Julia Simon-Mishel, Operations Director, Student Peace Alliance, United States. As one of two American youth delegates at the Third Global Summit for Ministries and Departments of Peace in Japan in September 2007, I arrived in Hiroshima expecting to see a city still leveled to the ground. Tears welled in my averted eyes as I walked through the Hiroshima Peace Museum and experienced the reality of the A-Bomb Dome and the staggering consequences of nuclear weapons.

  Julia Simon-Mishel and Aaron Voldman
with hibakusha Toshié Uné.

The onslaught of emotion peaked when I learned we would be meeting a Hibakusha, a survivor of the atomic bombing. How could we face someone whose life our country had destroyed? That evening the pain in her eyes was clear, but even more striking was the love of life that shone through that pain. Despite her loss, she forgave those who had forever changed her life. As this lively old woman danced and sang with us, I could imagine a world where the depth of human emotions overrode the hatred and fear that society places upon all of us.

The next day we spoke at a symposium in front of hundreds of people and met the Mayor of Hiroshima. The city's commitment to leading the international nuclear disarmament movement resonated with the mission of the Global Alliance. The Japanese youth in attendance, excited to meet American youth working for peace, questioned us about how they could work with the Japanese ministry of peace campaign (Japan United for a Ministry of Peace) to form their own movement.

Hiroshima remains in my memory as the beautiful city that has risen from the ashes of violence. The incredible heart and determination of the Japanese people to turn a disastrous event into a call for peace and reconciliation reinforced my belief in the resilience of the human spirit and the dedication of every person to leave a better world for the next generation.

Peter Phillips Lukwiya, founder and executive director of Uganda Peace Foundation Initiative. My participation at the 2nd Global Summit for Ministries and Departments of Peace in Victoria, Canada, in June 2006 marked a turning point in my peace work and ambition to see that communities in countries around the world are guided by the principle and ideology of a culture of peace, tolerance, and non¬violence in their daily lives. And this vision inspired me to initiate an advocacy campaign to have a ministry of peace established in Uganda. I see the world committed in its desire to create and maintain peace, and it is together that we see this pursuit a reality which we can achieve.

At the 3rd Global Summit in September 2007 in Japan, I was excited by the progress made so far in global campaigns to establish ministries and departments of peace. Most exciting were the successes noted in Nepal, which recently created its Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction, and the pending bill to have a similar ministry created in Costa Rica.

The formation in Japan of the African Alliance for Peace as an umbrella coordinating organization in Africa, for which I am the secretariat, filled my soul with hopes, optimism, and zeal to work for the establishment of a culture of peace in Africa. The attendance of a member of Uganda’s parliament is a landmark in Uganda’s initiatives to have a ministry of peace. With the already proposed strategies of setting up a parliamentary forum for peace and consolidating civil society organizations, and with Uganda Peace Foundation Initiative taking the lead so that they can come together in order to galvanize the lobbying, the prospect of having a ministry of peace in Uganda stands focused and promising.

Hon. Odonga Otto, Member of Parliament, Uganda. Recently I was in Japan to attend the 3rd global summit for ministries and departments of peace. A tour of Japan provided one of the most interesting life experiences. The Hiroshima peace museum is one of the memorable places that epitomize the Summit. A walk through the museum leaves one with tears rolling down the cheeks. And yet the peace you get from the people of Hiroshima is the peace the whole world deserves. At the Summit, the African Alliance for Peace was created, and I got the responsibility of the African Parliamentary liaison, with a task to make contacts in the African Region through its parliaments. In Uganda, we need to invest in peace with legislation that holds peace and nonviolence to be the primary organizing principle of society.


Corina Simon, Peace and Training Research Institute of Romania. My most alive desire has always been to have a meaningful contribution along with others for a worthy purpose. With the movement towards ministries and departments of peace wonderfully fulfills that need. A young person’s energy has the potential to move mountains, and, used in a positive way, it may inspire change for the better. In Romania, the volunteering movement is led by youth. The Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace, with its Youth Working Group, acknowledges the possibilities and the promise of youth.

I am now back in Cluj-Napoca and I am talking about my experience in Japan to people that I come across. Just today I handed the U.S. Delegation Report from the Summit to a representative of the U.S. Embassy in Romania and to a conflict resolution expert from the ARIA Group in Ohio. On 16 October, we will go through the schools of Cluj-Napoca giving a class about Making Poverty History. And in November, I start on a civil society peacebuilding project in Moldova-Transdniestria, a country nearby Romania, where there is a so-called frozen conflict. I am taking the lessons of these two years and applying them in the coordination of this project, initiating my first work on the ground in a conflict area.