The argument for peace

 

 

Top: Assabah Khan (right), a Rotary World Peace Fellow from Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and other fellows at Tuol Sleng prison, where all but four prisoners were killed by the Khmer Rouge. Bottom: Kishu Diswani, of Membai, India, at the temporary Mae Lah shelter camp in northern Thailand.

Assabah Khan, a Rotary World Peace Fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, is describing her life in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, one of the world’s most volatile and dangerous places. Since the 1947 partition of the British Indian Empire, India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the Himalayan region. Their saber rattling included nuclear weapons testing by both nations in 1998.

When Kishu Daswani, of Mumbai, India, asks Khan whether the Pakistani government is supporting Kashmiri terrorists, Khan responds indignantly: “These are ordinary people rising up against oppression from all sides.”

The debate in this classroom isn’t always amicable – not among people who have lost family and friends to ethnic and religious violence. But at least there is talk. “The participants come in with a great deal of passion, and often dogmatism,” says instructor Tom Woodhouse. “They think their own local situation is unique.” As the weeks progress, he says, they begin to see the common denominators in other conflicts.

The three-month program, which The Rotary Foundation launched in July 2006, offers two sessions each year for 25 midcareer professionals. Touted as a “mini-United Nations experience,” it combines classroom academics with field studies, which include site visits to refugee camps in Thailand and the Killing Fields Memorial in Cambodia, where more than a third of the population died under the Khmer Rouge. In 2008, the Rotary Center at Chulalongkorn University became the seventh Rotary Center for International Studies in peace and conflict resolution. The other centers offer master’s degree programs.

On the first day of class in Bangkok, each fellow discusses a local conflict, such as the violent aftermath of independence in the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, formerly part of Indonesia. “The situation is improving,” Fernando da Costa says. “But there are still groups in the jungle working to destabilize the country. It’s very fragile.”

Another participant, a judge in the Sharia (Islamic) legal system, describes tribal and religious disputes over land in northern Nigeria, and a Brazilian fire chief, a member of Firefighters Without Borders, tells how the men under his command often need to diffuse conflicts – and even dodge bullets – before they can extinguish fires in São Paulo’s favelas, or slums.

Irene Santiago, founder of Mothers for Peace in the Philippines, and Woodhouse, director of the Rotary Center at the University of Bradford in England, lead the day’s discussions. Other lecturers include academics, government specialists, mediators, and experts from nongovernmental agencies.

Most of the students are on leave from their jobs at newspapers, nonprofits, government agencies, law firms, and a variety of other places with connections to peace and conflict resolution. After graduation, 90 percent of the participants attribute the program to career advancement, according to a Rotary Foundation survey. “They’re getting grants, they’re making alliances,” says Tucker McCravy, deputy director of the Rotary Center in Bangkok.

Between lectures, the students get to know one another, and the room fills with English spoken in accents reflecting a dozen countries. “In Guwahati, the city where I live in northeastern India, we saw five bombings last year,” says Triveni Goswami. “We’re becoming immune to it.” Daswani says he watched his city across the subcontinent, Mumbai, descend into Hindu-Muslim violence.

These informal conversations are as critical as the coursework, McCravy says. “[The students] become friends, and they build up a network that they can use to pool their expertise.” Woodhouse recalls two students from warring factions in Sri Lanka. Thevananth Thevanayagam is from the Tamil territory of Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, where violent attacks are common. Raveendra Pathiranage is from Colombo, the capital of the Sinhalese-majority nation. “They were ethnically and ideologically opposed,” Woodhouse says.

“We had very heated arguments,” recalls Thevanayagam. “But we talked about our problems and gradually came to understand each other.”

“It was the first time I had had the opportunity to associate with a person from Jaffna for a long period,” Pathiranage says. “We discussed the common problems all the communities are facing, and we came to understand that, irrespective of ethnicity, most people are undergoing the same difficulties. We were able to erase our hard feelings and ask, ‘What can we do to solve the problem? What can we contribute?’”

In 2007, fighting closed the main road to Jaffna, blocking transport of food and medicine. Thevanayagam’s two young children had contracted chikungunya fever – a life-threatening disease borne by mosquitoes. When Pathiranage, who is senior state counsel for the attorney general of Sri Lanka, learned of the dire situation, he arranged to fly in emergency medicine. The children are now healthy. Unlike many children in Sri Lanka, who grow up with memories of violence and hatred, they will tell a different story.