Vasa Conference on Nonkilling & Sustainable Development Goal 16.1

Some 900 participants attended the 2nd Explorations on Peace and Conflict Research: “Peaceful, Killing-free Societies as a Sustainable Development Goal” jointly organized by the Center  for Global Nonkilling and Åbo Akademi University’s Program in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research on March 15-16, 2016. Attendance included 100 on-site participants at the University’s main auditorium in Vasa, Finland, plus 800 followers of the live video streaming from around the world. The conference focused on the newly adopted UN Sustainable Development Goal 16.1 that seeks to promote peaceful and inclusive societies and, specifically, to “significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere”.

1976 Nobel Peace Laureate and CGNK Honorary Sponsor Máiread Maguire offered the Welcome Lecture “Working together towards a just, killing-free world” after the greetings by the Chancellor of Åbo Akademi University Prof. Ulrika Wolf-Knuts. The conference program also included participants from the Centre for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, Örebro University (Sweden),  Tampere Peace Research Institute, Tampere University (Finland), the Mauro Center for Peace and Justice, University of Manitoba (Canada) and several civil society organizations, including Peace People (Northern Ireland), the Finnish Red Cross, Star of Hope (Finland) and Service Civil International.

One of the goals of the conference was to develop a policy statement with recommendations on how to successfully reach the targets set for SDG 16.1 and closely related items. The students of the graduate course on “Nonkilling Studies” featured in the Master’s Program on Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research were responsible for the brainstorming and discussion session that prepared the ground for this declaration to be issued. The 2015 conference produced the “Vasa Statement on Education for Killing-free Societies” that was later on submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.