DAY 179: INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, GENEVA

18 October, 2011

1737 miles/ 3,775, 601 steps

I have in life three great passions: politics, peace and education—I am continually inspired be the possibilities of all to build a better world. So when on Monday I received an invitation from Shona Wright, Headmistress (Middle School) to address the International School in Geneva, I didn’t take much persuading to delay my return to Milan for an extra day to undertake that visit and I am so very glad I did.

The International School, had been founded as the school for the children of diplomats serving at the United Nations and is the oldest international school in the world with over 125 nations represented amongst the student body of over 4000. What is more, the atmosphere going through the gates was not at all as the regimented, austere exam factory which has become so fashionable in the UK in recent years, the International School was full of colour and life—there was no uniform and students were at ease with using first names for the headmistress and even visitors, but it was clearly also a vibrant place of learning.

Having addressed a few schools along the way on this walk, often the students sit through the presentation and are perfectly polite, but you get the impression that they haven’t engaged with the subject matter; at the International School I got a wonderful round of applause and cheers just as a result of Shona Wright’s introduction. I had barely started talking when hands started to pop up around the hall with questions: “What do you eat?”, “Have you seen any snakes?”, “Do you still have to brush your teeth?” “Which was your favourite country?” “What music do you listen to on your iPod?””How will you cross the English Channel?” “How do you wash your clothes?” They reminded me that whilst sometimes we have lofty ideals and ambitions, there is nothing better than children to bring them down to a human scale and yet in doing so increase not diminish their magic.

I had three lessons from the journey which I wanted to convey to the students:

First, that we have a choice as to whether we go through life as a spectator constantly complaining the world isn’t the way you want it, or, as a player seeking to make a contribution to a better world.

Second, that often along the way I had been refused rest, a meal or even water from a garage shop because of my outside appearance; I was smelly, unshaven and dirty. People judged me from the outside and didn’t want me anywhere near, but had they just stopped to enquire as to what I was doing, then they might have been pleasantly surprised.

Third, that when I am asked which country was the most hospitable, I tell them that they were all the same, because in all countries, and from all backgrounds there were people who were amazingly kind and generous and there were a small number who were not so. In other words the response people made to a stranger passing through was not a matter or their nationality, but of their humanity.

We did three assemblies with over five hundred students and in between I had the opportunity to meet many of the excellent teaching staff, gate-crash a Parent-Teacher Meeting and even to meet with the Student Council to discuss how they might help promote the Olympic truce. They had drafted a letter which they intended to send to each of the national delegations to the UN in Geneva from the Student Council congratulating the various missions on signing the truce and then asking them what they intended to do to implement it—it was an inspired idea and was likely to have far greater effect than another communication from a politician. I urged them to come up with ideas about how to promote the truce around the school and then implement them because the effect of their letter would be all the more effective if it began ‘At the International School we are doing X Y and Z to implement the Olympic truce, and we would be delighted to know what you as a signatory to the truce are intending to do.’

All too quickly the time had gone and I had to dash for my train back to Milan but the warmth of the welcome from the teachers and students inspired me to pledge to come back when I had concluded the walk to see how they were doing with the project and also to meet the students in the other school campuses. Before I left I was presented with the school mascot, one for me and another for my grandson and also a tube of sweets for extra energy to help me over the Alps and even a packed lunch to eat on the train. What an amazing school, with great students and inspirational teachers—you just can’t fail. As I left Shona Wright’s office I noticed on the wall a wonderful quote from Pablo Casals which underlined the schools philosophy:

DAY 178 - GENEVA

17 October, 2011

1737 miles/ 3,775, 601 steps

The big day had finally arrived. Monday October 17^th was the date that the Olympic Truce Resolution would be presented to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. The UK Mission to the United Nations had been working tirelessly to rally support for the Resolution and to put forward a drafting that would be both acceptable to UN member states and also meaningful for the London 2012 truce.

The principles at the heart of the resolution were: local solutions to conflicts, legitimate politics, and the creation of a lasting legacy. The mention of the important role and history of the Paralympic Games, which were first held in London in 1948, was a welcome addition, as was the reference to the International Inspiration programme. This is a wonderfully ambitious legacy programme that seeks to promote sports amongst young people around the world and has already helped 12 million young people to engage in sport.

In a departure from previous resolutions, there was no commitment to “pursue initiatives for peace and reconciliation in the spirit of the ancient games”, which had been replaced with a simple request for members of “observe” the Olympic Truce. The timing of the Truce had also be altered; rather than the seven days either side of the Games that was instituted as the Truce period during the Ancient Games, member states were called to commit to the truce ‘during the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games’. The revised format therefore distils down to a simple requirement for member states to ‘observe the truce’.

As early as the Friday before the resolution was presented to the UN General Assembly, there were already 191 countries signed up. There was momentum and excitement as emails and text messages were exchanged over the weekend with new signatories and even an up to date scoreboard of those who had signed up. There were tense moments during the day of the 17^th in the hours before the resolution was presented by Lord Seb Coe (President of LOGOG) on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government as Syria and Iran held out. But, at the last minute they came through resulting in the unprecedented achievement of 193 nations signing the resolution on the day of its presentation. The credit for this remarkable achievement must go to Philip Parham and his colleagues in the UK Mission to the UN and Conrad Bailey at the FCO in London, all with the strong support of our excellent Foreign Office minister, Henry Bellingham MP.

News of the last two countries coming on board was relayed to me by Poul Hansen as we waited in the ‘Green Room’ to meet with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, which was met with cheers. Poul is the Head of Office of the UN Department for Peace and Development through Sport, who together with Tom Goodwin of the UK Mission were instrumental in securing the meeting with the Secretary General. This was the perfect start for the truce, but without diminishing their achievement in the slightest, they don’t hand out medals for signing up for the race and the true test will now be seen through the boldness with which this excellent resolution is implemented on the ground. I felt an intense pride that it was this government that had swung so decisively behind the truce with the Prime Minister describing it as an “historical opportunity” when the truce had been ignored for the five years under the previous government.

In one radio interview I was asked whether the fact that so many countries had signed up to the Resolution now meant that my campaign was over. My response was an emphatic “no” because we now have an amazing opportunity to see the truce finally implemented around the world, and in doing so, a chance to remind ourselves that the Olympic Truce wasn’t just a part of the Ancient Games, it was their central purpose. Whilst having genuine gratitude that we have got off to such a flying start it is now, more than ever before, that we must make sure that we demonstrate the fact that we can deploy the same resources and political resolved behind peace as we can behind war. Speaking at the UN last month, the Prime Minister declared that the UN should be united not just in words, but in ‘action’. He concluded an address specifically on UN resolutions by stating that if we do not act “then what are those signatures really worth.”  I couldn’t agree more and this will be the next big test.

It had been an exciting day, a bit like the build up to a Cup Final, with an excellent lunch hosted by our Ambassador to the UN institutions in Geneva, Peter Gooderham, meticulously organised by Tom Goodwin of the British Mission to Geneva. The lunch brought together Olympians, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Council of Churches, the Brazilian Mission to Geneva, and the UN Commission on Human Rights. It was a great discussion in the splendid setting of the Ambassador’s residence on the shores of Lake Geneva – of particular interest was the response of the Brazilian ambassador, who was very interested to see how the role of the Olympic Truce could be strengthened in the run up to the 2016 Games to be held in Rio.

It was then off to the Palais des Nations for the meeting with the UN Secretary General accompanied by Peter Gooderham, Tom Goodwin, and Poul Hansen. The Palais is a grand and yet optimistic building that was built for the League of Nations in the nineteen twenties. As is so often the case, architecture conveys the scale of political ambition and hope, something that is certainly true of the Palace of Westminster. The League of Nations had been envisioned as far back as 1795 by Immanuel Kant in his seminal work ‘Perpetual Peace’ although it wasn’t brought into being until the 1920 ‘war to end all wars’ had taken conflict and killing onto an industrial scale, resulting directly in the deaths of 8.5 million soldiers and 10 million civilians. Again, as is often the case, it took a visionary to seize the moment of history and that visionary was the American President, Woodrow Wilson. It failed because the Soviet Union was excluded from the beginning and the League gradually lost its credibility through Japan invading Manchuria, Italy invading Abyssinia, and Germany invading everywhere.

The meeting with the Secretary General (pictured) was a true privilege and I don’t think I have ever met an international statesman and leader with such grace and humility. Normally you are ushered in to pay homage to the ‘great leader’, even if they’re not that great and not much of a leader, and look amazed whilst he or she dispenses their wisdom after which you are ushered out after a total of five minutes. But Ban Ki-Moon is different, very different.  He came outside of the office to greet us warmly and was intensely interested in the walk and the truce. We agreed that there had never been a better chance for the Olympic Truce to work, especially with everyone signing up on the first day. Ban Ki-Moon was generous with his time and with his praise for the effort. I might be over-egging it, but I think what touched him the most was the fact that someone had done something ‘sacrificial’ in order to try and make a difference. I wasn’t really prepared for this response and was perhaps expecting a bit of a more formal exchange on where we go from here with the truce. We discussed where the truce had worked in the past and focussed on opportunities for advancing peace on the Korean Peninsula now that Pyeongchang had been awarded the Winter Games in 2018. To be quite frank, I was a bit lost for words because of the generous and humble remarks of the Secretary General and I saw immediately that these were the reasons why he had been quietly effective in his role and had already been nominated for his second term before he had finished his first. This was true greatness and in the theatre, posturing, and preening of international politics in the media age, it was all the more exemplary.

After the meeting with the Secretary General, Tom Goodwin and Poul Hansen took us on a tour of the Palais des Nations, gaining us access to the various chambers where you could sense the history as well as observe the United Nations at work today. Lots of people will be cynical about international institutions probably because they, like I, have seen too little of what they do. We only see and hear about the failures of the UN ,but their successes every day in defusing conflict and maintaining peace around the world pass largely un-noticed.

We ended the day with a UK reception for UN ambassadors and officials to celebrate the Olympic Truce. When Tom Goodwin was putting this together with his team and we were all preparing, none of us could have anticipated that the truce would have got off to such a flying start. But, as it had.  The speeches were short and the mood was light and optimistic – the perfect end to a momentous day. As we left I wanted to lean over the banister in the way I had seen Margaret Thatcher do in Central Office in 1987 when addressing the staff of CCO after the historic third term when she said, “Enjoy yourselves tonight, but not too much because tomorrow we have work to do.” Indeed, this had been a great result but they don’t hand out medals for starting the Olympic Truce any more than they do for starting the Olympic Games. In achieving our specific objective, it was probably better to emulate the quiet style of the current Secretary General rather than that of the former Prime Minister.

DAY 175 - DISPELLING WITH NATIONAL STEREOTYPES

14 October 2011

1737 miles/ 3,775,601 steps

Over dinner on my final night at Villa Wolkonsky, I was asked about the relative reception  I had received in the different countries I had travelled through – were the Greeks more hospitable than the Albanians, the Kosovans more hospitable than the Croatians, the Milanese more receptive than the Romans and so on. I suppose this is a very obvious question given that we so frequently deal in national stereotypes. I was reminded of this on hearing the history of the splendid residence in which I had the privilege of staying during my time in Rome.

The Villa was built for a Russian princess, Wolkonsky, and upon her death it was passed to the German Embassy and was the Ambassador’s Residence in the 1920s. During the German occupation of Rome, the villa became a headquarters for the Gestapo, who conducted brutal acts against Italian partisans in the basement cells. At the end of WWII the Villa was confiscated from the Germans as part of the War Reparations and offered for use to the Italian Red Cross. On 31 October 1946 the British Embassy at Porto Pia in Rome was blown up by the militant Zionist group, The Irgun, just a few months after the group’s deadly attack against the King David Hotel. Ninety one civilians were killed in this attack, which was part of a sustained campaign to secure the State of Israel. In an act of solidarity by the Italians against the terrorist attack, Britain was offered Villa Wolkonsky, which it later purchased and reverted to an Ambassador’s Residence whilst a new Embassy was constructed at Porta Pia. Following the 2003 al-Qaeda bombings of the British Consulate and other targets in Istabul in which 30 people were killed and 700 injured, a security review was undertaken where the British Embassy to the Holy See (Vatican) in Rome was deemed insecure, and was consequently co-located on the site of the new Embassy at Porta Pia. Less than a year ago, security at Embassies in Rome underwent another major review following the explosion of two parcel bombs, which injured staff at the Swiss and Chilean Embassies. This time responsibility for the attacks was claimed by a group of Italian anarchists.

What has all this got to do with the answer to the simple question about my reception in various countries over dinner, well this: In a media age when time is short, we wish to categorise ethnic, religious, and national or rebel groups as collectively good or collectively evil. We want to believe that global politics is simply a case, as George Orwell puts it so succinctly in Animal Farm, of ‘Four legs goods, two legs bad’. Yet, when a country as peaceful, prosperous, and beautiful as Norway, and is home to the Nobel Peace Prize and a religion as peace-loving as Christianity, can be warped in the mind of Anders Behring Breivik to the extent that he would massacre in cold blood ninety-two young people, we can only conclude with Nobel Prize Winner Aleksandr Solzhenistyn’s assessment of human nature as a prisoner in Stalin’s infamous Gulag:

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.”

The answer then to the original question: That there was no difference at all in the reception I received in the nine countries that I have travelled through so far. There were good and bad individual receptions in all countries, towns, and cities, in all religious communities Catholic, Orthodox, and Islamic, in poor areas and wealthy areas. But, they were mostly good. Morality and goodness can never be judged through the distorted lens of mere geography or ethnicity, but rather in the choices we make about how we view the worth of our fellow human beings and by which measure we ourselves will also be judged.