Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, Ministry of Culture, Government of India and the Centre for Global Nonkilling India is supporting and hosting he Global Colloquium on “Creating an Affirmative Nonkilling World” on the 28th of June, to commemorate the birth anniversary of Late Professor Glenn D. Paige. The occasion will mark the declaration of the day as the International Nonkilling Day that will be an annual feature. The Colloquium will be live on facebook and Youtube, for an international audience and the timing, keeping in mind the international time differences across Continents will be 8 am Toronto (5.30. pm IST India and 10 pm AEST Melbourne).

Professor Leslie E. Sponsel teaches the undergraduate course ANTH/PACE 345 Aggression, War and Peace, available for both students of the Department of Anthropology and the Matsunaga Institute for Peace & Conflict Resolution, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In spite of its title, in recent years the course program shifted into a pioneering approach of addressing nonkilling from an athropological perspective. Hundred of students have benefited over the years from Leslie’s teachings, that extensively use the learning materials developed by the Center for Global Nonkilling, including the books Nonkilling Global Political Science, Toward a Nonkilling Paradigm, Nonkilling Societies, and Nonkilling Spiritual Traditions. The syllabus of ANTH/PACE 345 Aggression, War and Peace divides the course in three parts. Part I Anthropology provides anthropological background by focusing on a critical analysis of competing ideological conceptions of human nature illustrated by a controversial ethnographic case and based on Sponsel’s recent book: Yanomami and Anthropology in the Amazon: Culture, Politics, Ethics, and Rights (2018). Part I also scrutinizes the development of professional ethics in anthropology in relation to wars and the specific recent case of the Human Terrain System in Iraq and Afghanistan. Part II Nonkilling explores the nonkilling possibilities and actualities of societies and also of anthropology and other academic disciplines, using various CGNK edited materials. Part III Religions explores the relationships of world religions with violence, war, nonviolence, peace, and human rights. This last part changes seasonally, and has included other focus such as climate change in previous years.

Nonkilling will be a focus of the course “New Tendencies in Peace and Conflict Studies” at the Jaume I University, Castelló, that houses the aster’s Degree in International Peace, Conflict and Development Studies. The course, taught in Spanish by CGNK Director Joám Evans Pim, will start on Abril 29 and carry on until May 17 as part of the 24th edition of the program. Jaume I University had already published the Spanish translation of Glenn Paige’s Nonkilling Global Political Science in 2012, with a preface by Juanes, which will be used as core course reading. The Master’s program, offered by the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace, is constructed around the underlying ideas that “There is no single way of understanding peace. There are as many ways of making peace as there are diverse people and cultures.” The curriculum promotes specific education in the areas of peace theories, conflicts, development cooperation, humanitarian aid, peace cultures, democracy, human rights, communication by peaceful means, gender and postcolonial studies. It also focuses on instruments for peaceful conflict prevention and transformation. The Master’s Degree was introduced in 1996 and has become well established over its twenty-three year course.

Seventy participants have concluded the first International Certificate Course on Nonkilling Political Science organized by the Institute of Public Policy and Governance of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Muntinlupa (PLMun University), in the Philippines, in collaboration with the Center for Global Nonkilling – India. The course ran from 3rd June, 2023 to 29th July, 2023 and was launched with a welcome address by Dr. Dan Jefferson, the Dean of Institute of Public Policy and Governance at Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Muntinlupa, followed by a special message delivered by the President of the University of the City of Muntinlupa and then by Dr. Anoop Swarup, Chair of the Center for Global Nonkilling and Dr. Katyayani Singh, Secretary General of of CGNK, India.