre for Peace Studies in Stadtschlaining, Austria, and a member of TRANSCEND, a peace and development network. As long as the major powers insist on maintaining nuclear weapons, they cannot expect to prevent other countries and terrorist organisations from acquiring and using them. Those who still believe in the fairy tale of \"deterrence theory\" better wake up to the age of suicide bombers. Ee need a vastly more open world, where all nuclear weapons are verifiably destroyed and the manufacturing of new ones cannot be hidden. The IAEA can now inspect only sites that member countries voluntarily place under its supervision; such an \"inspection\" is meaningless. If we cling to obsolete ways of thinking --that threatening others will make us safe-- we face extinction as a human species. Is getting rid of all nuclear weapons a realistic prospect? Certainly more realistic than waiting until they are used. Some have argued that we cannot disinvent nuclear weapons and therefore will have to live with them as long as civilisation exists. But nobody disinvented cannibalism either; we simply learned to abhor it.

TSUNAMI: SIMPLE STEPS THAT COULD SAVE THOUSANDS OF LIVES

In a January 2 interview on CNN, the head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was asked, Why was no warning issued to the countries hit by a tsunami after NOAA detected the earthquake on 26 December? He responded that, first, there was no warning system in place; and second, that NOAA lacked a precise model of the tsunami and could not have known how many people would need to evacuate, writes Dietrich Fischer, Academic Director of the European University Center for Peace Studies in Stadtschlaining, Austria, and Co-director of TRANSCEND, a global peace and development network. In this article, Fischer writes that even if the job description of the scientists who detected the earthquake did not include warning those whose lives were in danger, it was their moral responsibility to do so. They may not have had phone numbers of the relevant government agencies in the affected countries. But if they had informed people who could pass on the warning, even at night, they might have been able to reach some people in the affected areas who could have forwarded the information to others. And the US State Department could have contacted foreign governments and its embassies in the region directly. It took the tsunami 3 hours and 52 minutes to reach Sri Lanka, less for Thailand, but plenty of time for a warning.