Nobel Peace Laureate Lech Walesa had a conversation lead by Liv Tørres, Executive Director of the Nobel Peace Center in Norway titled “Peace and Justice: the humanity global path towards sustainable development” within the 39th session of the UNESCO’s General Conference in Paris. 

As part of the leaders’ Forum of the 39th session of the General Conference of UNESCO, the event was organized with the cooperation of the Permanent Secretariat of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates and supported by the Albert Schweitzer Institute. The goal of this Conversation was to bring different voices to the Leaders’ debate on how UNESCO could best support its Member States in their bid to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  

The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals along with the Paris Climate Agreement two years ago have opened a new page in the history of international cooperation. Taken as a plan of action for people, planet, and prosperity, this collective path seeks to achieve ambitious global targets for global peace, justice, inclusiveness to end poverty, protect the planet, and to strengthen universal peace in broader freedom. 

Considering that the global society is now confronted with major international challenges and struggles to find unity around the international institutions it’s highly important to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals building of a new agreement and collective unity around the global institutions. In this context, the Conversation with Nobel Peace Laureate, Lech Walesa, former President of the Republic of Poland, was focused on the 2030 Global Agenda, which calls for a collaborative action of all stakeholders in every society. 

President Walesa gave a reply to three questions asked by Liv Tørres, Executive Director of the Nobel Peace Center in Norway highlighting his background and his role in organizing a civil society in Poland in order to bring different and innovative insights into the discussions on UNESCO’s role in the implementation of the 17 SDGs. 

At the beginning of the Session Liv Tørres underlined that “UNESCO is critical in order to create the

value platform we need to go forward with Agenda 2030.” During the Conversation Lech Walesa stated that “globalization needs debates.” He stressed that “big international organizations like UNESCO are very important because they unite many nations for the good cause. To meet the challenges of the modern world such institutions, however, need to find a common spirit for all nations to overcome their cultural religious and economical differences.” 

Responding to Liv Tørres Walesa said: “We have to get a sense of why things are as they are at the beginning of the XXI century. We started to be afraid of our neighbours and that’s something we learned from the past. As a result, we have no good recipes, no common reflection. We don’t have that foundation and we must work on that as quickly as possible. UNESCO and other global institutions should educate people in the sense of values. At the end if we don’t come together this will result in chaos. To bring people together in the meetings like this with ideas to be put on the table must be resulted in programs implemented by people who have and enjoy common thinking. Globalization now is content free, structure free, idea free. But organizations like UNESCO have to quickly propose solutions and I believe that’s possible.”  

“We all feel the need to unite us, the need to build the new set of rules and the important role that UNESCO does have in the modern world. Sometimes the programs are even right but you’re not convincing people that it’s right. And when it’s done we can say about this generation: Not only did they want something beautiful, not only they managed to go away with the areas of the past, but they managed to bring a wise building of the future. We have this opportunity.”  

 Nobel Peace Laureate, Lech Walesa, is former President of Poland and leader of the trade union Solidarity. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his campaign for freedom of organization in Poland, and for using non-violence in the fight for social justice for his fellow workers in the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk.  His party Solidarity won free elections in 1989, and Walesa was elected President of Poland.  

Liv Tørres, Executive Director of the Nobel Peace Center, is a Norwegian researcher, politician and humanitarian leader. Before she started working for the Nobel Peace Center in January 2016, Tørres was Secretary General of Norwegian People’s Aid.

Permanent Secretariat of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates was created in 2006, and is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization, with its own board, based in Rome and operates on a permanent basis. The major activity of the Permanent Secretariat is organizing the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates internationally recognized as among the most important annual events in the field of peacemaking, attracting Nobel Peace Laureates, high-profile leaders, organizations, students and professors from around the globe since 1999.  

Nobel Peace Center is one of Norway’s most visited museums with app 250 000 visitors per year. It presents the Nobel Peace Prize laureates and their work, in addition to telling the story of Alfred Nobel. The Center is an arena for debate and reflection around topics such as war, peace and conflict resolution, presents changing exhibitions, engaging digital solutions, films, seminars and events. Nobel Peace Center is an independent foundation, with the Norwegian Nobel Committee appointing the board.

(Nadarajah Sethurupan)

An 85-year-old Canadian woman who survived the Hiroshima atomic bombing and will jointly accept this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to show his leadership and humanity by signing onto a UN accord to ban nuclear weapons.

Setsuko Thurlow, who was 13 when the United States dropped the bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, said she is “more than disappointed” that Canada refused to sign on to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, an accord that was adopted last July at the United Nations.

“I question the quality of leadership of the Prime Minister,” Ms. Thurlow said in an interview Thursday with The Globe and Mail.

Ms. Thurlow implored Mr. Trudeau to sign the accord and help the world work toward eliminating nuclear weapons, asking how the father of three would react if his own children were killed.

“My four-year-old nephew had that fate.”

Ms. Thurlow will travel to Oslo in December to jointly accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of this year’s laureate, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

She said it is a “frightening time” for the world, as U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un exchange threats of nuclear warfare.

The Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty itself has no binding effect on countries that have weapons and none of them would be likely to sign on.

But disarmament advocates hope that a treaty banning the last remaining legal weapon of mass destruction will provide the ethical momentum to banish them to history.

While 122 UN member countries voted in favour of the UN treaty last summer, states with nuclear weapons such as the United States, together with Canada and its NATO partners – with the exception of the Netherlands – boycotted the talks.

Ms. Thurlow, a former social worker who has lived in Toronto since 1955, said she hopes the Prime Minister will reconsider his position. She said Mr. Trudeau is prioritizing his economic and trading relationship with Mr. Trump and other NATO countries rather than humanitarian concerns.

If Mr. Trudeau doesn’t sign on, it means “a lack of courage, for economic purpose or some other excuses, to ignore and neglect the well-being and security of Canadian people he is responsible to,” she said.

“The Prime Minister seems to willfully ignore the fact that the majority of Canadians want a world without nuclear weapons,” she said in a statement sent to media on Thursday. “As a living witness to Hiroshima, I beseech Justin Trudeau to change course.”

A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada is committed to nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. “Our government strongly supports concrete and meaningful efforts that will help achieve these goals,” spokesman Adam Austen said in an e-mail.

Mr. Austen cited a variety of international initiatives supported by the federal government, noting that Canada is currently chairing a high-level UN group on the development of a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, to help halt the production of a material used in nuclear weapons.

“Crucially, these negotiations involve both non-nuclear and nuclear states. Canada remains a global leader on concrete efforts toward nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,” he said. “Progress on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation must involve states with nuclear weapons. That is what we are achieving.”

NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière said the actions of the Liberal government on this issue have been “entirely disappointing.”

“The Liberals cannot continue to pretend they believe in nuclear disarmament so long as they stay outside of this treaty,” she said in a statement on Thursday.

Last June, Mr. Trudeau told the Commons the treaty was a well-meaning but ineffective process.

“There can be all sorts of people talking about nuclear disarmament, but if they do not actually have nuclear arms, it is sort of useless to have them around, talking,” the Prime Minister said.

Ms. Thurlow, who was visiting the Parliament buildings at the time, called Mr. Trudeau’s comments “callous.”

“I can’t believe the leader of the nation can use such language,” she said.

In an interview with The Globe last August, she contrasted his position with that of his father, Pierre Trudeau, who was more outspoken about disarmament.

“He didn’t make himself very popular – with the Americans especially,” she said of the senior Trudeau. “But he was gutsy enough to be able to say that at the UN. But this time, his son is hiding behind Trump. He hasn’t said boo.”

Ms. Thurlow said she is “very proud and humbled” that she will be accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons; she said she does so on behalf of all nuclear disarmament advocates around the world.

Even 72 years later, she said the memories of the bombing in Hiroshima will always stick with her and her fellow survivors.

“It’s the only natural thing for us to dedicate our lives, to report to the world, to warn the world, to alert the world, what the nuclear weapons do to human beings. That’s what’s important for us,” she said.

“I want the world to learn what could happen. Better not happen again.”

With a report from Reuters

(theglobeandmail)