Speakers

Keynote Speaker: Mairead Corrigan Maguire

 

Mairead Corrigan Maguire won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 with Betty Williams for her work to end the violence in Northern Ireland. Mairead was the aunt of the three Maguire children who died as a result of being hit by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) getaway car after its driver was shot by a soldier. Mairead responded to the violence facing her family and community by organizing massive peace demonstrations appealing for an end to the bloodshed. Mairead is co-founder, along with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, of Peace People, a protest movement committed to building a just and peaceful society through nonviolent social action. She currently serves as Honorary President.

Mairead is an active pacifist passionately committed to nonviolent social and political change. She believes, "When we reject nuclear weapons and war, when we uphold Human Rights and International Law, when we build nonkilling, nonviolent societies and world, refusing to kill each other but seeking nonviolent solutions to our problems, then we will have come of age as the human family."

See her message regarding the Global Article 9 Conference here

Keynote Speaker: Cora Weiss

 

Cora Weiss has been well known as a peace activist since the early '60s, when she was a co-founder of Women Strike for Peace which played a major role in bringing about the end of nuclear testing in the atmosphere. She was a leader in the anti-Vietnam war movement. For ten years Ms Weiss was a volunteer teacher in the NY City public school system. She has a long record of support for the United Nations, starting in the 1950s when she hosted colonized Africans who were petitioning for the independence of their countries. She has devoted most of her life to the peace movement, the movement for the advancement of women, and the civil rights movement.

Cora Weiss was President of the International Peace Bureau (Nobel Laureate 1910). As President of the Hague Appeal for Peace, she is currently leading a campaign dedicated to the abolition of war. It seeks to re-focus our minds on the vision of a world in which violent conflict is publicly acknowledged as illegitimate, illegal, and fundamentally unjust. To implement that vision, the Hague Appeal for Peace has launched a Global Peace Education Campaign.

 

(in alphabetical order):

Ban Zhong Yi, Journalist, movie director and advocate for Chinese former “comfort women”, China

Christophe Barbey, Association for Non-Militarisation and Demilitarisation, Switzerland

Emmanuel Bombande, West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), Ghana

Chen Jau-hwa, Human Rights program, Soochow University, Taiwan

Aidan Delgado, Iraq War veteran and conscientious objector, USA

Corazon Valdez Fabros, STOP the War Coalition Philippines, Philippines

Joseph Gerson, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), USA

Verena Graf, International League for the Rights and Liberation of People, Switzerland

Syed Rifaat Hussain, Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Pakistan/Sri Lanka

Jung Gyung-Lan, Women Making Peace, Center for Peaceful Future of Korea, Korea

Kwon Heok-tae, Sungkonghoe University, Korea

Lee Suk-tae, MINBYUN Lawyers for a Democratic Society, Korea

Lim Jaesung, conscientious objector, Korea

Hilda Lini, nuclear-free and independent Pacific movement, Melanesia Institute of Philosophy, Science & Technology, Vanuatu

El Hadji Mbodj, Constitutional Lawyer, Senegal

Gus Miclat, Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID), Philippines

Florence Mpaayei, Nairobi Peace Initiative-Africa, Kenya

Park Jung-eun, Center for Peace and Disarmament, PSPD, Korea

Betty Reardon, leading theorist and designer of pedagogic materials and processes in peace education, USA

Hans-Peter Richter, German- Japanese Peace Forum and German Peace Council, Germany

Paul Saoke, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Kenya

Beate Sirota Gordon, co-writer of the Japanese Constitution and author of the disposition granting equality between men and women, USA

Alice Slater, Director, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, New York, and founding member of Abolition 2000

Kathleen Sullivan, Disarmament Educator and Consultant to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, USA

Auki Tituana , indigenous mayor of Cotacachi, Ecuador

Kasim Turki, former soldier in the Iraqi Republican Guard, humanitarian aid worker, Iraq

Carlos Vargas, Vice-President of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) and professor of International Law, Costa Rica

Mosese Waqa, Pacific People Building Peace (PPBP), Fiji/Australia

Ellen Woodsworth, former Vancouver City Councillor, co-founder of the World Peace Forum (2006), and President of WILPF-Canada

Ann Wright, Retired US Army colonel and diplomat, now antiwar activist, USA

C.G. Weeramantry, former judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and President of International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), Sri Lanka

Please see the file downloadable above for the full list of guests speaking at the conference