Photos of the IPPNW European Student Congress in Dublin

Faced with the nearly impossible task to sum up a conference like the one we’ve witnessed last week in Dublin, you ask yourself: “How can I even attempt to describe how it was?” Truly, this sometimes seems like an impossible task. So let’s just start with the facts and see where it goes from there...

Last week, over 100 students from all over Europe convened on the cute little village of Glencree, a few miles south of Dublin,where they attended this year’s European Student Conference. They came from as far away as Russia or Romania, from the UK and Estonia, Austria and Norway. The German and Swedish affiliates sent large groups of students, as did Finland, while smaller affiliates such as Denmark or the Netherlands were also duly represented. Many of the participants came from Ireland, a country that previously didn’t have many active IPPNW students. Through the organization of the conference, however, the three initiators, Paula, Sile and Peter, were able to assemble a fantastic team, including students from Malaysia, Lebanon, Japan or Botswana, who all study in Dublin and took part in the conference.

For four days, the lilac-covered walls of the “Peace and Reconciliation Center”, itself a former army barrack, reverberated with the spirit of enthusiasm - the kind of spirit that suddenly appears, when motivated students get together and talk about the subjects that touch them most. In the case of European IPPNW students these were, amongst others, the issues of “Peace through Health”, the promotion of global health, the peculiarities of life in today’s climate of fear, the problem of drugs, which are only availiable for one-fourth of the world’s population, different ways of reducing prejudices in medical practice, the possibilities to introduce social responsibility into the everyday medical routine and, last but not least, ways of improving the structures within the IPPNW student movement itself.

Fueled by the provoking speeches of well-known IPPNW physicians such as Allan Connolly or Neil Arya, the students were able to question many aspects of their own thinking and beliefs and in the workshops further examined common misconceptions in the world of today. All in all, it was one of those conferences, which you left, feeling that a few veils had just been swept away, which had been covering your eyes until then. Other inspiring speakers included Dr. Ceppie Merry, a young consultant doctor who spends much of her time working in development work for Africa, Dr. David Hickey who spoke of “Alternative Approaches to the War on Terror” and his own solidarity program for Cuba, Coalmhe Butterly, of Palestine fame, who presented ways to peacefully resist the many injustices of today and of course Dr. Austin O’Carroll, a General Practicioner and himself physically impaired, who talked about “Equality and Awareness in General Practice”.

Apart from these motivating workshops, organizations like Medicines Sans Frontiers or Amnesty International were given the opportunity to present their work and thereby offer concrete examples of “Peace through Health”. As another new feature of an IPPNW conference, the UN-Role playing game offered a group of 15 students the opportunity to slip into the role of UN-delegates for one day and to discover the opportunities and limitations of the UN and the veto-plagued Security Council. Furthermore, the conference managed to include workshops on stress management, laughter meditation, leadership and motivation, culminating in the creation of a “Mandala of Peace and Healing” on the premises of the Center, which served as the perfect backdrop for the closing ceremony on Sunday evening.

But it was also a conference of diligent “old-style” IPPNW work. Ongoing international student projects were presented and worked on. The Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project (NWIP), which promotes meetings with decisions-makers and organizes discussions amongst students in nuclear states had its own workshop, as did the Refugee Camp Project, which will organize an international program of applied “Peace through Health” in a Palestinian Refugee Camp near Bethlehem coming August. Finally, the new IPPNW website was presented and ways of improving its use were discussed amongst interested students.

As in years before, the European Student Conference was also an opportunity for the student participants, who came to Dublin from so many different countries and backgrounds, to exchange their views and ideas, to inform each other of their activities and to present the topics they worked on back home. In a workshop on the new student guidelines, many different voices were heard and during the presentations of the different affiliates, every country had the chance to raise issues, which were important to them – whether it was the introduction of “Peace through Health” into the curriculum in Norway or the promotion of open-source software by the Austrians, who seek to combat the “assymetry of information”.

True to its fame, the European Student Conference also provided the participants with an outstanding social program, starting every day with extremely cool wake-up dips in Glencree’s very own “outdoor pool” (aka “lake”). Yoga sessions, meditation classes, a Ghost tour of Dublin and a hike in the nearby hills (accompanied by the best, Irish weather-men had to offer) followed suit, while the evenings were filled with music, as bands played and students danced the nights away, sometime not knowing whether or not they were shaking their hips to the sound of African drums or to the bowrans of traditional Irish reels and jigs.

After four such days of learning, discussing, planning and exchanging, the participants parted again, returning home with some of the spirit of this year’s meeting, taking with them new ideas, new angles from which to look at things, new impressions ... and hopefully also new friends. For this and much, much more, which cannot even be remotely summed up in this terribly short article, I want to thank the organizers once again. Thank you for this spectacular conference, which by far exceeded everyone's expectations and set definite new standards for European Student meetings in the future.

Your excellent organization, your spirit and your contagious smiles made the weekend more than just a conference; it made it into an experience, and it gave a lot of people a lot of motivation to stay on, to join or to get to know IPPNW and with it the possibilities for medical students to change something about this world and to make a difference. And isn’t that what we are all about?

Alex Rosen

European Student Representative