Appeal for Peace 1999 Join the Citizens Peace Conference in the Hague, the Netherlands
May 1999
While the specific details of our conference will continue to evolve over the coming months, the overall theme is one of Delegitimizing War – Leaving War Behind. The following text invites your organization’s support and active involvement. At the Hague you will be able to hold your own meetings, join a central congress, attend a concert, maybe even a peace film festival.
Won’t you please fax or mail us your response today?
Help us end this century on a note of non-violence and launch a new century with commitment to peace!Sincerely
Maj-Britt Theorin
President, International Peace Bureau
Sir Peter Ustinov
President, World Federalist Movement
Josepf Rotblat
Professor, Nobel Peace laureate
Why Organize a Peace Conference?
After a decade of world corganized along sectoral and geographic lines: on peace and religion, peace and art, peace and sustainable development, peace and women, etc.
Who will plan the conference?
The coordinating committee is forming an international steering committee of organizations from all regions and sectors who support the Hague Appeal for Peace. This Committee will develop and implement overall goals and programs for the conference.
We invite you to endorse the plans for the conference and indicate your interest in participating.Hague Appeal
It was the worst of centuries
and the best of centuries.
The past 99 years have seen more death, and more brutal death, from war, famine, and other preventable causes than any other timespan in history. They have seen the tender flame of democracy snuffed out again and again by crazed dictators and military men in pursuit of power. They have seen the widening of the gulf between the favored of the earth and the wretched of the earth and the growing callousness of the former toward the latter.
But the years have also witnessed the power of the people to resist and overcome present oppression as well as age-old prejudices of gender against gender, race against race, religion against religion, and ethnic group against ethnic group.
These years have witnessed an explosion of scientific and technical knowledge which make possible a decent life for all who inhabit this planet, the formulation of a set of universal rights which, if taken seriously, would translate that possibility into reality, and the infancy of a system of global governance which, if allowed to grow, could guide this transition.
We, members and representatives of people’s organizations from many cultures and spheres of society, mindful of the dual history of this century, issue the followimg appeal to ourselves and to those who profess to lead us:
- As civilization has laegely left behind slavery, colonialism and apartheid, let the 21st century be the first century without war.
- Let us find ways- and implement the ways already available- to prevent conflict by removing its causes, which include the unequal distribution of the world’s vast resources, the hostility of nations and of groups within nations toward each other, and the presence of ever more deadly arsenals of conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction whose internal logic demand that they be used.
- When conflicts arise, as they inevitably will despite our best efforts, let us find ways- and implement the ways already available- to resolve them without resort to violence.
- Let us, in short, complete the work of the Peace Conference held in the Hague a century ago by returning to the grand vision of general and complete disarmament which flickered briefly on the world stage after the last World War. This will require new structures for peace and a fundamentally strengthened international legal order.
Specifically, let us find the moral, spiritual, and political will to do what our leaders know must be done but cannot bring themselves to do:
*Abolish nuclear weapons, land mines, and all other weapons incompatibel with humanitarian law;
*Abolish the arms trade, or at least reduce it to levels comatible with the prohibition of aggression enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations; and
*Use the tremendous resources liberated by an end or reduction of the arms race for the eradication of poverty and preservation of the environment.
In pursuing these goals, let us commit to initiating the final steps for abolishing war, for replacing the law of force with the force of law.
For Endorsement/Participation
Name and Title ____________________________________________
Organization ____________________________________________
Address ____________________________________________
____________________________________________
Phone/Fax ______________________________________
Email _______________________
My organization would like to participate
in the peace conference Hague Appeal for Peace 1999.
My organization endorses conferences on children, environment, human rights, social development, population, advancement of women, and habitat, we believe the last major peace conference of the century should be on peace. This time, civil society will organize the main conference, not governments.
While the specific details of our conference will continue to evolve over the coming months, the overall theme is one of Time to Abolish War-Deligitimizing War. During the last two centuries, humanity largely abolished and outlawed slavery, colonialism, and apartheid. Now, after the bloodiest century in history, it is time to take the final steps in outlawing war.
Why in 1999, in the Hague, Holland?
The city of the Hague is becoming the world’s international law capital.
In 1899, the first International Peace Conference took place in the Hague at the initiative of Russian Czar Nicholas II. The Hague Conference was unique- unlike almost all previous peace conferences, it was constituted not to conclude or settle a war, but to discuss the establishment of permanent mechanisms of international law for the purposes of disarmament, prevention of war, and the peaceful settlement of disputes. The 1899 peace conference was followed by a second in 1907, largely inspired by citizen peace societies. These conferences made historic advances in developing international humanitarian law, establishing the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA,) and planting seeds for the League of Nations, Permanent Court of Justice and their successors- the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. Both the PCA and the ICJ are located in the Peace Palace in the Hague.
As the draft vision statement describes (see reverse) after a century of terrible wars civil society is planning a major, end-of-the-century peace conference in The Hague to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the first International Peace Conference. We are also monitoring and supporting the plans of the Russian Federation, the Netherlands, and the Non-Aligned Movement for a major intergovernmental- perhaps UN- conference in 1999.
What form will the conference take?
We plan a core conference including the three major issues of the 1899 peace conference:
- strengthening international humanitarian law and institutions
- promoting fundamental disarmament measures,
- reinforcing mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of international conflicts.
In addition, we will focus on the causes of war and the global measures necessary for achieving political and economic justice, respect for human rights, and international democracy.
The Hague Appeal will advance many proposals, such as the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court, strengthened emergency humanitarian and peacekeeping mechanisms, agencies for early warning, conflict prevention, and post-conflict reconstruction, expanded authority in the regulation of weapons production and trade, and advancement of the culture and education for peace.
Please return to:
HAP-99, c/o WFM, 777 UN Plaza, New York, NY 10017 USA fax 1-212-599-1332 or to
IALANA, Anna Paulownastr. 103, 2518 BC Den Haag, the Netherlands fax 31-70-3455951.
More information from
Patrick McCarthy, c/o The International Peace Bureau, Geneva.
Fax +41-22-738 9419 – Phone +41-22-741-4010- E-mail p_mccarthy@iprolink.ch
