Jody Williams Is Focus of Lutheran Peace Prize Forum

MINNEAPOLIS (ELCA) -- Ordinary people working together can accomplish extraordinary things, according to Jody Williams, Putney, Vt., a 1997 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. With one effort, 1,380 countries working in a coordinated effort brought about an international treaty to ban land mines, which will take effect March 1, she said.
Williams spoke to more than 700 Lutheran students at Augsburg College's Peace Prize Forum here Feb. 19-20. Augsburg is a college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
This year's Peace Prize Forum theme, "Striving for Peace: The Morality and Machinery of Modern Conflict," focused on the contemporary and traditional modes of warfare as well as new and traditional avenues of conflict resolution.
Williams is founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The campaign, which was launched formally by six nongovernmental organizations in October 1992, shares the Nobel Peace Prize with Williams.
Provoked by the campaign, 133 nations agreed to ban the manufacture, stockpiling and use of land mines in a pact known as the Ottawa Convention in December 1997. The pact also requires nations to dismantle land mines already under ground. The United States has not signed the treaty.
"Millions of land mines in the ground, which do not recognize peace, take a victim every 22 minutes somewhere in the world," Williams said. "Tens of millions of these weapons contaminate approximately 70 countries."
Activist groups and what Williams called "middle powers" -- as opposed to super-powers -- have worked together to create an international criminal court, halted the use of children as soldiers and tried to slow the spread of firearms used in wars, ethnic feuds and street crimes.
"A lot of governments are very uncomfortable with this model," Williams said. "They don't want civil society to have an ongoing voice -- especially when it comes to security issues. As a Canadian friend of mine says, the men in suits do not want their process undercut."=20 Williams spoke at a news conference during the Forum.
Williams told students, "The campaign was a breakthrough because governments took the risk of allowing [civil society] in the room during negotiations. Because we both took risks, we changed the world on this one tiny issue. And, we've given the world the prospect of having real peace in counties like Egypt, Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Croatia, Angola, Somalia, Nicaragua and others."
"The treaty is a success without the United States, and it will continue to be a success without the United States," said Steve Goose, a representative of the land mine campaign. Goose was a keynote presenter at the Forum.
If the United States were to sign and throw its full diplomatic weight behind the treaty, it would be much stronger, he said.
Goose said the United States could conceivably bring other reluctant nations on board, including its allies like Israel and Egypt, who have not yet signed the treaty; and "difficult countries, like perhaps Russia, might be reluctant to come on board until the United States does."
The United States also has a reputation of being one of the most vigorous nations in making sure that, once it has signed a treaty, other nations which have signed it implement it effectively and live by its provisions, Goose said.
"The United States is good at monitoring compliance with international agreements and using its diplomatic muscle to make sure that others don't cheat. That would be an important contribution to this treaty," said Goose.
Larry Rasmussen, professor of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York, shared with students his thoughts on "peace thinking in Christian ethics." He said, "The new global feudalism means that peacemaking at the end of this most deadly of centuries happens amidst the heightened atomization of societies beset by shifting configurations of unsure sovereignty.
"As Christian peacemaking leans into this world, it does so with broader scope and wider search for appropriate practices. The traditional paradigms of Christian pacifism and 'just war' theory no longer control the thinking.
"God is never glorified by our violence and our humanity is never honored through it," said Rasmussen, a member of the ELCA.
The forum included 30 seminars on a variety of topics from restorative justice to crime on television news.
Dr. John J. Hamre, deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Defense, told students, "There are times when democracies have to band together and use their military forces to contain threats that could evolve into great violence in the world. It's sad that we have to say that, but it is our responsibility.
"In this kind of a world, the only appropriate course for people is to be politically active. You cannot affect the way this government carries out its foreign or security policies if you're just on the sidelines, because you're simply defaulting to others to decide what we're going to do with the country," Hamre said.
"I personally believe that virtually all forms of nonviolent political expression are appropriate and honorable and essential if we're going to shape the way this country has to carry out its responsibilities in the world. Sometimes, I'm sorry to say, it does require the use of violence, but I think you want a democracy to control that. And that, frankly, is my job," he said.
Hamre is a member of Luther Place, a congregation of the ELCA in Washington, D.C. In 1972 Hamre earned a bachelor of arts degree at Augustana College, a college of the ELCA in Sioux Falls, S.D. He received a doctorate from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1978.
Other speakers included Jan Egeland, special advisor to the Norwegian Red Cross and International Peace Research Institute of Oslo.
The Rev. Rebecca Larson, secretary for research and development education in the Department for World Service of the Lutheran World Federation, preached at the worship service. Larson challenged students to be "peacemakers and a de-mining of hearts and systems." Larson is a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.
The Peace Prize Forum rotates annually among five midwestern colleges of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America of Norwegian heritage: Augsburg College; Augustana College, Sioux Falls, S.D.; Concordia College, Moorhead, Minn.; Luther College, Decorah, Iowa; and St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn.
Held in cooperation with the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, this series of forums was created to offer an opportunity for Nobel Peace Prize laureates, diplomats, scholars and the general public to share in a dialogue on the underlying causes of conflict in modern society and on the dynamics of peacemaking. =20
The 12th annual Peace Prize Forum will be held at St. Olaf College, in 2000.

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