Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

On peaceful waters
By Marisa de Silva and Joson Chokatte
The Japanese Peace Boat, a new approach to peace education, is a passenger ship where students from all over the world, concerned about peace, congregate to discuss their various issues and possible resolves. These students attend lectures, conducted by leading specialists in the field, and interact with each other learning of new cultures and the conflicts of different countries.

The students share their experiences and perspective with each other and learn how similar or not their country’s conflicts are and the basis of their existence and continuance.

This new approach has proved highly successful and this year was the first time a batch of Sri Lankan students attended. Suzie Beling, Niran Anketell, Sheamal Samarasekera and Shahina Zahir were the selected four, representative of the four main ethnic groups of our country.

“The goal of the Peace Boat, is primarily, to educate students in peace,” said Shahina, one of the students attending the Peace Boat. “The experience was incredible, and was most definitely fun.”

Attending the Peace Boat were around 30 to 40 students, and about 800 to 900 paying passengers.“The Peace Boat is based on the concept of a floating university of peace,” commented Justice C.G. Weeramantry, of the Weeramantry International Centre for Peace Education and Research (WICPER), who was one of the several lecturers aboard the ship. “The students who attended the Peace Boat will return to their countries as crusaders of peace, with more knowledge and perspective on peace.”

“A big part of the experience was meeting new people and learning about their cultures,” said Shahina. “Discussing the parallels between the conflict in Sri Lanka and other conflicts, helps us students put into perspective the conflict in Sri Lanka and find its root causes.” This interaction between students was encouraged by a variety of recreational activities ranging from sports and yoga to karaoke nights. “It was impossible to find anyone not doing anything,” observed Sheamal.

Sri Lankan students also made a presentation on youth involvement in the conflict in Sri Lanka. “The presentation was about how the youth are the protagonists and victims, and also on how resolution could be brought about with the aid of the youth.” This presentation was well attended and proved effective in educating the various representatives of countries on the conflict in our country.

“The presence of Sri Lankan students brought about understanding among the passengers on the conflict in our country,” said Justice Weeramantry. “The whole voyage was a success and helped educate our students on peace.” WICPER continues to have a close relationship with the Peace Boat, and is helping to plan future voyages. After returning from the voyage, Justice Weeramantry went to Japan and attended the Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemoration after which he visited the Peace Boat’s headquarters. Next year WICPER hopes to have more Sri Lankan students attending. “The peace boat was extremely fun and insightful and we got a lot out of it,” said Shahina.

Of the 950 people travelling on the ‘Peace Boat’, 15 of them were international students from conflict countries, said Suzie. “We discussed the background details and history of the conflicts in our respective countries and discussed the differences or similarities we discovered, with each other,” she explained. They also discussed the various issues that affect each individual community, resulting in a better cross-cultural understanding. Another positive derived from having discussions with the other students, is that they were able to get fresh and objective perspectives on the conflict situation in our country.

They also spoke about the system and how each country or government ran the country, said Suzie. Possible solutions as to how youth can contribute to resolve or help minimise the country’s strife, was also thrashed out in an open forum, she said.

Aboard the ship, they had attended daily morning session where they were given updates on what was happening around the world, said Niran. In addition they also had a discussion on Sri Lanka only, where they became more familiar with more intricate details of the current conflict.

“One of the things I realised which is common to all of the conflict countries represented, was that the root cause of most of our problems were factors like national pride, insecurity, various historical baggage etc.,” said Niran, thoughtfully. “It’s pointless to organise peace conference after conference to try and discuss solutions for matters that stem from human emotions; people must realise it for themselves and overcome their weaknesses or insecurities.” Much has been said and thus learnt aboard the ‘Peace Boat’, where it seems, peace was truly given a chance to float above the turbulent waves of conflict.

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