Minister of International Development and Human Rights Hilde F. Johnson

“Solving Conflicts”

Welcoming address at ISFIT ‘99 - The International Student Festival in Trondheim

Opening Ceremony 6 March 1999

Students and friends,

There is no doubt that you - students from all over the world - contribute to setting the global agenda. Students’ meetings, festivals and global networks of all kinds draw our attention to issues that are important. You can make the headlines. You can define the bottom line. You can make a difference!

My address to you today will turn on what I call the ‘three A’s’: Awareness, agenda and action. These concepts are linked. You have to create awareness in order to get issues onto the agenda. And issues have to be on the agenda before we can act, before we can do something. We need to know and we need to get involved in order to take effective action.

A few weeks ago I returned from a visit to Sudan, where I headed a delegation from the ‘Partners Forum’, which was there to revitalise the peace process. For the last three decades Sudan has been rent by civil war. It is a society where human misery seems to have no end and where political solutions to the conflict seem very far away. We want to change that. I am chairing an international donor country group now working to accelerate the peace process. For a few months last summer the attention of the international community was focused on Sudan. Now we hear little about the fate of these people.

We have better means of communication than ever before, we have more newspapers, more television channels, not to mention the World Wide Web. Today’s means of communication reach all corners of the world.

The media shows us heartrending pictures of hungry children, women and men. Photos of devastated battlefields, damaged cities and destroyed crops. It is easier to take pictures of bombs, tanks and guns than of complex peace processes. It is easier to shoot dictators - and I am still talking about photography! - than to photograph democracy.

But after a few days in conflict areas the television cameras are turned off and the reporters leave. They travel to the next ‘hot spot’. We must not neglect the problems once the media has changed its focus. When the cameras are switched off and the CNN crew leaves someone has to stay.

In Europe, the focus is on the conflict in the Balkans. This is of course a serious conflict and it deserves our attention. We must not, however, forget the many other areas, the millions of suffering people, the other conflicts. Too many people in the world today live in countries torn by unending conflicts which are out of sight and off the global agenda. We must not forget that finding peaceful solutions takes time, political involvement, money and other resources. We must be prepared to support and to go on supporting these solutions. We need to be aware and we have to take action, whether we are dealing with conflicts in Europe, or forgotten conflicts in Africa or Asia.

In a wider sense, globalisation means that every part of the world is now our ‘neighbourhood’. There is no longer any such thing as ‘far away’. This goes both for geography and for our sense of solidarity.

Caring about others, caring about the suffering of others, and doing something about it, should not be an act of kindness that we perform now and then. It should be a moral imperative for all of us. Every human being has the same worth and the same inherent rights. As students, as future leaders in your own countries, as people enjoying the privilege of an education, you have a moral obligation to take action.

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Hence I am pleased to have this opportunity to address ISFIT '99, the 5th International Student Festival in Trondheim. The active approach of this festival, with its workshops, dialogues and many cultural events, will make it possible to share experience and learn from each other. And most important, to get to know and understand each other. As students you build a platform of knowledge. Active solidarity and action must be based on this knowledge.

Why the focus on solving conflicts? This is the main theme of ISFIT '99, and to illustrate it I would like to present some figures from today’s conflict agenda:

During the last ten years we have seen more than 100 violent conflicts. Only six of them have taken place between countries. The rest are civil wars. Many of today’s conflicts are characterised by their long-term and particularly violent nature. In the First World War five per cent of the victims were civilians. Today, the figure is almost 90 per cent. Civilians - you and me - are now the main target. Violence hits the weakest groups the hardest.

Every year, around 26,000 people are killed or maimed by anti-personnel landmines. Since World War II, mass-produced hand weapons have killed a far greater number of people than the heavier types of weapon. New technology in small arms makes it possible to use even more children as soldiers. Prisoners are tortured in more than 120 countries.

Behind the statistics on victims of conflicts and human rights violations we find names, faces and individual stories. People who are deprived of their homes, their families, their health, and even their lives.

What can we do? What are the roads from agenda to action?

For the international community it may be easier to provide food and blankets than to tackle the root causes of the conflict itself. To me, it is obvious that we have to do both. Prevention is always better than cure. We have to involve ourselves in a process that will cut through the vicious circle of human rights violations, suffering, retaliation and poverty.

Violent conflicts are always the result of deliberate human acts. We have to focus more on preventing violent conflicts and intensify our efforts to promote peace and reconciliation.

We need permanent, peaceful resolution of conflicts, the reconciliation of former enemies, and the building of new relationships based on trust and mutual interests. The human rights of every single individual must be respected.

Development aid is an important part of this process, but it is only one tool, one element of this process. Poverty is a cause of conflict, but you can also turn this around and say that conflict causes poverty. Today, a quarter of the world’s population are living below the poverty line. Rich countries’ commitment to fighting poverty through development assistance has faltered in recent years. There is a need to build up pressure to turn the tide.

Finding permanent, peaceful means of resolving conflicts is easier said than done. - Yes, but we have done it, and we are doing it. One example is the Middle East and the Oslo process. We have learned that it is possible to create links between fine words at conferences and concrete action in the field. I can point out two examples from the conflict agenda which are related to the themes of this festival as well.

First, Guatemala. The Norwegian Government and Norwegian Church Aid have facilitated talks and negotiations between the guerrilla movement and the Government of Guatemala. This eventually led to the signing of an agreement on a definitive cease-fire in Oslo in 1996. Throughout the negotiations Norway supported the process financially, in order to encourage the demobilisation and reintegration of soldiers from both sides. We are also involved in human rights projects, in strengthening democracy and in promoting economic development through our development assistance. Peace must be built over time.

Secondly, East Timor. I welcome your decision to award the ISFIT Peace Price to Antero Bendito da Silva of the East Timor Student Solidarity Council. For quite a few years after the Indonesian annexation of East Timor (in 1976), this was one of the world’s forgotten conflicts. But the East Timorese themselves, together with international and Norwegian NGOs, managed to create an awareness of the situation. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Bishop Belo and Ramos Horta in 1996 attracted more attention, internationally and in Norway, and prompted fresh action. The Norwegian Government has criticised Indonesia for perpetrating human rights violations. We have supported the efforts of groups in East Timor and abroad to monitor the human rights situation and facilitate the flow of information. And we have supported health care and education for the people of East Timor. East Timor is now at a crossroads. It is crucial that the international community is involved in ensuring a peaceful solution which takes care of the fundamental rights of the East Timorese. Here Norway is committed to assist.

These two examples help illustrate some general conclusions:

We must approach conflict prevention and conflict resolution from different angles. Our efforts for peace, democracy, human rights, development and humanitarian assistance must be integrated. Short-term measures, such as humanitarian relief operations, must be combined with a long-term commitment, such as intergovernmental negotiations and development cooperation. This requires an integrated, flexible approach, and a broad perspective.

Every second war that has reached a peaceful settlement starts again after a few years. This illustrates the importance of consolidating peace, of an integrated approach, including development assistance.

We must all use whatever means and channels are at our disposal, as politicians, as students, as members of organisations, as activists. We as governments must work to influence the politicians involved and the people in power. Both national and international non-governmental organisations - including students’ networks - have important roles to play. They can be part of conflict prevention measures and conflict resolution processes. Reconciliation and the prevention of new conflicts means involving ordinary citizens and giving them confidence in the future. It means developing a culture that can prevent violent conflicts. It means using all our knowledge of the past to set new, humane standards for the future.

I see from the festival programme that you have invited participants from Northern Ireland, Colombia and the former Yugoslavia to live together for a week and get to know each other. Peace is only sustainable when groups and individuals at all levels participate in the process. In other words, you have here an opportunity to build a platform, hopefully a common platform for reconciliation. This is indeed the best way of setting the agenda! I hope - and I believe - that your dialogue groups will be part of a process that will break down intolerance and prejudice on all sides. A process that will create awareness, a process that will start new action. For peace.

I would like to conclude by mentioning some areas where I feel that you as students can make a difference:

Use your student organisations, the fora and networks in your countries, to build alliances with students with different backgrounds from your own. As students you are shaping your society for the future. You can create awareness, you can influence public opinion and you can promote new attitudes. Use your power!

Use and develop information technology and exploit the many networking opportunities of cyberspace. Students are among the elite of Internet practitioners. Use your skills! The landmine issue would never have reached the global agenda or resulted in the Mine Ban Convention without the mobilising power of the World Wide Web.

Continue to shape the global agenda. Use your technology and your organisations to build bridges and to promote reconciliation and tolerance in your countries.

Commit yourselves more firmly to promoting human rights. Human rights should be made part of the curriculum, not only in law studies, but in many other university subjects as well. Knowledge of human rights is the foundation for action. Respect for the inherent rights of every human being is at the heart of conflict prevention and conflict resolution.

Finally, use the opportunities provided by this festival to become aware of, to understand, and to attack the underlying causes of conflict.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, spoke to the University of Tehran at the start of the anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights (and I quote) “ The absence of tolerance and human rights is not only a denial of human dignity. It is also the root of the suffering and hatred that breeds political violence and inhibits economic development... Human rights are what make us human. They are the principles by which we create the sacred home for human dignity”.

In a few weeks I will again be travelling to Africa, this time to Mali, Uganda and Tanzania. Every time I visit one of the least developed countries and see the plight of the people, I am reminded of our own privileged position, living in the richest and most peaceful corner of the world. It confirms my conviction that the struggle to eliminate poverty is indeed one of the most urgent human rights challenges facing us. It must be placed at the top of the global agenda. It must be fought with every means at our disposal. Combating poverty means resolving conflicts, potential ones and actual ones. Resolving conflicts, on the other hand, is maybe the best means we have for fighting poverty, and not least, its acceleration.

This job is my duty and it is our duty. In today’s global society, poor people’s lives are our lives, the lives of the victims of conflicts are our lives. As Secretary-General Kofi Annan put it: “You, the students and leaders of tomorrow, are the guardians of these human rights. Their fate and future is in your hands”.

In my words, you can make a difference! To give people - and yourselves - a chance, a chance for change.

Thank you.