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Nobel peace laureate calls for new American code of ethics

BY ELIZABETH COLLINS

In print | November 6, 2003

During Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias’s lecture on Thursday evening, the former president of Costa Rica called for a new American code of ethics, a reevaluation of government spending and the incorporation of Third World countries into free trade.

“I hoped the 21st century would be an age of multi-lateralism,” Arias said. “We’re not off to a good start.”

Arias won the Nobel Prize in 1987 for his work in Central America, which led to a peace accord signed in Guatamala in August of that year, according to the Nobel Web site.

Arias said Americans must develop a new code of ethics, one that includes humility and solidarity instead of pride and individualism.

He pointed out that the heroes of the United States are military heroes rather than peacemakers and said that, for peace to be possible, things like this must change.

Audience member Mark Hanis ’04 said Arias served as a “healthy reminder” of a perspective of “peace to make security” in the midst of “security to make peace” ideals.

Calling for what he called a “New Marshall Plan,” Arias said five percent of what the United States spends on military funding would be enough to provide education and basic health care to a significant portion of Third-World countries.

“The resources are there,” Arias said. “What lacks are solidarity, vision and courage.”

Arias called free trade “imperative to the development of the third world.” Poor countries need access to the markets of wealthy countries, Arias said.

The World Trade Organization (WTO), Arias said, is supposed to promote free trade, but free trade is impossible until First-World countries removes protections and farmers’ subsidies.

Several audience members at the lecture responded to Arias’s views with opposition, particularly concerning his views on free trade.

“I felt, in his response to the comments, Arias embodied the ethics that he tries to push,” Lee Smithey, chair of the peace and conflict studies program at Swarthmore, said.

John Meyer, interim director of the Pendle Hill Peace Network, said the group brought Arias because of his “bold, countercultural approach” to conflict.

“He focused on ‘structural violence’ – spending on arms, not children,” Meyer said. “This misappropriation of funds, funded by U.S. taxpayers, is something I think is very important for the community to be aware of.”

The Oscar Arias lecture was one in a series of lectures this year that will focus on peace building. The Pendle Hill Peace Network and Forum sponsors the series.

“We brought Oscar Arias because we were looking for speakers who would bring their experience in peace building to the lectures,” Jennie Keith, director of the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, said.

“We especially looked for speakers who, like Arias, are not only inspirational, but provide practical peace building advice,” she said.

The lecture took place in Lang Performing Arts Center.

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