UNIDIR - HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!!! Yes, it is 40 years since President Giscard d'Estaing created UNIDIR in Geneva.

 

UNIDIR is 40 years old.      HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNIDIR !

It is 40 years since President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing created UNIDIR.  

Giscard created the Institute inside the Palais de Nations in Geneva, because he did not want all the disarmament work to be kept in New York where the Secretary General lives. The French president was standing up for French values: and quite right too!

 

I work for peace, and I worked for one of my favourite peace organisations: UNIDIR in Geneva, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. 

 

Disarmament does not just happen!  It requires a great deal of hard work and patience as you persuade armed rebels or armed governments to give up their arms, to immobilize them or even destroy them.

 

During the 1990s, while my wife Michelle ran the European office of ChildFund and chaired the NGO Committee for UNICEF, I became a Research Fellow (and later a Senior Fellow) of UNIDIR working for micro-disarmament in West Africa and publishing books about how it is done.

 

UNIDIR studies different types of disarmament and offers new solutions. Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are well-known weapons of mass-destruction regulated by international conventions; micro-disarmament concerns the small arms and light weapons that kill thousands of people every year, and which need a different type of regulation in each country; recently UNIDIR has been focused on new emerging issues like the Arms Trade, Swarm Robotic weapons, Ammunition, Cyber-Space and Weapons in Outer Space.

 

The whole range of UNIDIR’s work makes fascinating reading, and in the 40^th Anniversary Report you can discover the evolution of our research work over the decades. See:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ZOenDv7Y

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=read+the+UNIDIR+40th+anniversary+report

 

If you would like to know more:  https://www.unidir.org   If you would like to read more:  https://www.unidir.org/publications

If you would like to meet the Director, @Dr Renata Dwan (from Ireland):

https://twitter.com/RenataDwan

 

 

One of my micro-disarmament successes in which UNIDIR was involved, was disarming the Khmer Rouge after thirty years of war in Cambodia. One day I might write the whole book, but meanwhile I wrote a short story:

 

  Peace is Possible: Exchanging Weapons for Development and how we disarmed the Khmer Rouge with wit, bluff and balloons

This amazing short story is fun to read. Robin Poulton takes you into rural pagodas along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, along tracks threaded between fields of landmines and rice paddies. Here you can read peace journalism at its best, and peace anthropology at its most creative: an uplifting and amusing story proving that even after a civil war, Peace is Possible.

On Amazon.com

 

 

 

Blog Post: Peace on U.N. Day

 

Professor Johan Galtung, the Norwegian ‘Father of Peace Studies’ celebrates his 90^th birthday on United Nations Day 24/10/2020, the 75^th anniversary of the United Nations. Two peace milestones. One of my first ‘outings’ with Michelle, my future wife, was to the UN's 25^th Anniversary celebration with Her Majesty the Queen in Westminster Hall on 24/10/1970. We were senior leaders of the United Nations Student Association in those days, with seats in the second row and full view of the 'Beefeaters' who provide Her Majesty's personal guard.

 

Happy Birthday to the U.N. and to Johan, with whom I had the pleasure to teach at the European Peace University in Austria. The Founder of the TRANSCEND network for peace journalism and Transcend University, Johan Galtung has been a mediator for conflicts in more than 150 countries; has written more than 1500 articles and book chapters and over 500 Editorials for the TRANSCEND Media Service; and 170 books on peace and related issues, of which more than 40 have been translated into other languages.  https://www.transcend.org/tms/2020/10/biography-prof-johan-galtung-born-24-oct-1930/

 

 

I read the Transcend Media Service weekly email in order to obtain a different view of world affairs, looking not at the bullets that have been fired, but at the reasons for conflict and possible solutions for peace.  Do you know anywhere else that has a section reserved for Nobel Peace Laureates to write? Sometimes I send my own comment to: tms-submissions@transcend.org

 

When we look around the world, it seems that peace is fragile. Yet if you visit the museum of the International Red Cross in Geneva, you quickly discover that our world is actually more peaceful today than at any time in the past 150 years. And fewer people are dying of hunger or disease. The 24-hour news cycle gives the wrong impression of reality. So The United Nations and Johan Galtung have made positive marks on our world, and we should give thanks.

 

Peace is Possible

I have published a new book, telling an exciting and amusing true story about disarmament in Cambodia. How did Cambodians reconcile and find peace? This short story describes a small part of the peace equation: persuading villagers in a civil war, that peace can come. There are lessons here for every war. Please tell your networks, buy it as a gift for your friends, get your students to buy it.

VE Day 75 years ago was a victory for All of Europe

The defeat of nazi and italian Fascism on 8th May 1945 (Victory in Europe) brought liberty to all of Europe (except in the Soviet zone) and the birth of the United Nations. Konrad Adenhauer, Robert Schumann and Jean Monnet created what became the European Economic Community and - later - the European Union. We need to hold on to peace and friendship across frontiers. What we all need is peace: respect for Nature and for each other - symbolized by peace dancing (here in St Andrews).