Wangari Maathai – Nobel Lecture - 6

Excellencies, friends, ladies and gentlemen,

It is 30 years since we started this work. Activities that devastate the environment and societies continue unabated. Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other.

That time is now.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has challenged the world to broaden the understanding of peace: there can be no peace without equitable development; and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space. This shift is an idea whose time has come.

I call on leaders, especially from Africa, to expand democratic space and build fair and just societies that allow the creativity and energy of their citizens to flourish.

Those of us who have been privileged to receive education, skills, and experiences and even power must be role models for the next generation of leadership. In this regard, I would also like to appeal for the freedom of my fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi so that she can continue her work for peace and democracy for the people of Burma and the world at large.

Culture plays a central role in the political, economic and social life of communities. Indeed, culture may be the missing link in the development of Africa. Culture is dynamic and evolves over time, consciously discarding retrogressive traditions, like female genital mutilation (FGM), and embracing aspects that are good and useful.

Africans, especially, should re-discover positive aspects of their culture. In accepting them, they would give themselves a sense of belonging, identity and self-confidence.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

There is also need to galvanize civil society and grassroots movements to catalyse change. I call upon governments to recognize the role of these social movements in building a critical mass of responsible citizens, who help maintain checks and balances in society. On their part, civil society should embrace not only their rights but also their responsibilities.

Further, industry and global institutions must appreciate that ensuring economic justice, equity and ecological integrity are of greater value than profits at any cost.

The extreme global inequities and prevailing consumption patterns continue at the expense of the environment and peaceful co-existence. The choice is ours.

I would like to call on young people to commit themselves to activities that contribute toward achieving their long-term dreams. They have the energy and creativity to shape a sustainable future. To the young people I say, you are a gift to your communities and indeed the world. You are our hope and our future.

The holistic approach to development, as exemplified by the Green Belt Movement, could be embraced and replicated in more parts of Africa and beyond. It is for this reason that I have established the Wangari Maathai Foundation to ensure the continuation and expansion of these activities. Although a lot has been achieved, much remains to be done.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs' eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents.

Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder.

Thank you very much.

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Wangari Maathai – Nobel Lecture - 2

I am immensely privileged to join my fellow African Peace laureates, Presidents Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the late Chief Albert Luthuli, the late Anwar el-Sadat and the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan.

I know that African people everywhere are encouraged by this news. My fellow Africans, as we embrace this recognition, let us use it to intensify our commitment to our people, to reduce conflicts and poverty and thereby improve their quality of life. Let us embrace democratic governance, protect human rights and protect our environment. I am confident that we shall rise to the occasion. I have always believed that solutions to most of our problems must come from us.

In this year’s prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has placed the critical issue of environment and its linkage to democracy and peace before the world. For their visionary action, I am profoundly grateful. Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come. Our work over the past 30 years has always appreciated and engaged these linkages.

My inspiration partly comes from my childhood experiences and observations of Nature in rural Kenya. It has been influenced and nurtured by the formal education I was privileged to receive in Kenya, the United States and Germany. As I was growing up, I witnessed forests being cleared and replaced by commercial plantations, which destroyed local biodiversity and the capacity of the forests to conserve water.

We continue our post on Wangari Maathai's Nobel Lecture in next post.

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Nelson Mandela's Peace Prize Speech - 5

We are talking about Peace Movement. As a part of our talk we were talking speeches of different Nobel Peace Prize winner. We talk about Dalai Lama’s and Nelson Mandela’s Speech -1 , Nelson Mandela’s Speech - 2, Nelson Mandela’s speech – 3, Nelson Mandela's Speech - 4.

Today we are going to talk Nelson Mandela'sSpeech - 5.

It remains our hope that these, too, will be blessed with sufficient reason to realise that history will not be denied and that the new society cannot be created by reproducing the repugnant past, however refined or enticingly repackaged.
We would also like to take advantage of this occasion to pay tribute to the many formations of the democratic movement of our country, including the members of our Patriotic Front, who have themselves played a central role in bringing our country as close to the democratic transformation as it is today.
We are happy that many representatives of these formations, including people who have served or are serving in the "homeland" structures, came with us to Oslo. They too must share the accolade which the Nobel Peace Prize confers.
We live with the hope that as she battles to remake herself, South Africa, will be like a microcosm of the new world that is striving to be born.
This must be a world of democracy and respect for human rights, a world freed from the horrors of poverty, hunger, deprivation and ignorance, relieved of the threat and the scourge of civil wars and external aggression and unburdened of the great tragedy of millions forced to become refugees.
The processes in which South Africa and Southern Africa as a whole are engaged, beckon and urge us all that we take this tide at the flood and make of this region as a living example of what all people of conscience would like the world to be.


ref: Peace Movement Volunteering, noble peace prize

Nelson Mandela’s Noble Peace Prize Address-Part-4

We are talking about Peace Movement. As a part of our talk we were talking speeches of different Nobel Peace Prize winner. We talk about Dalai Lama’s and Nelson Mandela’s Speech -1 , Nelson Mandela’s Speech - 2, Nelson Mandela’s speech – 3. Today we are going with Nelson Mandela's Speech - 4.


Such a society should never allow again that there should be prisoners of conscience nor that any person's human right should be violated.

Neither should it ever happen that once more the avenues to peaceful change are blocked by usurpers who seek to take power away from the people, in pursuit of their own, ignoble purposes.

In relation to these matters, we appeal to those who govern Burma that they release our fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, and engage her and those she represents in serious dialogue, for the benefit of all the people of Burma.2

We pray that those who have the power to do so will, without further delay, permit that she uses her talents and energies for the greater good of the people of her country and humanity as a whole.

Far from the rough and tumble of the politics of our own country. I would like to take this opportunity to join the Norwegian Nobel Committee and pay tribute to my joint laureate. Mr. F.W. de Klerk.

He had the courage to admit that a terrible wrong had been done to our country and people through the imposition of the system of apartheid.

He had the foresight to understand and accept that all the people of South Africa must through negotiations and as equal participants in the process, together determine what they want to make of their future.

But there are still some within our country who wrongly believe they can make a contribution to the cause of justice and peace by clinging to the shibboleths that have been proved to spell nothing but disaster.


ref: Peace Movement Volunteering, noble peace prize

Nelson Mandela’s Noble Peace Prize Address-Part-3

We are talking about Peace Movement. As a part of our talk we were talking speeches of different Nobel Peace Prize winner. We talk about Dalai Lama’s and Nelson Mandela’s Speech -1 and Nelson Mandela’s Speech - 2.

Today we are continuing Nelson Mandela’s speech – 3.

In front of this distinguished audience, we commit the new South Africa to the relentless pursuit of the purposes defined in the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children.1

The reward of which we have spoken will and must also be measured by the happiness and welfare of the mothers and fathers of these children, who must walk the earth without fear of being robbed, killed for political or material profit, or spat upon because they are beggars.

They too must be relieved of the heavy burden of despair which they carry in their hearts, born of hunger, homelessness and unemployment.

The value of that gift to all who have suffered will and must be measured by the happiness and welfare of all the people of our country, who will have torn down the inhuman walls that divide them.

These great masses will have turned their backs on the grave insult to human dignity which described some as masters and others as servants, and transformed each into a predator whose survival depended on the destruction of the other.

The value of our shared reward will and must be measured by the joyful peace which will triumph, because the common humanity that bonds both black and white into one human race, will have said to each one of us that we shall all live like the children of paradise.

Thus shall we live, because we will have created a society which recognises that all people are born equal, with each entitled in equal measure to life, liberty, prosperity, human rights and good governance.



ref: peace movemet work, noble peace prize

Why Was Gandhi Never Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

I was reading speachs of different Nobel Peace Prize winners and i find following artical about why Gandhi never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. . I like i share this artical with my blog reader community.

Up to 1960, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded almost exclusively to Europeans and Americans. In retrospect, the horizon of the Norwegian Nobel Committee may seem too narrow. Gandhi was very different from earlier Laureates. He was no real politician or proponent of international law, not primarily a humanitarian relief worker and not an organiser of international peace congresses. He would have belonged to a new breed of Laureates.

There is no hint in the archives that the Norwegian Nobel Committee ever took into consideration the possibility of an adverse British reaction to an award to Gandhi. Thus it seems that the hypothesis that the Committee's omission of Gandhi was due to its members' not wanting to provoke British authorities, may be rejected.

In 1947 the conflict between India and Pakistan and Gandhi's prayer-meeting statement, which made people wonder whether he was about to abandon his consistent pacifism, seem to have been the primary reasons why he was not selected by the committee's majority. Unlike the situation today, there was no tradition for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to try to use the Peace Prize as a stimulus for peaceful settlement of regional conflicts.

During the last months of his life, Gandhi worked hard to end the violence between Hindus and Muslims which followed the partition of India. We know little about the Norwegian Nobel Committee's discussions on Gandhi's candidature in 1948 – other than the above quoted entry of November 18 in Gunnar Jahn's diary – but it seems clear that they seriously considered a posthumous award. When the committee, for formal reasons, ended up not making such an award, they decided to reserve the prize, and then, one year later, not to spend the prize money for 1948 at all. What many thought should have been Mahatma Gandhi's place on the list of Laureates was silently but respectfully left open.

Nelson Mandela's Nobel Peace Prize Address-Part-1

Your Majesty the King,
Your Royal Highness,
Esteemed Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,
Honourable Prime Minister, Madame Gro Harlem Brundtland, Ministers, Members of Parliament and Ambassadors, Fellow Laureate, Mr. F.W. de Klerk, Distinguished Guests,
Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I extend my heartfelt thanks to the Norwegian Nobel Committee for elevating us to the status of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate my compatriot and fellow laureate, State President F.W. de Klerk, on his receipt of this high honour.

Together, we join two distinguished South Africans, the late Chief Albert Lutuli and His Grace Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to whose seminal contributions to the peaceful struggle against the evil system of apartheid you paid well-deserved tribute by awarding them the Nobel Peace Prize.

It will not be presumptuous of us if we also add, among our predecessors, the name of another outstanding Nobel Peace Prize winner, the late Rev Martin Luther King Jr.

He, too, grappled with and died in the effort to make a contribution to the just solution of the same great issues of the day which we have had to face as South Africans.

We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.

We stand here today as nothing more than a representative of the millions of our people who dared to rise up against a social system whose very essence is war, violence, racism, oppression, repression and the impoverishment of an entire people.

I am also here today as a representative of the millions of people across the globe, the anti-apartheid movement, the governments and organisations that joined with us, not to fight against South Africa as a country or any of its peoples, but to oppose an inhuman system and sue for a speedy end to the apartheid crime against humanity.

These countless human beings, both inside and outside our country, had the nobility of spirit to stand in the path of tyranny and injustice, without seeking selfish gain. They recognised that an injury to one is an injury to all and therefore acted together in defense of justice and a common human decency.

Continue.........

ref:http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1993/mandela-lecture.html

Dalai Lama's Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

Your Majesty, Member of the Nobel Committee, Brothers and Sisters:

I am very happy to be here with you today to receive the Nobel Prize for peace. I feel honored, humbled, and deeply moved that you should give this important prize to a simple monk from Tibet. I am no one special. But I believe the prize is a recognition of the true value of altruism, love, compassion, and nonviolence which I try to practice, in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha and the sages of India and Tibet. I accept the prize with profound gratitude on behalf of all of the oppressed everywhere and for all those who struggle for freedom and work for world peace. I accept it as a tribute to the man who founded the modern tradition of nonviolent action for change- Mahatama Gandhi-whose life taught and inspired me. And, of course, I accept it on behalf of the six million Tibetan people, my brave countrymen and women inside Tibet, who have suffered and continue to suffer so much. They confront a calculated and systematic strategy aimed at the destruction of their national and cultural identities. The prize reaffirms our conviction that with truth, courage, and determination as our weapons, Tibet will be liberated.

No matter what part of the world we come from, we are all basically the same human beings. We all seek happiness and try to avoid suffering. We have basically the same human needs and concerns. All of us human beings want freedom and the right to determine our own destiny as individuals and as peoples. That is human nature. The great changes that are taking place in the world, from Eastern Europe to Africa, are a clear indication of this. ...

... As a Buddhist monk, my concern extends to all members of the human family and, indeed, to all the sentient beings who suffer. I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction.
Yet true happiness comes from a sense of peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion, and elimination of ignorance, selfishness, and greed.

The problems we face today, violent conflicts, destruction of nature, poverty, hunger, and so on, are human created problems which can be resolved through human effort, understanding, and a development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. We need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and the planet we share. Although I have found my own Buddhist religion helpful in generating love and compassion, even for those we consider our enemies, I am convinced that everyone can develop a good heart and a sense of universal responsibility with or without religion.

With the ever-growing impact of science in our lives, religion and spirituality have a greater role to play reminding us of our humanity. There is no contradiction between the two. Each gives us valuable insights into each other. Both science and the teaching of the Buddha tell us of the fundamental unity of all things. This understanding is crucial if we are to take positive and decisive action on the pressing global concern with the environment.

I believe all religions pursue the same goals, that of cultivating human goodness and bringing happiness to all human beings. Though the means may appear different, the ends are the same.
As we enter the final decade of this century, I am optimistic that the ancient values that have sustained mankind are today reaffirming themselves to prepare us for a kinder, happier twenty-first century.

I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, that together we succeed in building a better world through human understanding and love, and that in doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.

Thankyou.

Tenzin Gyatso

14th Dalai Lama of Tibet December 10, 1989, Oslo, Norway, Earth


ref:
http://www.spiritual-endeavors.org/peace/dalilama.htm

Internal Peace-1

while searching about Peace i find following notes from Swami Ramdas's Book The Divine Life.

Peace is an internal state of the soul acquired through the realization of the highest Truth, which is inherent in every human being. Peace related to the eternal. The transient and the ephemeral things of the world are incapable of granting peace. If you would have peace, turn your mind to the immortal source of your life-the deathless and changeless Reality. By constant contemplation and meditation, tune your thought to this Reality, ultimately sublimate it into the Divine existence and thereby attain to a peace which knows no change.

God is Peace, Truth is Peace. So be the devotee of God, if u long for peace. Live and act for the sake of this peace and having possessed it, spread its cooling radiance around, bathing all about you in its blissful floods. First, gain the GOD of peace for yourself. Be liberated from the clutches of a restless spirit which has thrown the soul into darkness and chaos.

Next Time more on the same subject.

Peace Movement

PEACE MOVEMENT

The present state of the world offers a wonderful study. The race for earthly power and dominion is assuming a terrible feature. Hate, distrust and fear on the one side, skepticism, greed and thoughtlessness on the other, combine to hurl nations into the vortex of war. The heart of men and women of the highest vision are wringing with inexpressible anguish at the sight of the havoc which war leaves in its wake. Their heroic struggle to cool down the raging fever of the war-mad peoples is a sight for gods. The air resounds with their clarion voice, proclaiming insistently the message of goodwill and peace for mankind. What a contrast! --- The heart that bleeds for the sufferings of humanity and the heart that causes such sufferings. Both are ostensibly human, but they are really not. Whilst the one is superhuman, the other is inhuman. Once is Divine, the other is demoniac. The same heart can either be the one or the other. It can pour out the purest emotions of love, compassion and forgiveness. It can also give vent to the turbulent waves of hate, fury and vengeance. The world may be divided into two camps---those who possess a heart of the first caliber ad those who possess a heart of the second. Naturally, the stronger of the two prevails.

So, it is absolutely necessary that those of us who take our stand upon the eternal principle of invincible Love should join hands. We ought to wax powerful by working for the transformation of as many hearts as lie within our purview for an ordered and consolidated resistance against the inrush of war. The normal tendencies of the human heart from its infancy are mild, merciful and loving in character. Our task is to appeal to this part of human nature which is in fact higher than human—it is Divine. Educate the heart to the knowledge of its Divinity. Awaken it to the consciousness of its possibilities for good.

Let the divine instincts subdue the undivine aberrations that distort life and make it ugly. Let us join the ranks of those great souls who are putting forth all their intellectual and spiritual energy to thwart the darkening and degeneration influences that seek to possess and sway human hearts. Let us stand up, as soldiers of GOD, to spread the soothing power of peace and goodwill in the world. Let us move fearlessly with all, but in every contact transmit the overpowering thought of peace and friendliness. Let us encourage every such individual or society by the free offering or our powers, be they of wealth, though or body. Merely to sit still aghast and wail over the wanton massacre of human lives in the name of imperialism, communism or some other equally reprehensible cause is not the thing to do. We are the embodiments of the greatest Power that rules the world. Let us be aware of this and give up faint-heartedness and inaction. If at once we cannot reveal all the powers of soul, as we work on for the cause of universal peace and fellowship, we will be enabled in time to bring out the full brilliance of the light within us. Let us be the votaries of peace which is GOD--- peace for ourselves and peace for humanity.

There are many souls gifted with the spiritual vision, who are striving to establish the sovereignty of peace on the earth. There are some among them prominently in the forefront who are inspired by splendid organizing and creative powers. These outstanding figures are making themselves felt by their worldwide activities. May the Almighty bring them all victory in their selfless labors of love and service, and make the world better and more secure to live in.


ref: agency management system
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