The Muslim Coordinating Council of the National Capital Region, which has 40 member organizations devoted to serving our community and our country, strongly supports the creation of a Canadian Department of Peace.

In a world that is being devastated by wars, violence, conflicts and violations of human rights, we urgently need leadership that can meet the challenge through wisdom, goodwill, compassion, respect for others and loyalty to the fundamental principles of human rights, justice and dignity without discrimination and political considerations.

Canada, with its diversity, history of accommodation and respect throughout the world, is ideally suited to participate in this exercise, and indeed to take a leadership role. We need a professional institution within Canada that will enable Canada to boldly assume the leadership in treating the root causes of frustration, despair, hopelessness and ultimately conflict. We have to build a culture of peace, justice, mutual respect, dignity and trust as an intrinsic part of our democratic principles and practices within Canada and abroad. We have to build a better world for ourselves and our coming generations. We have to replace despair with hope.

Given the continued conflicts in the world, and poverty, misery and environmental degradation we have to work vigorously for nuclear disarmament and the elimination of all means of mass destruction. We must foster cooperation among professional, peace activists, human rights workers, various governmental departments and the common people throughout Canada under the creative leadership of a Canadian Department of Peace.

Canada must not fail our coming generations, and the world.

Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan, President

Muslim Coordinating Council of the National Capital Region

“Years hence, when every country has a Ministry of Peace, people will look back and ask: ‘What took us so long?’ After all, we have a ministry for almost everything else: health, education and so on. How odd that, of all things, we have no ministries of peace. Peace is the key to accomplishing the rest.

 Peace is the global imperative. The huge challenges we face will not be resolved through aggression. Aggression got us into this global crisis in the first place. Now, even the survival of the biosphere is under threat. We are not going pull back from this catastrophe by using the very same mindset and methods that bought us to this brink. Nor is this a crisis we can resolve through good wishes alone. We need a coordinated global plan which will bring together the brightest minds, the best plans and the most gifted leadership. The backbone of that plan will be the Ministries of Peace.”

The Sakyong, Jamgön Mipham Rinpoche,

Spiritual Leader, Shambhala International

QUESTION: What are your thoughts on the movement to establish Ministries and Departments of Peace in governments worldwide?

TUTU: It’s an extraordinary idea and, it fills one with a great deal of excitement and exhilaration, and it sounds crazy, but then I think it was crazy when Gandhi said we’re going to work so that eventually India is free. It must have been crazy when Martin Luther King Jr. also said we’re going to make civil rights a real issue in the United States, and maybe when Nelson Mandela and others said one day apartheid will be no more, that we need those like yourselves who dream dreams and say, “It is possible. It is possible for people to know that war is not natural.”
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Until very recently, many people felt that disagreements and conflicts between nations and communities could only be resolved through war or the threat of force. Although everyone wishes to live in peace, we are often confused about how it can be achieved. Violence inevitably leads to more violence. It is not the solution – certainly not in the long term. Today, more and more people realise that the proper way of resolving differences is through dialogue, compromise and discussions, through human understanding and humility. There is a growing appreciation that genuine peace comes about through mutual understanding, respect and trust.
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