PEACEBOAT - Voyages - 35th Voyage



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Dec 17st 2001/Updated

The Role of NGO's in Peace Movements / Johan Galtung

Professors Galtung and Nishimura, longtime residents of Kyoto, providing us with deep insight into the potential of Japan in the Peace Movement

How do NGO's fit into the Peace Movement, and what can they do? This was the massive subject tackled in about 30 minutes (one hour with interpretation) by Professor Galtung, a subject particularly relevant and important for Peace Boat as an NGO working to promote peace. Under this question, the first place to look was the source of NGO's themselves - civil society, using Japanese society as an example. Directed in the right way, Japanese society could become a much greater source of peace promotion from which organizations and directed movements could come, working on social issues, violent conflict and problems of structural violence. The next step may be the development of international relations between peace-oriented NGO's - based on the historically poor performance of inter-governmental relations and efforts for peace, forming a broad social base from which alternatives, anti-violence pressure and better coordination of the Peace Movement can happen. Important for all of this though, is that people themselves become aware of what is necessary and what is possible within a society - in this case Japan. Much of the lecture was a discussion of Japanese society and where, in the context of peace and the Peace Movement, its weak and strong points are. Many participants were more than a little interested in this examination, and the reaction was very positive - many participants seeing their own culture through a new perspective.

Why?

In an hour and a half long talk, including questions, Professor Galtung proceeded to give us more insight about the events of September 11th than two months of mainstream media and government spokespeople. What we heard was an enlightening though quite disturbing possible explanation of 'why?' the attacks occurred and how and why government and mainstream media seem to avoid this question as if it posed a threat to 'national security' and 'national interest' as great as terrorism itself. Which, as we have now heard, it may well be. For sure, the attacks in New York and Washington D.C. were crimes against humanity permissible for public knowledge. But to call the September 11th events attacks on democracy and civilization and go no deeper in explanation assumes that the terrorists have no purpose to the attacks beyond insane and irrational hate, and avoids many painful realities for which the US holds responsibility and invested interest, and create the conditions from which people suffering are often able to find no other voice than terrorism to affect their own conditions.

Text and photos by Stacy Hughes