Apathy is the biggest challenge to peace, says Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams

DUBAI: The biggest challenge to world peace today is politics of governments on the one hand and the apathy of the general public on the other, Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams said on a visit to Dubai early this week.

Speaking to XPRESS ahead of a lecture organised by the NGO Sokka Gakkai International (Gulf) at Knowledge Village, she said peace must be built from below and stressed the importance of safeguarding the basic rights of children worldwide.

Williams, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her efforts to end sectarian violence in Northern Ireland and commit its people to peace, said: “I am a child of war. I lost my hearing in one ear due to a bomb blast. But I did not take up arms, I started a peace movement instead. Apathy is the greatest withholder of peace. We must think of life and creation, not death and destruction.”

Once a housewife and office secretary, Williams was determined to do her bit after she witnessed a tragedy in which three innocent children were killed in a shooting incident in Belfast in 1976. She decided to launch an appeal against the use of violence in Northern Ireland and was joined by the dead children’s aunt, Mairead Corrigan, with whom she founded the peace organisation Community of Peace People and won the Nobel Prize.

Williams, who has travelled around the world recording the testimonies of children subjected to various kinds of abuse, stressed the importance of creating safe havens for them and implementing legislation to protect their basic rights. She set up the Global Children’s Studies Centre and the World Centers of Compassion for Children International through which she has been working to safeguard disadvantaged children worldwide.

She said she has created the first City of Peace in Basilicata, Italy, to provide a home for orphaned refugee children. “There are 100 families from all over the world living there today. The best part is that we built this city on a land which we saved from becoming a nuclear waste dump,” she said, adding that she hoped to take the model of the City of Peace to other parts of the world as well.