The Human Right to Peace

By Doug Roche

Novalis, Saint Paul University , 2003

271 Pages , $24.95

Review by David Kilgour

Edmonton Journal, November 30, 2003

The author is a much-admired Edmontonian, who for more than three decades has studied and written about development, disarmament, and related issues.

In his seventeenth book, he raises a fresh banner against the world's relentless thrusts towards war, which in turn causes worsened poverty, ruined natural environments, forced migrations of peoples and growing chasms between rich and poor.

Human Right to Peace is well organized and highly readable. Part 1 - The Culture of War - deals with violence and its causes, the consequences of the war on ecology and the important nuclear weapons factor. The Culture of Peace - Part 2 - deals in part with UN efforts to "make haste slowly" with peace.

The most important parts, however, are probably those dealing with changing attitudes, reconciling religious conflicts, improved education for all and the growing capacity of civil society worldwide.

In the chapter on religions, Islam is presented as a compassionate faith. He quotes Karen Armstrong who says that it is as foolish to equate Osama Bin Laden as a fair representative of Islam as to find James Kopp, the alleged murderer of an abortionist, as a typical Christian, or Baruch Goldstein, who shot 29 worshippers in a Hebron Mosque, as an authentic Jew. Those in all three faiths who use cruelty are a tiny minority; we should not blame the vast majority in all three who are compassionate and non-violent. Roche clearly agrees with the theologian Hans Kung who says that there will be no survival of humankind without peace and none of it without peace among religions. Bridging the chasm with secularism is a separate challenge for believers.

The growth of civil society around the world is for Roche a very positive phenomenon. He thinks that their achievements include both the Landmines Treaty and the International Criminal Court. International NGOs are also important components of civil society which today number more than 37,000, operating in virtually every area, including the marginalisation of women.

Another serious book published at about the same time as Human Right to Peace is Romeo Dallaire's Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, which paints a devastating portrait of the failure of much of the UN system during the genocide of 1994. Three permanent members of the Security Council were certainly first tier culprits, but other UN players deserve severe criticism too. Serious students of conflict resolution should probably read both books simultaneously. The authors of both are idealists, but Dallaire was mugged by a terrible reality a decade ago.

David Kilgour is the Member of Parliament for Edmonton Southeast and Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific)

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