THE PRESIDENT
“For almost two decades the Secretariat has had the privilege of serving to amplify the inspiring messages of the Nobel Peace Laureates and Laureate Organizations. The leaders and citizens of Rome, Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Barcelona, Hiroshima and Chicago have hosted Summits with open arms and hearts.
We consider it an honor to work with the Laureates, people who have overcome enormous challenges and speak with authority on the pursuit of peace and nonviolence. Summits have produced powerful substantive statements addressing a wide range of issues, such as, protecting human rights, ensuring a healthy environment, ending war and poverty, eliminating nuclear weapons, and providing a vision for a sustainable peaceful future.
The Secretariat has worked with a small dedicated staff and relied with gratitude on the extraordinary volunteer efforts of many highly accomplished people. Our current staff ranges in age from under 30 to over 70, comes from all over the globe, and brings skills from the professions of law, education, diplomacy, business, and the arts. We share a passion for peace and although we speak over ten languages, our efforts harmonize in our work to achieve a world where there is peace between peoples, nations and nature. We hope you will come to our next Summit and support our contribution to a better world.”
VISION OF THE PRESIDENT
“Dear Friend,
On behalf of the Permanent Secretariat of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, let me express our gratitude for visiting our web site and for your interest in the work of our organization.
As our Organisation is pursuing own paths of service to the society, combined with the creativity and ability to promote noble vision, we could offer to enter a new era of high technologies and information, of economic and other progress, equipped with the vision to foster the evolution towards a civilization of harmonious, happy, prosperous and loving human beings.
The studies made by our organization in the field of peacemaking since 1999 have made us to come up to the conclusion that the so called transversal approach and convergence of different spheres are important in order to allow our work to transcend into the complex system of living of human beings on Earth. Let me elaborate on this topic a little bit more in this letter.
A person strives not to suffer, and seeks the source of happiness in the material world, technological, social, economic progress, and finally faces a reality when there is a lack of a higher meaning. One can develop intelligence, but without ethics, higher purposes to serve the humanity, spirituality, culture, such intelligence can only bring the humanity onto the unimaginable sophisticated level of technological, social and economic development, but not necessarily to make a human more happy, harmonious and loving. This aspect may determine, where the civilisation is heading. It is essential to see that technological, economic and any other progress is an improvement in life, but not its basis. The basement of human life is a strong spirit, ethics, morality, reason/thought, controlled by the spirit.
This vision goes hand in hand with the approach: that any knowledge and any progress must fall into the ground which has strong ethical and moral standards, since when the ground is loose, a knowledge and progress might be compromised. We need a solid foundation – a society created and creating on the basis of values of ethics, fraternity, morality, dialogue, etc. This mean that in addition to the structural changes, the way of thinking also needs to change.
Therefore, the following methods can be explored and proposed. A human is the final user of the technology and progress, therefore a human, being capable to be a source of high consciousness, must stand at the forefront of all the processes created by human civilization.
A human is able to be one step ahead of technological and other progress and foster the development of scientific, philosophical, spiritual and cultural thoughts as the positive products of human’s intelligence, only when personal development of human beings is a priority, in order to better and safely assimilate progress for himself, for those around him, for the Earth. Personal development in this case means the convergence of ethics, culture, spirituality, education and responsibility.
If a person is developed spiritually, culturally, scientifically, ethically, then technology and other means for living will develop in accordance with nature, with the principle of preserving and developing our planet and life on it.
It is also necessary to see the necessity to stop the reason-consequence connection between progress and the deterioration of natural conditions and the conditions for the existence of life on our planet. If the planet flourishes, then the progress will flourish. In a highly conscious and developed society a human is able to accept technology, progress, inventions, assimilate and adapt to them safely for the final goal to suffer less, and not more. If there are means, processes, tools, intuitions that lead a holistic personal growth, then technologies will develop, and will not harm.
We are able to make the progress meaningful for all forms of life on our planet and as usual, like in everything, it is necessary to invest and spend time. If this approach is invested, then technology and any progress will not complicate life, will not add suffering, will bring life to a higher level where a person does not waste time on suffering, but is engaged in his own development and the development of his own environment, he himself becomes more beautiful, more harmonious and a similar environment is created around him, in other words inside harmony comes out of the person to the outside world. A pyramid image could be used for this approach: if investments are going only into technology and not in the holistic human development, the foundation will not be complete and no matter how much we build, the pyramid will collapse.
This will be the correct installation of the correct foundation so that the pyramid is stable, safe, viable. This will be a strong foundation and can take the humanity to another level.
For this, we are capable to find and share the experiences from those who have gone through it, look for new forms together, discuss and disseminate.
For this purpose I have the following vision for the Summit of Nobel Laureates for Peace:
- The World Summit of Nobel Laureates for Peace
Our organization has taken the decision to undergo a conceptual change and enhance the Nobel Peace Summit as a platform involving Nobel Laureates of other categories as well as renown scientists, philosophers, artists, intellectuals and spiritual leader . We had experience in our past by inviting few Nobel Laureates of sciences to the Nobel Peace Summit.
A reminder is needed that when a discovery is made: a Pandora’s box is opened. It is necessary to offer control over the process and ensure that the discovery contributes to the preservation of life, development and evolution of human nature and life on the Earth. This is common sense. A cultured person understands that if he makes a mess, he will live in it. In the meantime he also understands that he can use technology to his advantage and to the benefit of the environment. The more uncultured a person is, the more he will use technology for undignified purposes – wars, governance for his own benefit.
There is a large number of scientists, spiritual leaders, philosophers, etc. who are able to propose and expose the views, which are an alternative to pure consumption culture with its consequences on nature and human being essence, alternative to the unconscious substitution of the co-existence of human with nature and life in our planet with the sole objective of technological progress.
Therefore, we would like to explore on shaping an event which includes Nobel Laureates of sciences and peace and dedicate the Summit to the themes of Ethics, Science and Technology: the significance of ethics, balance between human safety and the technological progress, balance between nature and progress, human progress and holistic formation of a person and many more.
- Global Civilisations Dialogue Institute
This Institute was created in order to enhance the ideas on the peace dialogue between the world’s civilisations, which are considered not only as cultural, historical or geographical realities but also the dialogue between the vision on transforming civilisational paradigms of the past into the projected paradigms of the future through new means. This can become a platform to deeper explore and disseminate the ideas of intellectuals, philosophers, scientists etc.
- Education: universities and schools. As mentioned above, besides changing any “structure” it is important to take care of thinking. The moral and ethical gap can be eliminated from an early age. Education is the entering point to influence the minds and spirits of human beings. If educational, cultural and spiritual institutions develop, they cooperate, then all these institutions will be able to interest a person in being an adult, taking responsibility and becoming mature, and mature humanity will accept all technologies harmoniously, naturally and for the benefit of themselves and their environment, adequately to assimilate, perceive without the distortions of fear, helplessness, illusions, irrationalism that exist in an immature person. An adult and reasonable person is able to perceive and use any tools more safely for themselves and others.
For this it is necessary to invest in own ethics, social postulates, and develop the free will of people, as if there is a vacuum, then external and unacceptable alien forms will be attracted to it.
One of the core missions of our Organisation has been to preserve and promote the heritage of Nobel Peace Laureates. We are fortunate to work with these great minds in the field of peacemaking, and in doing so, we cherish every opportunity to promote Nobel Laureates legacy which has a powerful educational element, especially , for youth peace education.
We have developed an academic curriculum for universities that is the product of more than 20 years of experience in the field of ethics and peace-building in a large sense, based on our collaboration with Nobel Peace Prize-winning individuals and organisations, as well as the Organisations like Yours promoting unity, dialogue, peace.
The curriculum is a one year university course which consists of two parts: the first is more theoretical, including topics such as non-violence, environment, conflict resolution etc. and can be reduced to topics which are relevant to a region. The second part is more practical and focuses on the concept of “sustainability” and the sustainable development goals. Lessons are created to provide opportunities for students to present their ideas and make judgments about the world around them. We are also working on topics like ethics in leadership and plan to develop other related materials with our partners for the universities and in the future will extend to the school education.
To date, our Leading by Example network is made up of students and young professionals who are making a difference in the world every day. They come from more than 70 (seventy) universities from different corners of the world. Among them, we have young environmentalists, social entrepreneurs, artists, journalists, lawyers, politicians, doctors etc. This diversity with a collective aspiration is what makes our Leading by Example program universal.
The most remunerating feedback we have is that peace and ethical education offers an opportunity to create new formation of humanity, positive professional, leaders, etc. inspired by the courage, unity, determination, positive energies of the Nobel Laureates and other examples of peaceful coexistence. It offers the transformation of our youth from passive to active, from depressed, insecure, to decision makers, creative, passionate, confident, interdependent, courageous individuals that will make impact in the future of their city, their country and the planet.
Based on the above experience, there is an aspiration to create regional educational Nobel Peace Summit centers in partnership with regional leaders in order to foster the development of scientific, technological, social progress, based on ethics, peace, dialogue, individual dignity, fraternity, higher meanings.
With Best wishes,
Ekaterina Zagladina
President