Abdul Ghaffar Khan International Peace-Builder Award to Prof. Johan Galtung
TRANSCEND News, 21 Nov 2011
The American Muslim Alliance Foundation-AMA honored Prof. Johan Galtung, the founder of the academic discipline of peace studies, with the Abdul Ghaffar Khan International Peace-Builder Award.
In recognition:
Of your lifelong struggle for peace with justice and against militarism, imperialism, and continued Israeli occupation of Palestine;
For practicing and popularizing your “helicopter” consciousness, focusing your creative scholarship in freeing the pursuit of peace from the clutches of the world state system;
For continuing the work you had started in partnership with the late Olof Palme to bring about a comprehensive global denuclearization;
For being a spokesperson of the third world international and nonalignment in the West, supporting democracy inside each nation as well as among the nations;
And above all, for synthesizing the best of East, West, North and South.
Washington, DC November 14, 2011 – Pakistan American Democratic Forum
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Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988), in whose name the prize is awarded, was an Afghan political and spiritual leader known for his nonviolent opposition to British Rule in India. A lifelong pacifist, a devout Muslim, and a close friend of Gandhi, he was also known as Sarhaddi Gandhi or “Frontier Gandhi”. Ghaffar Khan strongly opposed the Muslim League’s demand for the partition of India. After partition he was frequently arrested by the Pakistani government in part because of his association with India and his opposition to authoritarian moves by the government. He spent much of the 1960s and 1970s either in jail or in exile.
Johan Galtung (1930), known as the Father of Peace Studies, spent six months in jail for being a conscientious objector at age 21 in his native Norway; the beginning of a lifetime of peace & conflict work. He is the recipient of many awards worldwide, including the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. In 1959 he founded the pioneering Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and in 1993 created the TRANSCEND Network for Peace by Peaceful Means (http://www.transcend.org/). Numerous governments, associations and NGOs, including the United Nations and the EU, rely on his 50-year mediation expertise and experience to create solutions agreeable and beneficial to all parties of a conflict. He has authored over 150 books and 2,000 papers/articles/essays on the universe of peace.
Photo by TRANSCEND member Dr. Diane Perlman.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 21 Nov 2011.
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This is to congratulate you, Prof. Galtung, on your winning the Abdul Ghaffar Khan International Peace-Builder Award! Your relentless and selfless peace efforts and achievements for more than half a century are far more than extraordinary so that nobody can deny them. Once again hearty congratulations, Prof. Galtung!