To Build a Better Tomorrow
NOBEL LAUREATES, 3 Mar 2025
Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Matt Meyer – TRANSCEND Media Service
February 2025
We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbors, near and far, day in and day out, to build that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning.
- Community of Peace People, Northern Ireland, 1976 [1]
In our founding declaration, Nihon Hidankyo expressed our determination to ‘save humanity from its crisis through the lessons learned from our experiences, while at the same time saving ourselves.’
- Terumi Tanaka, Nihon Hidankyo Nobel Peace Laureate, Japan, 2024 [2]
We do not seek to deny our violent past but rather work with it, process it, and turn it from a site of conflict into a basis for joint, constructive action. What does liberation look like and how do we begin to heal from our past and present trauma? How do we liberate ourselves from occupation, oppression and violence?
* Combatants for Peace, Israel and Palestine, 2025 [3]
At a time of great crisis and change, we write in continued and consistent urgency for peace with justice, through dialogue and direct peacebuilding. As lifelong peacemakers, we have never stopped seeking opportunities to exchange with the very peoples we may be in conflict with – finding more often than not that on the grassroots and local levels, all people want the simple truths of human rights and an end to violence and conflict.
In recent years, we have found ourselves in dialogue with friends from Russia – including a local elected official from St. Petersburg, Leo Semashko, who founded and heads the Gandhian Global Harmony Association.[4] We have joined him in an assessment of the dangers of suicidally militaristic pro-NATO intensifications which threaten both Russia as well as world peace. We have added our names as co-authors to a call for Perpetual Peace of Russia and Ukraine, recognizing their common histories.[5] We affirm, as some of our European neighbors warn us, that solutions which try to deny the sovereignty of either peoples or obtain a “peace without Russia”[6] or a one-sided “victory” will be ineffective and short-lasting at best. We must therefore also be sympathetic to our neighbors who hope to see in Donald Trump a US leader who will shift away from NATO, towards a more balanced and permanent end to unnecessary conflict in the heart of Europe.
Our analysis and experience, however, leads us respectfully to a different viewpoint, with continued hope but also with great worry and concern that a Trump-led imperial agenda can only lead to continued conflict, perhaps mostly in other parts of the world. Our histories are centered in an understanding that colonialism, like its imperial father and neocolonial cousin, is itself an act of great violence, a crime against humanity. Therefore, we especially oppose the intensification of militarism and incursions of the settler-colonial Zionist apartheid state of Israel, supported by different tactical approaches but with the same political and military fervor from both major US political parties. We support freedom for the people of Palestine and watch with horror as the early stages of a ceasefire agreement are followed by talk of a US take-over of Palestinian Gaza.[7]
Unlike some, in the US and elsewhere, we do not see the world fundamentally divided between Republican and Democrat, between good and evil, or even between an infallible right and wrong. Neighbors have to be more forgiving of one another, and social scientists and activists – especially ones seeking peace with justice – have to understand the nuances that appear to separate us but need not keep us divided. The Community of Peace People of Northern Island was founded on dialogue between Catholics and Protestants; our friends in Palestine include Muslims, Jews, and Christians; around the world we unite with people of all faiths, ideologies, and backgrounds.
We cannot disagree that a “revolution of common sense” is needed in the world. We are simply unwilling to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt that he can or will lead such a positive transformation, despite his rhetoric. We cannot dispute the excitement that surrounded the election of Barak Obama in 2008, but we were unwilling to give him the benefit of the doubt that he deserved the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize before even taking action as President. We are frankly more aligned with the rich histories and experiences of Nobel Peace laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and former President Jimmy Carter of the USA, both of whom led long lives struggling for justice – and both of whom were clear that Israeli policy toward Palestine was an act of apartheid.[8] For Palestine and for all still-colonized people living under occupation – for Puerto Rico and Kurdistan/Rojava, for Western Sahara and West Papua, for all oppressed people of the world, and all those living amid genocide, war, and the causes of war[9] – we call for freedom with dignity, for full and immediate liberation, for a true revolution of the common people.
In this time of great crisis and change, we work and pray for the tragedies of our era to become bad memories and continued warnings. Our work is as it ever has been: to nonviolently campaign for an end to the conflicts before us, to stand in solidarity with those most in need, and to dialogue with our neighbors – even those we seem to disagree with – to build a better tomorrow for our children.
NOTES:
[1] Global Nonviolence Action Database. Peace People March Against Violence in Northern Ireland. 1976. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/peace-people-march-against-violence-northern-ireland-1976
[2] Terumi Tanaka. 2024. Nobel Peace Prize Lecture. Oslo, Norway. December 10, 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2024/nihon-hidankyo/lecture/
[3] Combatants for Peace. 2025. The Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony. Palestine/Israel. May 15, 2024. https://cfpeace.org/joint-nakba-ceremony/
[4] Leo Semashko. 2024. Peace Science for the War-sick Humanity. Peace from Harmony website of the Gandhian Global Harmony Association. https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=253
[5] Semashko, Corrigan Maguire, Chomsky, et al. 2024. Perpetual Peace for Russia and Ukraine. October 6, 2024. Peace from Harmony website of the Gandhian Global Harmony Association. https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=1219
[6] Krone-Schmaltz, G. 2024. Peace in Europe—Not Without Russia. See http://www.krone-schmalz.de/. Full presentation:https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=121107. Referenced October 5, 2024.
[7] The Palestine Journal. 2025. ‘He’s Completely Lost It’ – Trump Proposes Taking ‘Ownership’ of Gaza in Bizarre Comments. February 5, 2025. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/hes-completely-lost-it-trump-proposes-taking-ownership-of-gaza-in-bizarre-comments/
[8] See Ahmed, N. 2024. Desmond Tutu: ‘Israeli Apartheid Worse than South Africa.’ Middle East Monitor. October 7, 2024. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241007-desmond-tutu-israeli-apartheid-worse-than-south-africa/. See also: Carter, J. 2006. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. New York: Simon and Schuster.
[9] See the Occupied People’s Forum; the International Tribunal on US Human Rights Abuses Against Black, Brown, and Indigenous Peoples; and other leading expressions of resistance to genocide and modern colonialism, as in Meyer, M. 2025. Beyond Our Current Boundaries. Trenton: Africa World Press.
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Mairead Corrigan Maguire is the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and co-founder of the community of Peace People of Northern Ireland.
Matt Meyer is Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association, active in global resistance, reconciliation, and human rights work from his home base in New York City.
Tags: Nobel Peace Prize
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 3 Mar 2025.
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