The Hague Appeal for Peace Conference
A Great Success!

Civil Society held the largest international peace conference in history
on May 11-15, 1999.  Over 9,000 activists, government representative and
community leaders  from over 100 countries attended the Hague  Appeal for
Peace Conference.   During the four day gathering participants discussed
and debated in over 400 panels, workshops and round tables mechanisms for
abolishing war and creating a culture of peace in the 21st century.

Participants included representatives from 80 governments and international
organizations,  and hundreds of civil society leaders including:  UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh,
Queen Noor of Jordan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Arundhati
Roy of India, Rigoberta Menchu Tum of Guatemala, and Jody Williams from the
Landmines Campaign.

This event marked the centennial of the first International Peace
Conference, which began in May 1899 in the Hague. This first conference was
the beginning of the Hague process, the process of active interaction of
civil society and governments to prevent war and control its excesses,
which ultimately brought several conventions on warfare, including the
treaties under which Slobodan Milosevic is accused of war crimes, the
Permanent Court of Arbitration and the International Court of Justice, both
in the Hague, the League of Nations, and the United Nations.

This Hague Appeal Conference was made even more significant because unlike
the UN global summits of the past decade, this conference was organized
entirely by civil society, not governments. The UN did not receive the
governmental support needed to convene a global summit on peace. So, the
people organized it ourselves. The Hague conference proved to governments
that civil society is serious, desperate, and fed up with war.

The conference launched an action-plan, the Hague Agenda for Peace and
Justice for the 21st Century, containing 50 detailed programs which set the
international agenda for coming decades on conflict prevention,
implementing human rights, peacekeeping, disarmament, and coping with the
root causes of war. Hundreds of civil society organizations from many
countries collaborated over a year on producing the Hague Agenda.

The conference was a living example of what is known as the new, or
democratic diplomacy - the collaboration of civil society, governments and
intergovernmental organizations which has already proved its effectiveness
in bringing about the treaty to ban landmines, the statute creating the
International Criminal Court and the World Court opinion on the illegality
of nuclear weapons.

The Hague Appeal for Peace also successfully redefined peace as not only
the absence of conflict between and within states, but also the absence of
economic and social injustice. From this belief, we brought together
environmentalists, human rights advocates, humanitarian aid and development
workers and others who have traditionally not thought of themselves as
"peace activists" to work together for the development of a sustainable
culture of peace.

 Some conference highlights:

 1500 youth participants showed us the peace movement is alive and
kicking, producing a great Youth Agenda for Peace and Justice;
 Kashmiris, Indians and Pakistanis reached an unprecedented peace
agreement on Kashmir;
 Ethiopians and Eritreans held a dialogue on the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict;
 Young people from Turkish Cyprus and Greek Cyprus wrote a 4 page
"Timetable for Peace in Cyprus" action-plan;
 Sports was proven to be a powerful medium for promoting peace and
friendship in "basketball diplomacy" - a 3 day tournament in which the
Californian youth team of Athletes United for Peace played local Dutch
youth teams;
 Five Nobel Peace prize winners participated in the conference, as well as
HM Queen Noor of Jordan, heads of UNICEF, UNESCO, UNIFEM and the
Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan. Messages of support were sent from
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (via video) Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and Graca
Machel;
 Two prime ministers, a deputy prime minister, two foreign ministers and
ambassadors spoke and PM Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh agreed to mail the
Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century to heads of state
around the world (she has done this already!);
 The Hague Agenda has been submitted as a UN document, will be translated
into all UN languages, and will be formally presented to the Fall 1999 UN
General Assembly.

The Conference also launched seven key initiatives, all of which are
looking for individuals and groups to join them. They are:

(1) the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA),
email <[email protected];
(2) the Global Campaign for Peace Education,
email <[email protected];
(3) Global Ratification Campaign for the International Criminal Court,
email <[email protected];
(4) the International Campaign to Ban Landmines,
email <[email protected];
(5) Abolition of Nuclear Weapons,
email <[email protected];
(6) Global Action to Prevent War,
email <[email protected]; and
(7) Stop the Use of Child Soldiers,
email <[email protected].

Additional campaigns launched at the conference include:

A call for a global ban on depleted uranium, email  < [email protected]
A campaign to end genocide, email <[email protected], and
An international  network on disarmament and globalization <
[email protected]
 

 Where do we go from here?

The Hague Appeal for Peace sent a delegation to the Centennial Conference
of "Friends of '99" the governmental meeting commemorating the 1899 first
Hague Peace conference. Hosted by The Netherlands, this legal expert level
meeting reviewed the 3 agendas of 1899: armaments, the pacific settlement
of disputes, and international humanitarian law. Another delegation, will
attend the second round of the governmental meetings in St. Petersburg on
June 22 to discuss implementation of the agenda areas. The Hague Appeal for
Peace is one of only three non-UN member states invited to participate in
these governmental meetings, the others being the Permanent Court of
Arbitration and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Hague
Appeal's participation in this meeting made history as the first
governmental level meeting in which a civil society delegation has sat with
government delegates as equal partners with equal rights.

The Hague Agenda will also be presented at the International Conference of
NGOs in Seoul, October, at the 27th International Conference of the Red
Cross and Red Crescent Movement, October, at the Millennium NGO Forum in
New York, June 2000, and at many other international meetings.  Report back
meetings are happening around the world as word spreads about the success
of the Hague conference and the Hague Agenda is distributed and discussed.
New regional coalitions are forming, for instance a South Asian Agenda for
Peace and Justice has developed. We are creating a world database of all
the organizations which participated in the conference , to facilitate
networking. This database will soon be available on our website:
www.haguepeace.org.

The purpose of the Hague Appeal for Peace gathering was to unite the
diverse elements of the international peace and justice movements in an
appeal to our governments and the citizens of the world to find ways to end
war. As Peter Weiss put it, we raised, in a serious and realistic way, the
question of whether, at the end of the bloodiest century in history,
humanity can find a way to solve its problems without resorting to arms;
whether, from the next century onward, war is still necessary or
legitimate; and whether, given the nature of the weapons currently in
arsenals and on drawing boards, civilization can survive another major war.

You too can get involved by joining one of the above mentioned campaigns
and the Hague Appeal for Peace network of activists.

Email your complete mailing address and contact information to:
[email protected].

You can also get regular updates on Hague Appeal for Peace activities, the
seven campaigns launched, and on new initiatives by joining the HAP news
listserv.

 To subscribe to this listserv, send an email message to
<[email protected] with the message "subscribe hapnews-list" in the body

of the email.

Join thousands around the world in demanding and working towards a world
with peace and justice!

***********************

Gouri Sadhwani
Campaign Coordinator
The Hague Appeal for Peace 1999
c/o WFM  777 UN Plaza
New York, NY  10017
USA
Phone:  + 1 212.687.2623
Fax:  +1 212.599.1332
Email:  [email protected]
http://www.haguepeace.org