Eurasia Diary held an exclusive interview with Secretary-General in the International Peace Bureau Mr.Colin Archer.
Eurasia Diary: Today’s event has been organized on the high level. What kind of opportunities including financial opportunity you need to organize such event?
Mr. Colin Archer: First of all, you have to want to make a conference. You have to have a need to do it. So, it takes a lot of work. There is no point doing it unless it is something important for your organization. Ten years ago, International Peace Bureau (IPB) launched Global Day of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS), with the beginning of a new project. Within, in 2014, we enlarged it and made a global campaign on military spending. We have about one hundred and fifty groups all around the world. Hence, a large community of people but it can be much bigger and we feel a need to lift up the issue of military spending in order to make it more visible in the political debates in all countries actually. But since we are here in Europe we have to think also about Europe. Therefore, the idea of doing a conference was to respond to the need to expand the campaign and so far, it looks quite successful. Secondly, the conditions you need is you have to decide on the city and who are your partner groups. If you do not have good organizers, it is a disaster. But we have that because the President has its office here. Thirdly, you need to raise money because you cannot do a conference like this without a lot of money. So, Berlin was a good choice because we have good links with German foundations and trade unions others. We will probably have a loss but we had enough money to put the things together.
Therefore, the conditions are a need, the right configuration, right resources, right place and right partners.
Eurasia Diary: How can such conferences influence the conflict resolutions all around the world?
Mr. Colin Archer: Well, that is not the purpose of the Conference. Imagine, this is a big house and there are a lot of rooms in the house and conflict resolutions is just one room but military spending is another room. Of course, there are connections between the rooms but the focus of this conference is mainly on military spending room that is the economy of war. However, in order to be successful in having some influence on this very difficult problem we need to show that there are other ways to solve the conflicts. So, that is the connection. For example, tomorrow, there is a big double session about the peaceful processes. The topic of military spending is not a big phenomenon and we will be looking at peace processes but the outcomes are important. We can show that there are some positive paths to follow and the military need can be reduced. It is too early to say what is the impact of the conference because it is not even finished and the impact is something you can measure over time. It is difficult to say even after some time that the things happened because the conference was held. However, we can say that X and Y met at the conference and they decided to make a useful project. Therefore, it is a project-making forum and it is a place to make statements, to listen other people, to make friends. For me, the thing that make an impact is Media, which is a widely public. We hope that all connections made here will work.
Eurasia Diary: During the plenary sessions, a lot of speakers have addressed the point to the youth that young people should join this peace-building process. So, what kind of opportunities you offer them to join you?
Mr. Colin Archer: First of all, this is important because we have age in peace movement. Many people here have experience, they are quite elderly. And elderly people always want the young people to take over. Because it is the future of the work. You devote your life to something and you want others to carry it forward. We organized youth gathering around this conference not separately, because we want the young people to participate with others. They also have a chance to share their opinion, to speak with others and to do social media because they are so good at social media. Hence, that probably sufficient in term of providing something to young people in term that we do not separate them from other participants. Making the program in general benefits the youth. We arranged the hostel for young people to stay during the conference. We try to make it easy as possible. The thing that was difficult is a date because many students are already back to the universities and even though it is a weekend, it is difficult for them to come. Probably, we might to choose the different date but there were reasons why we are here at this time.
Eurasia Diary: It is already many years that you are working on peace building. What is your own motivation to work on it?
Mr. Colin Archer: What is a better way to spend your life?
Eurasia Diary: What kind of message you can give to the readers of Eurasia Diary that is a platform for peace making and conflicts resolution?
Mr. Colin Archer: Well, there are many messages I can give but it is easy to give an advice to the people. The main advice is, “Find your own way to peace”. If you are a musician maybe you can use your music to promote the peace message, if you are a teacher then build a peace making at your lessons, if you are a politician then scrutinize the government policy, choose the correct one for peace making. Hence, every profession, every area of the society can do something to bring peace. Peace is a very deep subject but it is also very wide and it touches every area of the society. Some options are more difficult than others and sometime it requires some courage because it is easy to sing the song of peace but more difficult it to make friends with your enemies and that is the most important thing.
Interview by :Fazilat Samadova