Marching Towards Global Peace and Development
IN FOCUS, 5 May 2025
Dr. Surya Nath Prasad – TRANSCEND Media Service
This paper is based on Presidential Speech delivered by the author at the National Convention of IAEWP on “Marching Towards Global Peace and Development” on 24 July 1992, held from July 24-26, 1992 at KRIBHCO, Surat, Gujarat, India
Justice: The Mother of Peace
The mother of peace is justice, which is yet to be born. Let the mother of peace that is justice take birth. Peace will naturally come out. But we see everywhere there is injustice, exploitation, oppression, and violation of human rights.
Development and violence
Indeed, there can be no lasting peace without respect and protection of human rights. But one of the greatest barriers in the achievement of peace is development. It is inimical to all peace – individual, national and global. Development makes a few affluents and the rest maximum poor.
The United Nations itself had made great efforts to secure development in the backward areas all through the years 1960-70, the decade was declared by the United Nations as the Development Decade. But in fact, it has been finding of the Development Decade that the gains of growth, have all over the Third World, been eaten up by a few well-to-do. The theory of development has failed also in the North World. The O.E.C.D. Report 1969 and several evaluation reports of the development decade e.g. Pearson Report, Jackson Report etc. have reveal that development has made some countries of the developing world richer and more powerful than the rest. It has also made in each nation some regions, some ethnic groups and ultimately a few families powerful and wealthy, leaving a great many to languish behind. Development increased also poverty of the masses and created much violence in the pocket of growth.
Adam Curle, Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, who had been involved in the Third World Development for sometime also, realized that the sort of projects which they had been working on were either projects which were, in fact, of indirect benefit tom rich countries rather than poor ones, or even if they were helping the poor countries in which they were involved were in jeopardy from violence which was constantly breaking out. Some of this violence was a direct result of the inequalities and oppressions which were so rife.
Poverty is state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support. World Bank sources told, “The studies they are conducting for their next report on poverty and development indicate that the tendency in all most all in Third World countries is towards increased poverty and social Marginalization. The Report titled Labour in the World 1992 revealed ‘In the past two years poverty has increased 30 per cent in Cote D’Ivoire, 6 per cent in Argentina, 4 percent in Brazil and 3 per cent in Mexico, while the percentage of Ghanaians under the poverty line has jumped from 37.3 to 59 in the same period.
Thus, development promotes exploitation and oppression of majority weak by the minority rich. Gandhi considered exploitation as supreme form of violence. Because every development process has a violent content in it, as any plan for development emphasizes production and does not keep the principles of distributive justice in mind.
Human Rights and Development
Unless proper measures are adopted by the International Community to promote international equity, efforts to ensure the realization of human rights in developing countries will be to little avail. True development cannot be attained in the absence of respect for human rights. The Third World should attach to the need to relate human rights of its pre-iminent concern development. A positive duty for rich stated is to make regular transfers of financial other resource to those states that are at present unstable to ensure the satisfaction of the fundamental human rights of their citizens and also rich people of the nation must share their resources with the poor masses in fulfillment of their basic human rights. Hence, development in the North must reduce the consumption of raw materials, most of which are imported from the South. And development in the South must work towards bringing an end to the poverty. Besides the rich people of North and South both must be free from greed, must minimize their desires and set their lives based on basic human needs to protect and fulfill the human rights of needy people of both the regions for true development of poor and rich both. Because one man’s or a few men’s freedom from hunger and want is not true development until all men are free from hunger and want. Hunger knows no nationality. Peace is secure only if people of the world are free from hunger. And if there is poverty in any reason of the nation or any part of the world, it is dangerous to prosperity everywhere.
Therefore, if development may be of any use for bringing global peace, it must be linked with protection of human rights all over the world. And when development, which will give emphasis equally on production and principles of distributive justice both, is attached with human rights protection, which has equity content in it, then there will be no development of a few rich, but limitation of wants in affluents, in lowering down of standard of living of the few rich and powerful, and thus liberation of rich and poor both for attainment of global peace.
Human Rights Teaching and IAEWP
Peace – individual, national and global – will be a far reaching dream unless the human rights are duly protected by every institution within the nation including the State, and by the national governments between the nations of the world. For these human rights teaching should be developed at all levels from school through university to out-of-school education, in order that they may become accessible as part of a true system of life-long education to all men and women in all countries, whatsoever their legal, social or political status.
Human Rights education is a branch of Peace Education discipline, which is aimed, inter alia, at eliminating intolerance and discriminatory behavior and at promoting Positive Peace and interpersonal, social and international understanding, and cooperation.
Awareness about human rights makes both – violators of these rights and those whose rights are violated – free from committing exploitation and being exploited. And this job of making conscientization to the citizens and people of different nations about their rights is being done very successfully by the IAEWP.
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Dr. Surya Nath Prasad, Former President, Executive Vice President & Secretary-General of the International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP); associate professor of education emeritus, the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea. Founder and editor-in-chief of Peace Education: An International Journal. dr_suryanathprasad@yahoo.co.in
Tags: Peace
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 5 May 2025.
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