Betty Williams: Good morning, everybody. [Audience responds, "Good Morning"] Good! You're alive! Let's do it again. Good Morning [Audience responds louder, "Good Morning"] That makes me feel a little better. It might not make you feel any better, but it makes me feel better. I'm always terribly nervous when I get up to speak because before I became a Nobel Laureate, I only ever spoke in public once before in my life, which was at my sister's wedding when my Daddy got a little tiddly and I had to stand up and thank all the guests. And Father Tutu was not a great help. He said coming out, "Are you going to perform?" I'm not quite sure what that means. I just know that within me there is an incredible passion to change the world for the children. Bobby said earlier that he started off his work because he was angry. I guess that's why mine started. People say to me, "Why did you start the Peace Movement in Northern Ireland?" The truth is I did it for purely selfish reasons. Their names are Debra and Paul, my children. And I really didn't want my babies to be brought up in a society that was destroying children.
And so, the Movement for Peace in Northern Ireland was begun by women. And I believe that women have a huge role to play in creating a just, non-violent, and peaceful world. Now, that doesn't mean that we ostracize men. Ladies, get real. We cannot do it without our partners walking beside us. But at the same time, when presidents and what have you...The last political campaign in the United States of America for President Clinton, the catch phrase then was, "It's the economy, stupid." To the men of the world I say, "It's a womb thing, stupid." Stop taking my children. Stop destroying my creation. I remember many years ago, we opened a school in Northern Ireland, the first integrated school in Northern Ireland's history. It was called Lagan College. And when we opened the school, we asked the children would they name the school-now there's a great fondness in Ireland for saints-it's St. Dominic, St. Patrick, St. Theresa, Saint, Saint, Saint, Saint. So we asked the children to name the school. And, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings come the most incredible words. One little boy, about ten years old, was sitting, and he said, "Why do we have to call everything here after saints? There's a river in the middle of Belfast, it's called Lagan, the Lagan River. Why can't we call it Lagan College?" And then we asked the children to design the motto of the school. And they designed a bridge over the river, with two little hands going across that bridge. Perhaps it's time that we, as adults, give more credibility to what comes out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.
Changing the world for the children. My goodness, what a huge statement to make. If you look at the world as it is now, you will see that we are in an economic crisis. I mean, a person with half a brain knows that there is an economic crisis going on in the world. And every time that there is an injustice of that kind, economically, socially or culturally, it always falls to the littlest of our citizens to do the most suffering. You see the way I said "citizens"? Because they are citizens. And when our work was born in Northern Ireland, it was born because I saw three little citizens destroyed in one huge act of senseless, useless violence. And I often say to people when I am talking, "tears without action are wasted sentiment." You can cry all the tears that you want to, and that's not going to change anything. But when the women of Northern Ireland stood up and said they'd had enough-that was twenty-three years ago-what you see today evolving is not that Gerry Adams finished the war in Northern Ireland. That's a lie. Gerry didn't finish the war in Northern Ireland. There was a groundswell that became so strong and so huge in its justice that, really, the men of violence had nowhere else to go. They had to get around a table. They had to begin discussing. Father Tutu has just returned from Northern Ireland and he said to me, "You know, Trimble has never shaken the hand of Gerry Adams." Well, I'll tell you something: Gerry Adams wouldn't be the first terrorist who became a statesman. Would he? And, someday, they will shake hands.
My work was born because of an act of violence. And then, when they gave me a Nobel-you see, there are no famous people in the world, ladies and gentlemen; there are only people who think they are. And when they gave me a Nobel label, who would want to hear what Betty Williams, ordinary housewife-did you ever here such a disgusting word as an "ordinary housewife?" Have you ever met an ordinary housewife? Have ya? Hands up. See, there's no such thing as ordinary in the world. Everybody is extraordinary. And everybody can do something. Little did I know when I stood up that morning, and screamed out against the violence, I didn't know what God's plan was-because you know, God has a very strange sense of humor. You never see a sentence as it's written, you only see it when the whole paragraph is completed. So, He stuck this Nobel label on me, and threw me out in the world. And I very quickly became an expert in the issues of children.
One of the first journeys-I would prefer to tell you the stories that children tell me, rather than talk as Betty Williams. Talk as the children talk to me. And one of the first journeys that I took was to Ethiopia. And we went in with convoys of trucks delivering food around the little villages. And when you go to an area like that, it doesn't take too long before you start to suffer from what the people there are forced to live with on a daily basis. You get head lice-anywhere you have hair you have lice, which is very uncomfortable. You also get terribly sick stomach, and then you become, after three or four days, when you start to try and acclimatize, you become kind of emaciated. We covered about thirty-two villages in that journey. And on that last village-I mean, they were all absolutely horrible, but I'll just tell you about one village that we visited. By then, we were almost out of supplies and we were all very tired. We were also emotionally destroyed. This village had 368 children. Let me rephrase that: 368 little pieces of human garbage. Because that's what we had made of these children. In a world that can feed itself, it's crazy that any child should starve. And we didn't know what to do for these children because we were, I suppose, so destroyed emotionally at the time. But I managed to get friendly with an Ethiopian guard. I really kissed the Blarney Stone that morning, Father Tutu, because I actually had to physically say "don't hate this person, don't hate this person." Because he was one of the people who would be responsible for terrible actions. But I managed to get friendly with him, and he let me use his telephone equipment. And I called a friend of mine in Norway, a wonderful man called Gunnar Borrevik, who was head of a newspaper called Faedrelandsvennen, which is rather on the par of The New York Times, and they flew in a small aircraft, and we started transporting children to a field hospital the Norwegians had set up. It would have taken us probably about five days by road to get the children to the field hospital, but it only took twenty minutes by air. This was only a little six-seater plane, and into that we put forty children. And on a journey of twenty minutes, we lost fourteen of those children. Fourteen children. Think about that. Those priorities... They talk to me about military budgets. And I have to sit in rooms with men who justify military budgets by telling me it's for defense. Do you know what I say? No doubt, the dead and dying are very gratified that you are defending them so well. The insanity of what's going militarily in the world has got to be challenged. Not by me, or Jody Williams, or His Holiness, or anybody else who is supposed to have "a famous name." The insanity of that has got to be challenged by every single one of you. Every one of you. I'm proud to have a friend by the name of Oscar Arias Sánchez, because this man is challenging that, and we must all support that challenge. To look forward to a demilitarized world is not for idealistic fools. They call us idealistic fools-I've been referred to by many names, but that's one I object to the most. It's not idealistic to say that the world must begin to live together without guns or bombs, or better and bigger ways to destroy each other. It's not idealistic.
After having done twenty-three years of journeying around the world on behalf of children, I've come to one conclusion, and one conclusion only. The children must be given their own voice because the adults are not doing a very good job of representing them. So, what we will do at World Centers of Compassion for Children is to create a political voice, to create a voice so strong. The AARP was founded by a woman who sat one day in her kitchen and was absolutely disgusted by what was happening to the elderly folk in the United States of America. She formed an organization called the American Association of Retired Persons. And when that organization was formed, everybody in Washington kind of laughed; they thought it was a joke. And the organization began to call itself "The Gray Panthers." Well, they ain't laughing anymore in Washington at those little old ladies. Because when they go to Washington with an agenda, they have a voice And we will do the same for the children.
We will have to develop courts that deal with their issues separately, because the children of the world need a Marshall Plan, a huge new Plan. UNESCO is wonderful, UNICEF is wonderful, Save the Children is wonderful, and on, and on, and on. And all these organizations that are out there have one problem. Nobody knows what the other one's doing, and they're all fighting about their dollars. That's got to stop. We must umbrella every organization out there that is working for children, and bring them under one roof to do the job better. I wrote this last year. I'm not very good at making long-winded, intellectual, academic lectures because I've had to sit through so many of those myself, I swore I'd never perpetrate that act of violence on anyone, so I'm not going to do it to you. I'll probably speak a little less than twenty minutes. I would, however, like to say a very special thank-you to a person that I love with all my heart. Her name is Michele Bohana. Thank you, Michie, for bringing us together. And to Jeffrey and to Bryan, this is an incredible event. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. Bryan, I met your wife last night. She's gorgeous.
This is what the children tell me. "We, the children of the world, assert our inalienable right to be heard and have a political voice at the United Nations and at the highest levels of government worldwide. We, the children of the world, must live with justice, with peace and freedom, but above all, with the dignity we deserve. We, the children of the world, require a Marshall Plan, a Geneva Convention, and a World Children Court of Human Rights which meets regularly to listen to our testimonies and know what is actually happening to us. We intend to provide our own testimonies. We, the children of the world, demand the right to be taken to safe shelters in situations of war. We, the children of the world, consider hunger, disease, forced labor, and all forms of abuse and exploitation perpetrated upon us to be acts of war. And we, the children of the world, until this day June 20, 1997 in the city of Vienna, have had no voice. We demand such a voice. We, the children of the world, will develop our own leadership and set an example that will show governments how to live with peace and freedom. We, the children of the world, serve notice on our abusers and exploiters, whoever they may be, that from this day forward, we will begin holding you responsible for our suffering.
Thank you very much.
DISCUSSION AMONG THE PARTICIPANTS
Julian Bond: Again, let the moderator begin. Two more Irish citizens just received the Nobel Prize, and the nation has demonstrated at the ballot box that it wants to move ahead. What more must be done to put this behind the Irish people?
Betty Williams: I meant to mention that, but I get so nervous that sometimes I forget what I need to say. One of my great friends in the world is a man called John Hume, who has worked ceaselessly and tirelessly for justice and freedom and peace in my country. The other man, David Trimble-it's rather like the Mandela/ de Klerk affair, where David Trimble actually managed to push that envelope. And someday, Your Grace, he will shake hands with Gerry Adams. I think right now they have to stop posturing. They're posturing at each other. I was home very recently, and one of the greatest things that we have in our Assembly in Northern Ireland now-there's a women's group in there-and while all the men are posturing at each other, the Women's Coalition is actually doing the work. And so that will stop, too. The absence of violence is only the beginning of the work for peace. We have come a long way in Northern Ireland and we will go that other mile to sustain the justice and peace we so richly deserve.
Jody Williams: I have a question. This would be directed not just to Betty, but to Rigoberta, to Archbishop Tutu, to everybody whose children have grown up in a culture of violence. The words you say about the voice of children, I certainly support. I worked with Madame Graca Machel, former first lady of Mozambique, currently the wife of Nelson Mandela, when she was the expert at the U.N. to look at the situation of the impact of armed conflict on children. I worked in El Salvador, in and out, for many years, and if I remember my statistics correctly, 85% of all families were directly affected by the violence in El Salvador. How do you create havens-and this was a great question we had in the Machel project-how do you create havens for children? But even worse than creating a haven in the midst of conflict, what is the legacy for a country when 85% of its families have directly felt violence, when children have grown up in a state of conflict where that is all they know. Where they learn that violence is the quickest way-at least seems to be the quickest way-to resolve conflict. How do you undo that so that you really can reestablish the values, reestablish citizenship and good governance? It's just an ongoing question. Olara Otunno [Under-Secretary General, Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, at the United Nations] and I just had this big debate about this in Belgium. How do you do it?
Betty Williams: Well, I think in this situation-I can only speak for Northern Ireland, I am not an expert in the world, I can only speak for a situation that I saw-one of the greatest things I referred to was Lagan College. And what actually we had to do in that situation was educate children to educate their parents. The child became the teacher at home. I remember the morning we opened Lagan College. We had eleven students. We were a Protestant short. We had six Catholics and five Protestants. And we were very aware that the media would concentrate on the fact that we didn't have even numbers. And about three minutes before the school opened, this woman arrived with her child. And I said to her, "I hate to ask you this, but what's your religion?" She said, "I'm a Protestant," and I hugged her so hard, I nearly broke her ribs. "Thank you, God!" And that school now has 1,400 pupils and a waiting list in utero. So, it has to start somewhere, Jody. You cannot go out to a child in the Northern Irish situation and take the gun out of his hand, and take the bomb out of his hand, without replacing it with something. It has to be replaced with something. And so, we replaced that with education. We are now seeing the results of this all these years later. There are no quick solutions, love, you and I both know that. It has to be worked for on a daily basis.
Julian Bond: Your Grace? Dr. Menchú Tum?
Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum: Si. In the first place, I would like to say that there is a huge problem throughout the world which is the street children. The street children who have only one mother, or don't have a regular family life, they suffer not only from situations of actual violence, but from the lack of sensitivity on the part of other people in their society toward them. In terms of the knowledge and the experience that we have of conflicts in Guatemala and in Central America and in Chiapas, in all those areas, none of the peace accords that have been fashioned have remembered in any way whatsoever that there are children that live in those places, and there have been no provisions for children in those peace accords. And when those wars came to an end, it was as though everything was going to simply come back to normal for those children. After the peace accords in Guatemala, we have had to begin to struggle to have a code for children so that we can begin to defend their interests. And much to our surprise, we found a tremendous amount of opposition on the part of those in our country who sell children. It almost seemed like we were confronting a new struggle, almost as though the old violent struggle that we had just overcome did not have anything to do with this new situation that we were in. I believe very much in local struggles and in national struggles, and I think that in each nation we have to create laws and conditions which will protect the interests of children. I don't think that this can be done in a global fashion. I, too, have spent many, many years going from one international conference to another, and I find that in those international conferences, people do not really know what is going on at different national levels, so that we really have to go from the national to the global.
Betty Williams: I think, Rigoberta, we have to create a model refuge. As Jody was saying, until we build the model-and I believe all the Laureates should be involved in this-to create the safe havens and to allow the children's voice to be stronger than ours, we will see no changes.
Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum: What I understand is that all human beings have mothers, and if all of us who are the mothers of the world get together, we will create a better world.
Betty Williams: Absolutely. Here! Here! I must tell this to His Holiness, whom I also love. I am surrounded by men that I just adore, this is great! When we opened our school, Your Holiness, as you know, our children were educated Catholic or Protestant, and really were not aware that there were other religions in the world. So we decided we would bring the other religions in to talk to our children. And one day, this little boy said to me-I said, "We're bringing in a Buddhist monk today to speak to you." And he said, "Is he a Catholic Buddhist or a Protestant Buddhist?"
Julian Bond: Your Grace.
Archbishop Tutu: I am not a Buddhist! Really, just two things. One is to-and I am not trying to be politically correct-to underscore what Betty was saying, and Rigoberta. Sitting for two and a half years or so, listening to some gruesome accounts of the sorts of things that have taken place in our country from all sides, it struck me more forcibly than I had ever been able to realize that, in fact, we would not have got our liberation without the women. They have been quite, quite extraordinary, actually. And somebody looking at the statistics, as it were, of our Truth and Reconciliation Commission, one of the things that struck them was the fact that when men came to testify to the Commission, almost always they were testifying about what happened to themselves. And when women came, almost equally, they were telling stories about what happened to somebody else. That there was this kind of nurturingness, that women have nurtured our freedom. And I think that we need to give a very special place to them in our struggle, which we probably don't always do.
The second point perhaps is in relation to conflict and children. To say that, in a sense, the impact of that on children is like what happens with landmines. The effect continues long after the conflict has ceased. Our children, who are going to be the adults of tomorrow, are brutalized. They have lost in many ways a reverence for life, and the violence that then erupts in a society in part is the consequence of children having known nothing better. They have gone through life seeing people say that the way you resolve a quarrel, a disagreement, is dispatch your enemy. That the best kind of enemy is a dead enemy. And we are going to have to be dealing with that at home. How do you rehabilitate youngsters who had to fight for the right to be human and, in the process, have lost the compassions and the gentlenesses and the reverences for life that ought to be natural to children.
Jody Williams: May I tell a little story? When I worked in El Salvador, we brought wounded children to the United States for donated medical treatment. I met a young woman-she was sixteen, she was a guerrilla, and she... It was very curious to watch her-the juxtaposition of this woman who felt that she had no option but to take up arms, and I'll tell you why she had to. When she was eleven years old, she came home to her village and she heard the screams of her brother. She hid, but unfortunately, she could see the death squad killing her brother. And they were doing it by skinning him alive. She did not take up arms yet. She finally decided she had no option and no voice in this country, when the death squad came back and killed both of her parents. By then, she was thirteen or fourteen. At that point, she decided that it was either pick up a gun, or die herself, and it was also pick up a gun so that no other people would have to watch their brother be skinned in front of them. So what does it mean-childhood-in this kind of situation? But then, I also saw her flirting-I saw this young woman when we brought her to the States-because she had been rehabilitated, if you will, and she needed treatment-I watched her flirting and trying to figure out how a young teenage girl experiences all the other things in life that she was seeing by being in the United States that she had never experienced in El Salvador. And it just profoundly affected me, wondering-all of her lost childhood-and here the adolescent she was trying to recapture in her new experience in the United States juxtaposed beside a young woman that had to take up weapons to defend herself, her village, and her dead family. Rigoberta would certainly understand that. How do you deal with that? And I totally agree with your analogy. It's a landmine that will affect them forever.
Betty Williams: Jody, you deal with it by changing it. By giving the children their own voice is how you deal with it. There are no answers from adults. We have screwed it up royally for the children of the world. And we need to fix that. There's a young man in Canada whose name is Craig Kildenberger. I don't know whether any of you have heard of this young man, but he read an article about a Pakistani child who was used in slave labor. And it moved him so much that he persuaded his parents to take him to Pakistan, and he met with this young man. And he saw the slave labor that was going on. He came back to Canada and he challenged-now this young child, at this stage, Father Tutu, was only eleven-he's fifteen, I believe, now. He challenged his own government on bringing in goods from Pakistan that had been used in forced labor. And he challenged them so well, and so articulately. You see, children have tremendous brains, and we don't give them credit for that. Mothers will relate to this: when my children were nine, ten and eleven, they could outsmart me, outwit me, outfox me, outrun me. They're clever, they're really smart, and when Craig came back and did that challenge to his own Prime Minister, he did it very publicly. And he changed that situation for the children in Pakistan. The Canadians no longer import those rugs. So children can do it, Jody. We just have to give them the way to do it.
Julian Bond: Who else can answer this difficult question: How do you restore humanity to people who may have lost their humanity in the struggle to gain their humanity? How can this be done? Bishop Tutu, is this occurring in South Africa as a result of the work you've been doing?
Archbishop Tutu: I thought I was raising that problem.
Julian Bond: And I'm asking for the answer!
Archbishop Tutu: Sometimes, it is very distressing. It is distressing. You've got to have the organs of civil society seeking to permeate society with the right kind of values. At home, just now, they've had what they call-speaking about moral rights, and so forth-they have had a Moral Summit, in which the leadership of the various communities: religious communities-Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc.-and political leaders, and leaders in other spheres of life have come and said, "We've lost a lot of things in the struggle. We've lost the sense of worth of people. We've got to recover the act of being human." The whole business about morality, trying to remind people that, in fact, this is a moral universe. That right and wrong, in fact, matter. That you might get away with many things, wrong things; you could succeed, but you will get your comeuppance. It's that kind of universe. But it's not something that you proclaim just by word of mouth. It's got to be incarnated in people. You've got to have structures that assist people in realizing actually that this is a universe that is ultimately hospitable to gentleness, to compassion, to love, to caring, to sharing. And that there ought to be people who are willing to live for that. And then children will, I hope, catch...
But a lot of things have gone wrong at home, as some things have gone right. And so, whilst we celebrate, there are other things that we realize have gone wrong, and as I grow more decrepit, I realize that there are some extraordinary truths that people might have usually have pooh-poohed, which are for real. That there is no reason whatsoever to assume that because I was involved in a just struggle, and I had my idealisms, that when I win the struggle, I will necessarily maintain those idealisms. But there is actually something-and it's not a myth-there is something called "Original Sin." And each one of us has constantly got to be saying, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."
Betty Williams: Original sin. Mortal sin and venial sins, I used to get so confused as a child. I think I commit mortal sins constantly, because I am constantly angry about what's happening to the children. Anger is an emotion that can be very destructive, and I have to be very careful about my anger, and direct it correctly. I just want to say this because His Grace is here. We are doing a project-for the students in the audience. I am a great believer in getting you involved, you know, put your money where your mouth is, and we're doing a project for South Africa. I was with His Grace earlier in the year when we did a Peace Jam on Robben Island where we brought young people together from Capetown and surrounding areas. And it was a wonderful experience, Your Grace. You gave them back a lot of what they'd lost in just some of the things that you said to them. And we had a young girl come up to us at the end of the Peace Jam, and she was a very tiny little girl-[to Archbishop Tutu] Do you remember, Your Grace?-and she walked over and she said, "Mama Williams" (and I was crying, they called me Mama Williams) she said, "I have been raped" [to Archbishop Tutu] Do you remember, Your Grace? And I went to His Grace and I said, "Your Grace, there's a child here that's just been raped," and His Grace came over and we did what we could for her. But we went to a school in Mannenberg, which has over 1,000 students, about two books in the library, and no computers. I want to get the students here involved in helping me bring computers to the school in Mannenberg. Will you do that? Hands up, I want your names-your name, your address, your date of birth, your telephone number-on a piece of paper, please, because that's a project that we are now doing at World Centers of Compassion for Children. We're taking out-tears without action, wasted sentiment-we're going to take out twenty computers to the Mannenberg School and ten to the city of Capetown.
Bobby Muller: One of the very encouraging things in my experience is the resilience of the human spirit. I am just going to share a little bit of a personal thing that happened. I really considered myself a very righteous guy, a very good guy. And when I went in to the Marine Corps, I was really sensitive to kids. I went through the whole training thing, went to Vietnam. Vietnam was a very confusing war. You didn't have a front line, and you didn't have a clear identification of who your enemy was. And I had a lot of situations-I was a platoon commander-where I had my guys out doing operations and, as they would often do, they would have the kids come in, and we'd give them C-rations, we'd give them stuff, and a couple of times, actually, that night, we would get hit, we would get attacked. Our command position and our critical positions were obviously known to the attacking force, the Viet Cong. And it turned out that it was the kids who we had befriended, and given the C-rats to, etc., that had gotten their brothers to come in and attack us that night. And I won't get carried away with it, but a lot of things happened in my interaction with the Vietnamese. I remember at one point, we used to have these heating tabs that we would light up and they would burn with an invisible flame to cook up the C-rats. And we were on a truck convoy going down the highway and my guys were lighting up these heating tabs and throwing them off the truck. And they were a valued little commodity. So the kids would come out of the villages, and they would pick up these heating tabs. And, being that they had an invisible flame, the kids couldn't tell that it had been lit up and it would stick to their hand, their fingers, and burn them. And I remember laughing at that. When I got shot, I was medevacked to a hospital ship, and they had me in intensive care for several days, and they had a psychiatrist come and talk to me. He said, "Is there anything you want to talk about?" He was presumably inquiring about the fact that I was going to be a paraplegic. My question to him was: two days before, I had sat down, chowed down and had a big lunch amongst a whole bunch of dead bodied. And it meant nothing to me. And I said, "Is there something wrong with me?" And he said, "No, there's nothing wrong with you. You've been in an extraordinary circumstance, and your mind has its automatic defense mechanisms that come into play to allow you to get through these extraordinary circumstances." He said, "You go back to New York City, and next year you see somebody get hit by a cab, and you're going to be as affected as anybody else." Which is exactly what happened.
What I am saying to you is that I think people are inherently good. I think the power of love and the power of good is a very, very strong force. But, we can be affected by the negative, we can be affected by the forces of, for lack of a better term, darkness. And, in being on the ground and getting involved in a situation of killing people and having my guys killed, I sometimes say that I think I took a little bit of a walk down that path of darkness. And I personally realized how a good guy could wind up doing unconscionable things and have a value structure so fundamentally altered. And remember, My Lai, O.K.? In My Lai, it was the good guys-it was an American infantry unit that went in and murdered 504 Vietnamese women and children and old people, without one single shot being fired in return. That was the good guys. O.K.?
So, what I am saying may not be clear, but when you get exposed to evil, and when you get into darkness, and the circumstances around you are of that nature, they can have an affect on all of us. Those of you may say, "That could never happen to me." Well, let me tell you something: you're kidding yourself! I didn't think it could happen to me. I was shocked when I realized it did happen. But, the positive part of the story, to wrap it up, is that by coming back, by getting love, getting nurturing, getting out of where the forces of darkness and the negative energy of basically evil can work on you, allows you the opportunity to rehabilitate, to rejuvenate, and I've seen it with literally hundreds of veterans that were exposed to the most horrific combat-I have seen it with kids, I've seen it with a lot of people in war zones that I have gone to. So, we have a rejuvenative capability, stop feeding the negative, take them out of those situations, provide love, give them a decent environment, and even with those that have been crushed, you can so oftentimes bring them back to wholeness and to health.
Betty Williams: Absolutely. There's just one more thing that I'd like to add to this. I am a Catholic, and I challenge my church on blessing men to go to war. I think we have to challenge the leadership of whatever church we belong to, and remove padres from armies.
Julian Bond: Thank you. Professor Hopkins:
Jeffrey Hopkins: This question is addressed to Harn Yawnghwe. How would you educate the children affected by oppression and war to grow up not to retaliate?
Harn Yawnghwe: I don't know, to give a short answer. But it is not an easy process, because as everyone has been saying, when they see the suffering, when they experience it themselves, it's very hard not to want to have revenge. But I think, if you can create the environment, the atmosphere, and in the case of Burma, a lot of people-most people in Burma are not-the culture is such that you do not-there's a lot of give and take. So, since I mainly am speaking about Burma, I am hopeful that it will be possible as long as you stop.... The whole reason that we have these problems in Burma is that it is, in a sense, a political problem. The military has been trying to solve it by using violence. And what we are saying is that this will not solve the problem, and you have to solve political problems through political means. And hopefully, that kind of thinking-also what José has been talking about in East Timor, not to take revenge on the Indonesian migrant workers-I think that is the way we need to go.
Jeffrey Hopkins: This is a question for His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Can the religions worldwide, given their dissimilarities and their followers' different passions, act as a coherent force in the peace process?
The Dalai Lama: My belief is, of course, various traditions have great potential to increase compassion, the sense of caring for one another, and I think also the spirit of reconciliation. However, I believe that in terms of humanity, the role of religious belief is limited. Also, I believe that a human being, without religious faith, can be a very good human being: sincere, a good heart, a sense of caring for others, but no belief in a religious faith. So I usually say that there are two types of spirituality. One spirituality is with faith and a philosophy. Like according to Christianity, and Islam, and Judaism, and many other religious traditions, the concept of a Creator is very powerful, very powerful. And then some other religious traditions like Buddhism and Jainism: no Creator; oneself is almost like a creator, self-creation. That also is a very powerful method to change our mind. Both types utilize or approach through different methods, different ways, but more or less have the same goal. I am not talking about heaven or other things, but simply a good human being, a warm-hearted person. All religious traditions have the potential, as I mentioned earlier.
However, we also need some other sort of spirituality without any religious faith. Simply on the basis of awareness. [To José Ramos-Horta] You mentioned that the ultimate source of conflict is ignorance. I think for all trouble, there are a lot of causes and conditions. Some are very subtle causes. And ignorance, lack of awareness: that is, I think, the ultimate root cause. And then other different factors or conditions also are there. So, I believe that through analyzing, through education: what use is violence? What benefit, ultimately, is violence to yourself? Ah, more violence. Counter-violence. And eventually, mutual destruction.
On the other hand, a certain amount of disagreement or different views or contradictions is always there. Even if we are involved in war continuously, day by day, that contradiction will not be solved. It will always remain. Different ideas, different economy reasons, and some kinds of disagreement, sources of conflict, always remain there. Then we need to think about that reality. Even if I use violence intensively, the problem cannot be solved; it still remains. Instead, mutual destruction, mutual suffering.
So then, problems we have to solve, but through other means: dialogue, compromise. [To Archbishop Tutu] You are the great preacher! So the spirit of reconciliation: fully respect others' views, and others' rights, and develop a sense of genuine concern about others' welfare and their right. And then compromise. Only compromise. That's the only way. So you see, with awareness, I think these can develop without any religious faith or religious belief. Therefore, I usually call them basic human values. That means the good qualities of human nature. [To Bobby Muller] As you mentioned, I am very much encouraged. There are a lot of bads in our emotion, but our ultimate nature is, I believe, gentleness. Everyone has the seed of a sense of commitment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of caring for one another. So I believe that with various different religious traditions we also have a greater potential. So, let us try to utilize that potential. Isn't it? Thank you.
Jeffrey Hopkins: This is a question for President Arias. Is it easier to identify the problems and motive forces behind religious and ethnic hatred than it is to speak against the horrific results of multi-national capitalism?
Oscar Arias Sánchez: Well, I believe in the market economy. I don't see why capitalism has anything to do with what we are talking about here, but anyway. I am a strong believer in democracy, as well as in the market economy, as well as in political pluralism, etc. The problem is that even though Marxism and Communism has been buried, and both are dead, that doesn't mean that democracy has triumphed, and that is our main concern, or should be our main concern. Because democracy is not going to triumph simply because democracy is not an end in itself. We all know that for more than 2,000 years, democracy has been a means. The end is always the human being-the mother, the child. And as long as democracy does not deliver the goods-and democracy is not delivering the goods in many or most African countries, in many Latin American countries, in many Asian countries-so eventually, it is going to be questioned. Democracy is going to be questioned by the people, by societies: why do we need to praise and struggle for democracy if democracy is creating more and more and more injustice, and poverty increases every day, and inequality increases every day, etc., etc.
It was Berdiaev, the Russian thinker, who said, "The problem with Christianity is the Christians." But this is true for all religions. We are the ones who are failing-our indifference. I don't think we can enjoy peace in the twenty-first century with our ethics of the twentieth century. It has been mentioned here that his century has been the bloodiest century-by Professor Bond-in the history of humankind. I mean, how can we enjoy peace and security and freedom with the values that have prevailed? Selfishness instead of solidarity, so much greed, so much cynicism, so much hypocrisy. I will be speaking tomorrow-perhaps this might sound too strong-but about the cynicism of this great nation. I think there is a need for the United States to lead, because the world expects from Washington leadership. But in the right way. Politics goes hand in hand with responsibility and with morality. And, certainly by sending arms to so many countries in the world, you are not taking the moral decisions that you should be taking. This country taught the rest of the world that "right is might," and that's what the world expects from this great nation. So, trying to answer your question, I think that the reason why we might not enjoy a more peaceful future is simply because we, as individuals, have failed. There is a need for a new ethics; otherwise, it is going to be very difficult to enjoy peace. I think there is a need for more compassion, for more generosity, for more solidarity, for more tolerance, and certainly for more love.
Julian Bond: Thank you a great deal, Mr. President. This brings to an end this morning's session. Before we thank our honored guests, may I ask the audience if you will please stay in your seats until the Laureates have cleared the room. And now, a big thank-you for this morning.