PeaceZone Rationale

At a time when most people understand and fear war – at a time when communications can bring the peace message swiftly into the home of most people – war grows, mutates and becomes more resilient.

Those of us, who have returned from the front-line of Development Aid, know only too well that all the armies and police forces in the world could not manage a world cease-fire tomorrow. In the absence of innovative and informed action, the rapidly expanding peace message will be churned into peace rhetoric – but never before have there been so many ordinary people ready to take action for peace.

Our mission today must be become able to fill in the gaps between military peacemakers, to follow in the footsteps of the civilian peacemakers (International Peace Brigades and others) and to add our learning to the pool. The challenge today is to not only expand and strengthen the ranks of existing civilian peace-making groups but to increase the span of the experiment, to create new paths, from different experiences, which others can follow or copy.

We spring from a country that has experienced, and is now overcoming 800 years of conflict, racial discrimination and strife (Ireland).  We are part of the great new European experience which has staved off World War for already so long. We have worked within conflict zones in Asia, Central Europe and Africa – we have learned to question, discover and invent. We have learned the power of the Truce – the day the guns go silent and people start to go about ordinary life, for however long it lasts. We have learned that cease-fires can happen, but that in order for it to happen there is a need of a short-term external presence to be actively present and to ensure safety and induce temporary normality.

Music is a powerful language – music says there is a time when it is not necessary to speak, that there is a time for the music to takeover. In this sudden new and temporary safe zone, music brings the unity to induce normality – to bring the most stricken above ground.