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The World Peace Forum was mainly located on the Campus
of UBC (University
of British Columbia)
and
the Orpheum in the City Centre. The Forum was divided into different
conferences including an Asian and a Latin American Conference, a Peace
Education Conference, plenary sessions with focus on the UN and Peace
Departments, Economy and Health Professionals. All together
about 5000 people from
around the world attended this event.
23rd
of June 2006
On Friday the Forum
started with a big opening
ceremony where well-known long time peace activists like Mary Wynn
Ashfort (IPPNW)
and mayors from Mayors for Peace welcomed all the Forum participants.
24th
of June 2006
The day after we attended
the opening plenary which
main topics included Abolition of Nuclear Weapons as well as Social and
Environmental Impacts on Militarism. Judge Ch. Weeramantry, the Vice
President
of the World Court
presented "the international legal case against nuclear weapons" in a
very interesting and encouraging speech. Further speakers from amongst
others
Mayors for Peace accompanied him.
A big peace walk was
organized that afternoon from the
Waterfront to Sunset
Beach,
right through busy
Vancouver Downtown. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people
attending
it, accompanied by huge banners, music and songs. Although the peace
walk was
about different social and political problems in the world, it was
interesting
to see that a large focus was put on nuclear weapons abolishment.
25th
of June 2006
On
Sunday we were very
happy to attend the Panel
Discussion "Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: the Foundation for 21st Century
Peace". At the first panel, a survivor from Nagasaki shared with us his horrible
memories
and told us of all the suffering he went through after the explosion.
Another
victim of nuclear weapons, Trisha Pritkin whose father worked as a
nuclear
engineer at Hanford, Washington
(a plutonium manufacturing site that treated the plutonium used for the
A-bomb
dropped on Nagasaki)
told us of how her family has been haunted by all kinds of cancer
traced back
to the radiation from their former home town. Then Dr. Victor Sidel,
past
president of IPPNW, informed us about nuclear weapons as a public
health
concern. On the second panel Senator Doug Roche, the chair of the
Middle Powers
Initiative, and Rebecca Johnson, the vice chair of the Bulletin of
Atomic
Scientists were invited as speakers. They gave fiery speeches about the
need of
nuclear disarmament that were very encouraging and stirred up emotions
among
the audience. Rebecca concentrated mainly on the Trident Issue coming
up in Great Britain
in the next two years, something NWIP and IPPNW also intend to focus on.
26th of June 2006 -
“Health Professions Work for Peace”
On
Monday, Physicians for Global Survival, the Canadian affiliate to
IPPNW,
organized a one-day symposium at the WPF on “Health Professions Work
for
Peace”, and NWIP was invited to be one part of the symposium. Working
with Dr.
Mary-Wynne Ashford, one of the main organizers of the PGS event, we
arranged to
hold one group discussion with the entire audience and 2 small-group
workshops.
The NWIP participants were
Lena Wendel from Germany,
Wenjing Tao and Thomas Silfverberg from Sweden,
and Liam Brunham and
Christine Newell from Canada.
Group
Discussion
The group discussion took
place in the morning as part
of a session on IPPNW projects that also featured the Global Health
Alerts
project. During the NWIP presentation we focused on the following
issues:
- Introduction
to IPPNW
-
Why
health
professionals should be involved
-
Medical
effects of NW
-
Scope
of NW
problem
-
Introduction
to NWIP
-
Background
to project, focus and aims
-
Dialogue
technique
-
Delegations:
China, NATO,
India/Pakistan
This
entire presentation lasted about 30 minutes and we divided it up
amongst the 5
of us so each spoke for a few minutes.
There
were about 80 people in the audience consisting mostly of older
physicians,
some residents and medical students, and peace activists. It was
definitely a
sympathetic audience, as would be expected at a peace conference, so we
didn’t
really have the opportunity to try to change people’s opinions about
NWs.
Overall, though, I think we did a good job of introducing people to
NWIP and
what we have been doing. Certainly many people approached us afterwards
to
comment that they found it very interesting.
During
the first workshop we planned to start by asking the audience what they
remembered about NWs from the group presentation, and then to have an
open
discussion with the participants during which we would attempt to cover
some of
these topics:
-
philosophy
of deterrence
-
horizontal
vs vertical proliferation
-
new
developments in NW technology, BMD
-
CTBT,
NAC,
NWFZs
-
terrorism
-
accidental
and deliberate use of NWs
However,
during the introductions of the participants it became clear that the
all of
the participants (none of whom were students!) knew a lot about NW
issues. We
therefore had to change our plans a little and instead facilitated a
discussion
about NWIP and how older physicians (such as the workshop participants)
could
support it. We had an interesting discussion about the problems of how
to make
nuclear disarmament issues attractive to students in the United States,
where it has generally been difficult to generate much interest. It was
suggested that by tying the NW issues to larger social justice issues
about
resource allocation it may be easier to generate broader interest.
The
second workshop was intended to be very action oriented and focused on
concrete
projects that students could engage in. We started with an abbreviated
version
of the model-of-change game in order to provide a framework of where
student
activism could fit in to the bigger picture of disarmament work. We
were again
somewhat surprised by the make-up and small size of the audience, but
we
managed to have a productive discussion about the general
characteristics of
student-led projects.
27th
of June 2006 - Target Vancouver
On Tuesday, the last day
of our delegation in Vancouver, we
arranged Target Vancouver in front of the Art Gallery.
Liam prepared flyers with a map with concentric circles featuring the
city and
contact information to politicians in Vancouver.
We stood there for about 1,5 hours with the big red cross, handouts and
an
inflatable globe, which drew quite a bit of attention. We found a few
people
were very well-informed about Nuclear Weapon Issues, some were shocked,
others
not interested. All in all we received a good response, especially
compared to
Target Las Vegas. In Vancouver
people seemed more interested and open to our demonstration. People
there
actually kept the handouts and did not hand them back right away
showing a lack
of interest.
Conclusion
It was a privilege for us
to take part in the World
Peace Forum. Through WPF we have received input and encouragement for a
joined
walk to peace and nuclear disarmament. Although there were other topics
on the
agenda, it was great to see how much focus was put on nuclear
disarmament
proving what an important issue this is. It was great and interesting
to meet
so many people fighting for the same goal. From them we also learned a
lot for
our future projects and work. Although the workshops did not turn out
the way
we had planned and we did not get to talk with as many young students
as we
would have liked to, it was a good learning experience for us. Both to
hold a
presentation about nuclear weapons and NWIP on the “Health
Professions Work for Peace”
symposium (to some of us this was
the first time to talk to a
big group like that) and to understand how to approach young people in
North
America (and also other parts of the world) to get them more interested
in the
nuclear weapons issue.
Liam Brunham
Christine
Newell
Thomas
Silfverberg
Wenjing Tao
Lena
Wendel
On behalf of NWIP
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In
June 2006 a delegation of NWIP students consisting
of Lena Wendel from Germany, Thomas Silfverberg and Wenjing Tao from
Sweden,
and Liam Brunham and Christine Newell from Canada attended the first
annual
World Peace Forum in Vancouver, Canada.
