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May/June 2007 Living Now
Nobel Peace Winners Tell How to Achieve World Peace

by Gary Alan Spanovich

Gary Spanovich asked the Dalai Lama how to achieve world peace. His answer? Educating young people.

Gestures and symbols are needed now to develop a world-wide awareness of the world peace movement.

At a 2001 World Peace conference in Portland, the Wholistic Peace Institute brought together six Nobel Peace laureates to discuss how compassion can be brought into the diplomatic peace-seeking process. Through my work with nine Nobel Peace laureates since 1999, I have asked them two basic questions: Is world peace possible? What role did God play in your world peace work?

All nine say that world peace is possible today and each has a different understanding as to how to achieve peace.

"World peace will be found in new solutions and new ideas, and the universities of the world are the best places to formulate these solutions and not street demonstrations," says Lech Walesa, former president of Poland and leader of the Solidarity movement that toppled the Polish Communist government.

I asked Walesa what role God played in his world peace work.

"God did it all. I went around Poland everyday, for three years, trying to convince people we could overcome Communism and after three years, I had exactly 10 people who had faith we could," says the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner. "One year later, I had 10 million people who believed it because a Pole had been chosen Pope and the Polish people knew that that was impossible and if God would intervene to create this miracle, he would intervene to create other miracles. God did it all and the Polish people came to have faith that he would overcome Communism."

When I asked His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama, the head of the Tibetan government in exile and the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner the same question, his response focused on education.

"The proper way to reduce violence in the world that could lead to war is not through more police but through education. In the educational system, right from the beginning we must educate the minds of our students," says the Dalai Lama. As part of the planning team that brought him to Portland in 2001, we arranged a Dalai Lama's Youth Summit, where we brought 10,000 high school students together for a talk on non-violence.

Other Nobel Peace Prize winners hold humanistic views on peace.

"When conflict emerges in the world, almost always there have been severe violations of human rights. We must work for human rights if we are to achieve world peace," says William F. Schulz, former executive director of Amnesty US, which won the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize.

former U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield shared the same belief. "I believe that the 1948 United Nations resolution on human rights is the most important document in human history, more important than the Magna Charta or the U.S. Constitution, and if fully implemented would bring world peace."

Gary Alan Spanovich, author of How to Achieve World Peace; Six Nobel Peace Laureates Answer the Question, is the executive director of the Wholistic Peace Institute in Portland. Visit www.wholisticpeaceinstitute.com