Posted on April 5, 2007
Leaders from the World Bank and Amnesty International joined with students to discuss contemporary issues affecting poverty and justice around the globe Tuesday at a day-long Conference for International Peace and Justice sponsored by the Muslim Student Association.
“One of the goals of MSA is to address contemporary social issues,” said MSA President Samier Mansur. “We focus on peace and justice because they are values that appeal to all humans regardless of ethnicity or other divides; we wanted to broaden the scope and touch upon issues that affect all of humanity.”
Seven students were selected by their professors to present their papers at the conference, and topics ranged from genocide in Darfur and female genital mutilation to the issue of protecting racist speech as a civil right in the United States.
“We realized there were so many interesting classes at JMU that target justice and peace, so we asked professors to nominate students to present,” said Kaja Jurczynska, coordinator of events for MSA. “We thought it would be more meaningful to make this event student-run and student-organized than just having intellectuals speaking; we wanted to give credit to some of the intelligent classmates that we have here.”
Senior Beth Pope, a student presenter, hopes the conference will inspire action.
“I believe conferences like these are very beneficial because they approach topics in a new way,” she said. “They allow the public to be more aware and hopefully become more active in the community and make changes themselves.”
The keynote address was given by T. Kumar, Amnesty International’s Advocacy Director of Asia and Pacific. Kumar, who has testified before Congress on various human rights issues, discussed at length the topic of peace and justice; he stressed the individuals responsibility in helping to establish a more peaceful and just world.
“Being in this educational environment we are the privileged,” Mansur said. “We have the power to influence not just U.S. policy but world policy.”
Sophomore Cannon Veale, a student presenter, agreed.
“Changes already made in terms of human rights are from public outcry,” she said. “If people collectively object others will listen.”
The conference attracted more than 200 members of the JMU and Harrisonburg communities throughout the day.
“The topics are very relevant today, especially for students at JMU because we’re very much isolated from the outside world,” senior Tyler Burton said. “I found that I learned a lot through the student presentations that I had not previously known about.”
Shantayanan Devarajan, World Bank chief economist of the South Asia Region gave the final address. The World Bank attempts to fight poverty through providing loans, grants and policy advice to low and middle-income countries. Devarajan presented strategies and goals of the World Bank in attempting to alleviate extreme poverty.
“Poverty is a huge epidemic; half the world lives on under $2 a day,” Mansur said.
“Living in the U.S., we have the opposite problem with obesity and extravagance, so put terrorism aside, Iran, nuclear bombs these aren’t killing people to the degree of people who are dying from global poverty and hunger.”
The conference called for countries and people to stand up and fight against the problems the globe faces today in order to strive toward greater peace and justice, which must start at the grassroots.
Burton was disappointed with the turnout from the JMU community.
“I think they let down the students who spoke,” Burton said. “Many students don’t seem to feel it’s worthwhile to attend conferences like these because they feel it doesn’t matter to them, but if they actually understood the weight of these speeches, then I think they would care,” he said.
