CENDEP at the Peace Summit 2020

Two DEP students, Lindsay Slark (2018-20), centre, and Dina Black (2018-19), right, attended the Second Peace Summit for Emerging Leaders in Bangkok this month. Here they reflect on the experience.

“My name is Lindsay Slark and I am here representing Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom.”

As the red light flickered and the mic turned off, I suddenly felt a sense of pride. I am at the United Nations and I am here representing something so much bigger than myself.

The 2^nd Peace Summit of Emerging Leaders, Feb 2020, brought 348 peace delegates together from 55 countries around the world in the name of peace. The sessions that took place over three days contained a mix of personal testimonies, of experiences with conflict and peace resolution, as well as a healthy mix of empowering speakers. 

We heard from Zak Ebrahim, whose father orchestrated the 1993 bombing of the world trade centre, as well as Ponheary Ly, a female survivor of the Pot Pol Regime in Cambodia.

The themes from these harrowing stories were reflected upon by Marina Cantacuzino, founder of the Forgiveness Project, whose aim is to empower victims of crime to understand the perspective of their experience and to seek to forgive those who had acted against them. 

Every speaker at the summit was a champion of peace in their own unique way. As peace delegates, we all arrived in Bangkok separately but by the first session of the summit, we united with one goal. In three days’ time we would all become peace ambassadors, tasked with going back to our respective communities and to begin the conversation. Our first baby steps on the path to a more peaceful world.

Although the journey was guaranteed to be a long one, I looked around the room at the other delegates, tentatively listening as I was, to the words of Janice Leong, Regional Director of Humanitarian Affairs Asia: “You may not achieve much as an individual, but the powerful force for good, by a group of like-minded people, is unstoppable "

                                                                          - Lindsay Slark 

When I ask myself what are the biggest memories or lessons I learned during the 2nd Peace Summit of Emerging Leaders 'Together for peace' in Bangkok, the first thing that springs to my mind is a wonderful phrase which I heard in the speech by one of the victims of genocide. It provided me with food for thought and contemplation during my time in Thailand. "It is better to light the candle than to curse the darkness". How very true that is! How often we forget about the importance of individual action while putting blame on the failures of the system. If politicians fail us in delivering lasting and sustainable peace, it is up to us as individuals to take action, however small, to make our communities better, more tolerant and peaceful. 

When many small streams join together, they form a river. When we come together as delegates from so many countries across the world, we take that important message back home to spread it further. This way we can build peace together and make it sustainable. 

- Dina Black