Peace and Democratic Multilateralism

27 Jul 2017 at Headquarters of the ECPD in Belgrade, Serbia

The coming conference will bring together numerous participants ‒ prominent scientists, politicians, diplomats and high-ranking officials of international, regional and national institutions from Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, China, Australia, India and other countries. It will be opened by introductory speeches by H.E. Federico Mayor, President of the ECPD Council and long-standing Director-General of UNESCO, H.E. Prof. Dr Erhard Busek, Former Austrian Deputy Chancellor, Prof. Dr. Shinichi Ichimura and Prof. Dr. Johan Galtung, Founder and long-term President of the International Institute for Peace Research.

Read more: Peace and Democratic Multilateralism, 27 Jul 2017 at Headquarters of the ECPD in Belgrade, Serbia

Dear friends and distinguished members of ECPD,

With deep sorrow and grief we announce that our dear and good friend, Vice President of the ECPD Council, Academician Prof. Dr. Vladimir Stipetić passed away in Zagreb at the age of 89. Academician Stipetić was a prominent scientist and internationally reputed economic theoretician, former Rector of the University of Zagreb and one of the most prestigious members of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, member of a large number of the academies of sciences in many countries and author of numerous papers published in many languages all over the world. His demise represents an irreparable loss for our institution whose mission and noble goals Academician Stipetić was devotedly pursuing from the very foundation of ECPD, and everything he did will forever be highly appreciated. His remarkable personality, high professionalism and genuine dedication to ECPD will always be remembered and he will be greatly missed.

Prof. Dr. Negoslav Ostojić

ECPD Executive Director

Making it Happen: A Big Stride for Youth

The 5th Global Youth Forum of the EUROPEAN CENTER FOR PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT (ECPD) United Nations-mandated University for Peace is orchestrating this Happening in Belgrade, 28-29 October 2017. The ECPD is on course for Balkan Youth to undergo a regional and European eclipse. It will follow a rare solar summer eclipse that darkens a large part of the earth. However, as Youth turns out in Belgrade, a new day dawns for the rising moon of Youth as it noses up the socioeconomic agenda. We can make it truly regional and much more so! Know that only YOU can make it happen. If YOU come to Belgrade, it will happen. We await YOU in Belgrade, the decision is YOURS!

Professor Dr. Jeffrey Levett

Co-Chair Youth Forum

Making it Known, 5th Youth Forum

28 — 29 Oct 2017 at the City Hall of Belgrade, Serbia

Belgrade above marina

by JEFFREY LEVETT

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe".

“Let no man be called an infidel unless he has harmed another”.

 The European Center for Peace and Development (ECPD) Belgrade and United Nations-mandated University for Peace has already, home page posted, the upcoming event and 5th Youth Forum. It will be transacted in the City Hall of Belgrade, (October, 28-29, 2017). The Youth Forum is a recent activity of the ECPD. The ECPD is making considerable effort to push youth higher up the regional agenda. Youth must be given an even higher social priority! Youth must be given greater skills and its socio-political engagement strengthened. Youth must be better dovetailed into its multiple worlds. Youth must become an evolving force.

The ECPD emphasizes cultures for peace, religious tolerance, and respect for human rights and a society for all ages. The implementation of the Road to Dignity by 2030 outlined by the UN Secretary-General can promote an alternative life approach to consumerism and materialism and take out bumps on the way to its achievement as well as help transform the lives of Youth and protect the planet. These are essential ingredients for unity and sustainability and can give Youth more hope in lieu of hopelessness.

The Youth Forum first surfaced within the framework of the activity, Balkans in the 21st Century, a pointer to peace and stability and finally arrived after a period of gestation. Your presence may just make a noticeable regional difference! Your presence will make an important difference and your voice will be heard!

The upcoming event provides an instrument to discuss problem solving within a framework of a world staggering from inequality, societies in crisis and weakening democratic values. The context is the new global digital space and widespread fiscal austerity. The background is also one of denial, denial of disastrous climate changes from a planet running down, mass migration along highly dangerous corridors as well as terrorism that viscously takes away innocent lives. The mindset of concern yells that little time is left for looking back and that much greater effort is needed to save and shape the future. This will be made better known in Belgrade.

Aims of the Belgrade Youth Forum are to provide a knowledge network for Balkan youth within culture, health, education and work and to give YOUTH a better crack at changing their world for the better. Another aim is to develop citizenship, civic and civil practices and cultivate a better sense of true belonging. The upcoming Fifth Youth Forum (Belgrade, 28-29 October 2017) will be transacted within an uncertain regional space and a problematic world. Its banner is “Youth Peacebuilders for a sustainable Future”. Come to Belgrade with your forward looking mindset and your concerns. Bring your ideas and say what citizenship means or should mean to you. Tell your audience of your community initiatives. Do you want a peaceful and inclusive society? Can we build Youth leadership? Can we encourage peace-building, reduce violence or counter extremism? Youth can stimulate society to “think out the box” and push it in difficult directions.

One outcome thus far and much appreciated by this writer is the level of inter-generational solidarity expressed by youth participants in their acceptance and warmth towards older contributors in all past Youth Forums. Pasquale Baldocci is one of the seniors, an Italian diplomat, poet and humanitarian who was present in Rome, 1957. In Pula, 2016, he took youth on a fascinating journey, from the Ventotone Manifesto, through Coal and Steel, Treaties of Rome (Common Market, EURATOM), the agony of BREXIT and addressed the urgent need to reform European institutions. Many participants underscored that implementation of European projects in our times cannot be done using thinking from past centuries. A new mindset is called for! Another 3rd age stimulus came from an inspiring discourse on man’s higher purpose and values worth striving for within a better society. As one young participant from Finland Hannah Kekale said, young people are born into a different world. Her father got his first mobile phone at 35, her grandfather at 85, and her great grandfather didn’t have one. Life is changing at breakneck speed, trucks drive themselves and computers translate sentences with almost human-like accuracy; globalization gets faster. Exemplary participant reports have been produced, for example one by Kristina Tolic, from Croatia.

The ECPD, considers it imperative that young people in the Balkans and everywhere receive a deeper understanding of status and circumstances of their region, workings of the European Union as well as erudite interpretations of events in their global world. Participant Marjana Gorgieva promoted the instruments of consolidation, conditionality and communication together with developments in effective diplomacy as a means to underscore the advantages of belonging to the supranational EU. In the same vein the ECPD desires greater communication with Youth and is a health diplomacy activity on its well developed diplomatic studies. The 5th Youth Forum has arrived and because of the work of a dedicated team of young people in Belgrade; Ljiljana, Irena, Irena, Luka , Mirjana, Ana, Aleksandar. They are the real facilitators of the event. Come to the beckoning multicultural Balkans and meet them.

If you are between 18 and 35, come to Belgrade and help nurture a new generation of Youth leaders. Make new friends! Connect. Apply by June 30, 2017 . Take the fast track to leadership. Make it known and facilitate the 5th Balkan Youth Forum in your own networks. See you soon in Belgrade!

References:

• Youth for maintaining peace: the role of knowledge. Proceedings of fist two youth forums (ECPD, 2015)

• Declaration on Implementation of the Human Security Concept in the Balkan Region

• Jeffrey Levett, John Kyriopoulos: Public health in the Balkan region: one school's experience

• Levett Jeffrey, John Kyriopoulos, Contributing to Balkan Public Health: a School for Skopje

• Skopje Declaration on Public Health, Peace and Human Rights 2001 Croatian MJ

• Jeffrey Levett, Takehiro Togo: Health Diplomacy, WFPHA

Jeffrey Levett

Jeffrey Levett is Director Emeritus, Department of Public Health Management and founding Dean of the National School of Public Health, Athens Greece. He is currently, Professor, International Health and a member of the Executive Board, European Center for Peace and Development, United Nations University for Peace, Belgrade, Serbia. 

Champion for Children

Remembering Jim Grant

Jim Grant teaches two young girls

http://wsimag.com/economy-and-politics/23436-champion-for-children 

9 FEB 2017

The figure of Jim Grant is a historical one. He saved 25 million children, and it would be interesting to find out how many of them are now playing a relevant role in their countries and in the international arena. Of course, it is impossible to forget that Jim Grant managed to make the ideals of peace and international cooperation real, at a level which made the United Nations a major player all over the world.

Read more: Champion for Children - Remembering Jim Grant

Between Europe and the Middle East

The Current Challenge

20 APR 2017 by NEGOSLAV OSTOJIC

The Victor monument was built to commemorate Serbia's victory over Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire during the Balkan Wars and the First World War

Once again, Europe and the Middle East are facing historic challenges. The withdrawal of the UK from European institutions, the rise of extremist national leaders, the challenges of Jihadist Islam in nearby regions, and the assertive policies of Russia under Vladimir Putin all pose new issues, seemingly without offering positive pathways toward the future. The period of peaceful post-Cold War evolution seems over, and no one can easily predict the ways in which Europe will evolve in the coming decade.

Read more: Between Europe and the Middle East - The Current Challenge

The Author’s Own Review On

JAPAN AND ASIA-Economic Development and Nation-Building

Shinichi Ichimura

Kyoto University, Japan
European Center for Peace and Development (ECPD) 
University for Peace est. by United Nations, Belgrade, Serbia

This book is the second collection of my professional articles on the economic development and nation-building of Japan and Asian countries that I wrote from the early 1980s to 2016 and did not re-publish in any other monographs. The first one was Political Economy of Japanese and Asian Development, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Tokyo, 1998. It covered my main articles and essays from the 60s to the early 80s, dealing with Japan’s postwar reconstruction and Asian flying-geese pattern of development. These two books are translated into Serbian-Croatian language and published by the European Center for Peace and Development. I am particularly pleased with this effort of ECPC, because as the director of Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, I recognized a long time ago geo-political similarities between Southeast Asia and Southeast Europe, the Balkan countries and have been long associated with ECPD.

Read more: Wall Street International - Promotion of the book S. Ichimura 2016

Sir James R. Macham, founding President of the Republic of Seychelles, our long-standing honorary professor, prominent member of ECPD Council and our true friend and supporter, passed away suddenly on January 8, 2017, in his residence in the Seychelles.

Sir James was the Founding and First President of the Republic of the Seychelles, President of the World Peace Council and Member of the Club de Madrid. He was a persistent and committed advocate of peace, tolerance, understanding and international cooperation. He received numerous prestigious national and international awards as well as worldwide recognition for his philosophy and tireless engagement for a better world.

Read more: Persistent and committed advocate of peace, tolerance, understanding and champion of human rights,...

William Shakespeare would have loved to see the Brexit. Many of his themes are there: friendship and treason; truth and lies; deception and betrayal. Cameron invents a referendum as a trick to get more power from the EU, and unify the Tory party under his leadership. He ends instead out of Europe, with a possible secession from Scotland, and problems with North Ireland. His friend Boris Johnson, who turns anti EU to get Cameron job, has betrayed him. But Johnson does not run for PM, because his friend Michael Gove has betrayed him. And the Brexit has as a collateral damage the leader of the other party, the Labour, with the majority of his parliamentarian asking Jeremy Corbin to go. He rejects, claiming that the majority of the members of the party are with him. But then, the parliamentarians do not represent the electorate?

The Brexit gives a strange show of the British political system, considered always the best example of parliamentarian democracy.  A referendum is not the basis of a parliamentarian system, where elections are based on parties, with a strong identity and history. Labour’s electors vote Labour. But a referendum becomes a transversal issue, and in Brexit one third of them   has voted against the position of the Trade Unions and of the party, which were for the Remain.

The same has happened with the Tories. At least 35% voted against Cameron campaign for the Remain. In fact, people voted according what they felt was their identity. So London and other cosmopolitan citizens, voted for Remain. Those from the rural world, those who felt left out, voted massively for the Brexit. Enough has been written about this. And how this kind of neoliberal globalization has failed, creating a growing large part of the population angry and destitute. But going back to debate is a Referendum is a tool for democracy, let us see which were the arguments for the Brexit, that brought 17 million people to vote to get out from the EU. Well, they were false, as the main campaigners for the Brexit themselves, Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson have admitted.

The argument that the UK was giving to Brussels 350 million pounds per week, and this money would go instead to the National Health System, was a fraud. The net contribution to the EU are 150 millions a year, net of what the UK receives form the EU. Brussels’s silence on this issue was grave mistake, due to the idea to avoid to meddle in internal politics.

Also the argument that by leaving UE, the UK would recover “its independence”, as Johnson said in his closing speech, and the control of its borders was clearly false.  Any future relation with the EU, that would keep UX exports to Europe without customs (they are 44% of the total British exports), will entail free circulation of European citizens (180.000 last year, out of a total of 330.000). Britain has already the control over the extra European.  To make this credible, the tabloids, which are the real winners of Brexit, launched a campaign indicating that 70 million Turks could invade Britain. This was really a fraud. Turkey is not a member of the EU, and just one vote from any member country could block any request of admission. This was usually Germany’s line, until Merkel asked Erdogan help to block migrants, by giving the EU the task to pay 3 billion euro.  But it never went to promise admission). At the moment of the vote, 45% thought it was imminent.  Tabloids also announced that after the Brexit, criminals and terrorist would be immediately deported to their country of origin, and of course nobody talks any longer of this now. And it was also a fraud to assure that all the subsidies coming from the EU would be substituted by government’s funds. So for instant, voters from the small town of 18.000 people, Ebbw Vale, in Wales, had the highest vote for Brexit: 63%, With an unemployment of 40%, its only real income were the EU development funds: Ebbw Vale got 420 million euro for its industrial development: 40.5 millions for a professional institute, with 29.000 students; 36 million for a new train’s line; 96 million for upgrading its roads: and 14.7 millions that citizens did receive at different title. There were very few immigrants. EU did commit to Wales 2.200 million euros within 2.020. Will now the government replace those?

In fact, the referendum has created a dramatic intergenerational problem. The people over 55 did vote at nearly 70% for the Brexit. Those until 25 years, voted 75 5 for Remain. But only 50% of them went to vote, against 68% of the old citizens. Therefore, the old people have decided the future of the young ones. This in a progressively ageing world, with fewer young, should have people thinking.

So the question is: with poorly informed people, manipulated by a campaign of fear and lies, is a yes or no referendum a tool of democracy?

But things are more complicated. We live in an era of post ideologies and post parties. To be at left or at right is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Without ideologies, discarded with the collapse of Berlin’s wall, politics are becoming just an act of administrative action, where differences disappear. Parties without ideologies carry little motivation and identity.  Gone are the times when they were based on strong membership, with a vibrant youth wing. Parties are becoming just movements of opinions, which mobilize citizens just to vote in a temporary campaign, where hired experts of marketing tools and other instruments of mass communication, have replaced debates about visions and values. This cost more money than volunteers, and corrupts politics, as it is becoming evident. More important yet, Internet and new technologies have changed how people relate to politics. The relation between the parties and voters is not any longer direct, and vertical, as it was at the time of the radio and the TV. Let us take the last important elections in Europe: those for mayors of Italy. A tide of young and untested mayors took over from an older generation. A research in Rome made by Pragma Sociometrica has found out that 36% of voters still use the TV as primary instrument of information, but 26% use the net. Friends and relatives account for just 5%. And for deciding the vote, 46% has made its own judgment in Internet on Raggi, the new young lady mayor of Rome., and only 18% used Internet and voted the oldest candidate, Giachetti. Dialogue with the candidates on Internet is preferred by 58% of the voters; then comes 48% for videos, then Facebook for 33%. And finally, photos with 30%. Clearly, the great popular meetings filling public squares are something of the past…

The American website “Vox technology” has published an article:” How Internet is destroying politics”. Web Amazon has decimated libraries. ITunes and Pandora, with   on line’s music, have uprooted the power of recording houses. In transportation, Uber the taxi’s monopoly. Now is the time of the political system, is the article’s thesis. The net is progressively reducing the power of the traditional system of information, and it gives the progressive candidate Sanders as an example. No media or any Democrat guru, like Paul Krugman, supported Sanders policies, denounced as unrealistic. Yet Sanders has been immune to this campaign. Why? Because Sanders ‘supporters did not read papers, but went on the net, and created their own circle, immune to the traditional information’s system, where Clinton was overwhelming.

According the pollster from El Pais, the Brexit in the recent Spanish elections, pushed people to take less risks, and reinforcing the governing Popular Party (regardless of a string of corruption cases), and reducing the appeal of Podemos, the party of alternative. Yet Le Pen, the French rightist leader, called a press conference to welcome Brexit, like Trump, Gehert Wilders and all the leaders of the xenophobic, nationalist and populist parties which are growing everywhere.  There are already in power in Poland, Hungary, and Slovaquia…and if Brexit has a domino effect,(as many fear), the future is going to be not helpful for democracy. Already several of them has been calling for their national referendum, convinced that they would all be like Brexit…Campaign of fears will run all over Europe---

We have now an unexpected observatory coming up soon. Austrian elections, where the extreme right wing lost for just 30.000 votes, have been annulled for irregularities, and new ones are dues.  This time victory should be clearer. If the extreme right wing wins, this will have a strong impact in the coming elections in France and Germany. And then, the destiny of Europe as a political project will be sealed.

Will be able the traditional political elite to take lessons from the reality, and change austerity for growth, banks as a apriority of youth, come back to a debate of ideas and visions, values and ideals? Start to discuss at least social remedies to the disasters of an unregulated globalization? Or it will repeat the Byzantines discussing about the angel’s sex, while the Arabs were entering in Costantipolis?

Dr. Roberto Savio
Responsible for ECPD International Relations‏

Bivši zamenik šefa CIA za Balkan: Diplomatama nije posao da naređuju

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