Building Societies of Peace
Ms. Wahu Kaara
2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee
Executive Director of the Kenya Debt Relief Network
Kenya
The world today is at crossroads in matters of international relationship and equally continental, national including the very foundation of society, the communities themselves. This gives an organization like FOWPAL an opportunity to vibrate the ideals that makes FOWPAL an organization in search for PEACE for the world of the 21st century.
I am greatful that I met FOWPAL and interacted with their activities during the NGO/IPO UN conference in September 2005.In particular I remember the good memories of ringing the peace bell and subsequent and many other dialogues we had on what really we should and can do in participating to make peaceful world no matter how farfetched the dream was.
This gave me an opportunity to continue with my dreams of peaceful world and not only a dream but a noble idea to occupy my thinking and motivate courage and determination for action. It was the same time I was awarded the Nobel peace prize nomination of 1000 women across the globe. How timely this nomination was to affirm my ringing of the peace bell that by the time I was leaving New York and saying goodbye to the members of FOWPAL, I was confident and sure that the seeds of building societies of peace indeed were available and already planted, ours was to nature and proclaim the determination and the focus. My work on the jubilee campaign since1999 translating to economic justice for a just international economic governance gave me a good platform to articulate and network for JUSTICE FOR ALL; a message of speaking truth and in particular to power on how the international economic governance as we know it today is the root cause of problems and issues that threaten peace. Peace is threatened in essence by how we access resources to create wealth for our livelihoods and how we distribute the wealth. The current international economic governance framework is very unequal, discriminative, and irresponsible and actually kills life both human and nature in its glorified development model of overproduction for overconsumption without any alarm of implication that manifests itself in both unspoken poverty that majority of the people in the world experience and climate change that cannot be ignored any more.
It is this background that FOWPAL can intervene and coordinate people of goodwill who believe in peace and are themselves agents of peace to strengthen and deepen our determination because this is the time and the moment.
Peace is not conflict resolution but averting conflicts in peace building and keeping it which means every citizen of this world feels and believes to be a citizen of the world to participate and contribute to human fulfillment and progress .It also means every citizen of the world takes responsibility in the stewardship of our environment because life is about humans and nature-people and the planet. This is the backdrop to pick bits and pieces of the remnants of peaceful minded people who believe in love-truth, purity about life and manifest a visible pillar of light to inform the focus and the way forward for reclaiming the 21st century to be a century of peaceful societies.
The 21st century will only be a century of peace when we have both economics and politics that will work for peoples life fulfillment, economics guided by principles of guaranteeing provision of goods of life-for life is abundance that will be distributed on an equitable framework and formula guaranteeing horizontal participatory democracy. It is these experience of the Kenyan African people in particular the women who have creatively and innovatively made this system visible and a pattern of their lives that I am confident and courageous to make this statement. This is their statement and our statement because we have refused to die for Africa and we live for Africa by overcoming dispossesion and powerlessness from the patriarchy market economy that thrives on politics of domination and control, conquest and plunder, extraction of resources both human and natural in co modification value to serve the interests profit for overproduction and overconsumption a value system of the north-developed world, underproduction and under consumption a value imposed on the south-developing world.
The mindset and work of FOWPAL transcends this scenario and offers hope to think and act love for life not for the sake of life but reclaiming the sanctity and sacredness of life-values that are ignored, dismissed and wished away by the paradigm that governs and regulates our lives today. We must work for a paradigm shift and FOWPAL has already set the foundation and the motion. I pledge my commitment and determination to work with others to deliver societies of peace which is our historical challenge and responsibility and we doing it no matter how small or insignificant.