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Conference for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence [Mexico]
an article by NSS Oaxaca (abridged)

"Peace is not the absence of conflict" - With these words, Cascón Francisco Soriano begins his Lecture "Conference for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence" organized by the Interagency Panel on violence against children and adolescents, made by the State Institute Oaxaca Public Education, the Human Rights Ombudsman of the People of Oaxaca, the Care Coordination for Human Rights of the Government of the State of Oaxaca, Oaxaca DIF System, the Ministry of Public Security, the Attorney General of State Health Services of Oaxaca and the State Council on the Rights of Children and Adolescents in Oaxaca.



click on photo to enlarge

The program started at about 9 am, with a participation of over 300 people, with the words of the Executive Secretary of the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents in Oaxaca, Maestra Blanca Castañón Canals, Coordinator of the inter-institutional group against violence to children and adolescents. She referred to this event as "seeds of a long-term project for education in a Culture of Peace to increase protective factors against all kinds of violence and to improve coexistence through peaceful conflict regulation. "

Immediately afterwards came the main speaker, Professor for the "Culture of Peace" Diploma of the UNESCO Chair on Peace and Human Rights for Peace at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His lecture covered the following themes:

1) Conflict and Violence are not the same. Conflict is natural in human relationships;

2) Conflict can be an educational tool. Also, the speaker identified those situations giving rise to various forms of violence that can culminate in extreme situations such as suicide and murder;

3) The steps that consolidate a process of conflict resolution, and three errors involved in conflict resolution: a) Waiting until the conflict reaches the point of violence; b) Neglecting the problem; c) failure to analyze the causes. He also noted two types of models, cooperation and resolution;

4) Aggression and violence. In this section, he considered the various actors responsible for promoting a culture of peace: family, school, community and the media.

In the latter section he mentioned the difference between aggression and violence, and he explained the use of the term nonviolence, which comes from the Sanskrit ahimsa. He noted that "NOT TO BE VIOLENT" is not the same as to "BE NONVIOLENT" and he defined a nonviolent person as someone committed to Peace, Justice, Human Rights, taking Gandhi as his reference.

He listed three types of violence: direct violence, cultural violence and structural violence. He explained, too, the difference between the concepts of prevention and provention. Preventing violence serves to generate violence because it prevents conflict, which are natural. Instead provention means providing strong relationships constituted by confidence and dialogue. . .

Upon completion of this process Professor Cascón provided web pages where one can read materials on Culture of Peace and Nonviolence: www.pacoc.pangea.org and www.edupaz.org .

(Click here for a Spanish version of this article.

DISCUSSION

Question(s) related to this article:


Does research show that nonviolence works?,

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Latest reader comment:

Did the writings on nonviolence by Gene Sharp help inspire the movements of the Arab Spring in Egypt and elsewhere?

This is debatable.  The New York Times said "yes" and some Egyptians, for example, the blogger Karim Alrawi say "no".

However, it should be recognized that the ideas of nonviolent resistance have a way of transcending borders and centuries.  Nelson Mandela was influenced by Martin Luther King who was influenced in turn by Mahatma Gandhi who was influenced in turn by Henry David Thoreau.

[Note added later: The blog of Karim Alrawi is no longer available on the Internet, but see instead the blog of Hossam El-Hamalawy who says that the Palestinians "have been the major source of inspiration, not Gene Sharp, whose name I first heard in my life only in February after we toppled Mubarak already and whom the clueless NYT moronically gives credit for our uprising."


This report was posted on June 24, 2013.