Following the proclamation in 1997 of the Appeal of the Nobel Peace Laureates for Peace and Nonviolence, the Peace Appeal was founded with a mandate from five Nobel Peace Laureates, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, F.W. de Klerk, Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Esquivel, to build a culture of peace and non-violence for the children of the world. For two decades we have partnered with a global community of peacemakers to advance just peace.
News from Our Partners: The National Convergence Platform is Launched in Zimbabwe
Harare, Zimbabwe. The National Convergence Platform was formally launched at Kentucky Airport Hotel in December 13, 2019. A new initiative involving the Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations (a grouping of all Zimbabwe's major church associations) and civil society institutions, the National Convergence platform was created to create a space to host deliberations on the social, economic and political challenges facing Zimbabwe. The opening gathering attracted more than 1,000 participants drawn from churches, civil society organizations, labor unions, academia, business and professional bodies, Chapter 12 Commissions (formal bodies established under Zimbabwean law), chaplains from the police and students. The Peace Appeal's partners, the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, played a lead role in organizing the event, and will serve as the secretariat for the new body.
Issue Brief: New Challenges to Peace - Artificial Intelligence and Weapons of War
By Sahana Bhagat
Technological advances are rapidly outpacing our ability to reflect and decide whether a particular new technology is one that serves our public good. Technologists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, ethicists and legal scholars from Microsoft to MIT are now openly questioning how artificial intelligence and what is called “machine learning” can be designed and/or regulated to ensure such automated systems don’t do harm, from entrenching racial stereotypes, or other forms of discrimination, in insurance, criminal justice, healthcare, or in many other applications. Nowhere is the dystopian vision of machines increasingly taking over human agency more frightening than in the current research on lethal autonomous weapons systems, known as “LAWS”. LAWS are weapons that utilize artificial intelligence to locate, identify, and attack targets without human intervention. Dubbed ‘killer robots’ their critics argue these technologies lack human morality and judgement, and point out the danger in assuming that the automation of the exercise of lethal force is more ‘objective’ than human rationale. Read more. Research Update: Coordinating Transitional Justice
Insights into the practice of peacebuilding from the community of the Peace Appeal.
Jeffrey Seul, the Peace Appeal's co-chair, recently published an article in the January 2019 edition of the Negotiation Journal (published by the Harvard Law School) on the challenges to coordinating transitional justice in countries in conflict. The article addresses the real and perceived tensions between human rights and conflict resolution professionals as they seek to "avoid or end the wars that breed human rights violations and the human rights violations that breed wars. The full article is available online from Wiley and Sons here.
Other Recent PublicationsFor further articles and reports exploring approaches to conflict transformation and critical issues facing our partners, click Recent Publications.
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Invest in Peacebuilding 2020
News and Perspectives:
The Hong Kong Protests
Nov. 16. “Ripeness [for dialogue] is not something that happens, you create it. You need to understand what is behind the precondition so you can address what is under the table rather than on the table.”
- Hannes Siebert at a closed-door forum organised by the Hong Kong Forward Alliance. Read more.. Welcoming Our New Intern for Fall 2019
The Peace Appeal is pleased to welcome Sahana Bhagat for its internship program in its US office for the Fall semester.
Sahana is a 3rd year Echols Scholar at the University of Virginia. (The Echols Scholarship program is awarded to app. 5% of entering students within the University of Virginia's College of Arts and Sciences). Sahana is pursuing a degree in Global Security and Justice, with a minor in Social Entrepreneurship. Sahana has a qualitative research background and has most recently returned from conducting ethnographic research for community organizations in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. She is passionate about humanitarian aid and microfinancing. During her internship, she will be working with Peace Appeal staff on a number of projects related to our support for peacebuilding partners in Zimbabwe and US. We are excited to have her join us. 2018 Annual Report Available
The Peace Appeal's Annual Report - a snapshot of our work and financial statements is available. Contact us here to request a copy.
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