Scilla Elworthy | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | University of Bradford Trinity College Dublin |
Occupation | Anti-war activist |
Known for | Founder of the Oxford Research Group |
Priscilla "Scilla" Elworthy (born 3 June 1943) is a peace builder, and the founder of the Oxford Research Group, a non-governmental organisation she set up in 1982 to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics, for which she was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. She served as its executive director from 1982 until 2003, when she left that role to set up Peace Direct, a charity supporting local peace-builders in conflict areas. In 2003 she was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize. [1] From 2005 she was adviser to Peter Gabriel, Desmond Tutu and Richard Branson in setting up The Elders. [2] She is a member of the World Future Council [3] and in 2012 co-founded Rising Women Rising World, a community of women on all continents who take responsibility for building a world that works for all.
In 2017 she wrote The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World Without War (Peace Direct, 2017) and now leads an organisation of the same name which provides people and organisations with the skills and support to transform conflict. [4]
Born in Galashiels, Scotland, Elworthy attended Berkhamsted School for Girls on a Herts County Scholarship, before moving to Ireland in 1962 to study social sciences at Trinity College, Dublin. During her vacations, she worked in refugee camps in France and Algiers. After graduating, she travelled round West Africa to South Africa and between 1966 and 1969 became involved in marketing for various boutiques, most notably introducing the Mary Quant range. In 1993, she gained her PhD in political science from Bradford University.
In 1970, she married Murray McLean, a South African entrepreneur. She is mother of Polly Jess McLean (born 1974), step-mother of Leigh, Jay, Shirley, Sophie and Pippa, and grandmother of Pearl Mai Mary, Wolfetone and Rainer Jay.
In 2019 Scilla re-connected to the love of her life, John Hamwee. In 2021 they were married in the Quaker meeting house in Colthouse, Cumbria, and now live very happily in Sherborne village, west of Oxford. [5]
From 1970 to 1976 she chaired Kupugani, a South African nutrition education organisation, where she set up an initiative that involved the sale of nutritious Christmas hampers to industrial employees, thereby providing annual self-financing for the charity of R6million. [6]
In 1976 she helped organise the building and launch of the Market Theatre, South Africa's first multiracial theatre. Then in 1977 she established the Minority Rights Group in France and in 1978 she researched and delivered their report on female genital mutilation, [7] leading to the World Health Organization campaign to eradicate the practice. From 1979 to 1981 she became a consultant on women's issues to UNESCO [8] and it was during this time she researched and wrote UNESCO's contribution to the 1980 United Nations Mid-decade Conference on Women: "The role of women in peace research, peace education and the improvement of relations between nations".
In 1982 she founded the Oxford Research Group (ORG) an NGO which independently researched decision-making on security in the five major nuclear nations during and after the Cold War and brought together policy-makers, academics, the military and civil society to engage in dialogue with their critics. For this work she was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2003 was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize. [9] She remained the executive director of ORG until 2003.
In 2003 Elworthy stepped down as executive director of ORG to found a new charity, Peace Direct, which supports local peace-builders in conflict areas. Peace Direct was named "Best New Charity" at the London Charity Awards 2005 and, although she is not involved in the day-to-day running, Elworthy remains an Ambassador for Peace Direct.
In 2002 she launched a production at the Royal Opera House theatre in London entitled Transforming 11 September. In 2004 she provided the basic material for Max Stafford-Clark's production of Talking to Terrorists at the Royal Court Theatre in London; and in 2007 her case study on the siege of Fallujah in Iraq was used as the basis for Jonathan Holmes' production of Fallujah at the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane.
Her work for the World Peace Festival in 2011 included building seven achievable goals for the Global Peace Building Strategy, [10] adopted by the World Peace Partnership. Dr Elworthy designed the programme for an international two-day conference on peacebuilding, the first day entitled "Peace is your business!" followed by a conference on the "Global Peace Building Strategy" including a morning of workshops entitled "Self Knowledge and Global Responsibility" featuring Dr Deepak Chopra. She and colleagues produced a booklet for the Festival entitled "Tools for Peace", with an accompanying video produced by TalkWorks in association with Different Films Ltd, presenting a seven-step process anyone can use to resolve conflict in the family, workplace or community.
In autumn 2007 Elworthy joined the EastWest Institute's International Task Force on Preventive Diplomacy; in 2009 was featured in the project Soldiers of Peace – Stories from 14 countries around the world – a documentary film narrated by Michael Douglas.
Although she has lectured extensively around the world and appeared on television and radio throughout the last 20 years, her work was less in the public eye from 2005 to 2009 as she was advising Richard Branson, Desmond Tutu and Peter Gabriel on the creation of The Elders, "an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity." [2] [11]
Since the autumn of 2011 Dr Elworthy has been working on a course in consciousness and conflict transformation for mid career professionals, in association with Thomas Hübl in Berlin. She is patron of The GREAT Initiative Gender Rights and Equality Action Trust and a member of the International Advisory Council of the Institute for Economics and Peace; Voice of a Woman; [12] Oxford Research Group; adviser to MasterPeace – an international bottom-up peace initiative – and a member of the steering Committee of PAX, a service to help prevent wars and genocides, and since the early 1990s, a member of the Society of Friends.
In 2012 Elworthy co-founded Rising Women Rising World, a growing, vibrant community of women on all continents who take responsibility for building a world that works for all. "The custodians of this mission are a committed group of professionals, who, over the past 30 years have been shaping their respective fields: economics, business, governance, security, health, ecology, media, culture and the arts, education, spirituality and indigenous wisdom. Now, as Rising Women Rising World we come together to pioneer a possible future." [13]
In 2013–14 Elworthy worked with a group of young social entrepreneurs at the DO School in Hamburg to raise awareness of the work of peace-builders worldwide. [14] She remains involved with The DO School and its international development through her position as a board member. [15]
In 2014 Elworthy published Pioneering the Possible: Awakened Leadership for a World that Works (North Atlantic Books, 2014).
In September 2017 she published The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World Without War (Peace Direct, 2017). The Business Plan for Peace demonstrates how 25 tried and tested strategies for preventing war could be scaled up and extended over 10 years, with the aim of preventing armed violence worldwide. The total cost came to as little as two billion dollars, when the cost of militarization worldwide now exceeds US$1,686 billion. The book further demonstrates how people in any country can learn the skills to prevent conflict and apply them in their own communities, schools, workplace and families. In 2020 she wrote The Mighty Heart: How to transform conflict which outlines the skills and techniques of conflict transformation. These skills were developed into an online course [16] and in 2022 she wrote The Mighty Heart in Action which shows how they help people build a better world. [17] Through Business Plan for Peace she advises the leadership of selected international corporations on investing in and strengthening their respective roles in preventing violent conflict, and teaches young social entrepreneurs. [18]
Her TED talk on non-violence has been viewed by more than 1,426,000 people.
In 2023 she was awarded the GOI Peace Award in recognition of her lifelong dedication to prevent and transform conflicts and build sustainable peace throughout the world. [19]
Elworthy has written, edited and contributed to myriad reports, articles and books including:
The reports produced by the Oxford Research Group are available from their website or, for the older reports, by contacting them directly.
Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term denuclearization is also used to describe the process leading to complete nuclear disarmament.
Peace means societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. In a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict and freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups.
World peace is the concept of an ideal state of peace within and among all people and nations on Earth. Different cultures, religions, philosophies, and organizations have varying concepts on how such a state would come about.
Mairead Maguire, also known as Mairead Corrigan Maguire and formerly as Mairéad Corrigan, is a peace activist from Northern Ireland. She co-founded, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, the Women for Peace, which later became the Community for Peace People, an organization dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Maguire and Williams were awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize.
Proponents of democratic peace theory argue that both electoral and republican forms of democracy are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Different advocates of this theory suggest that several factors are responsible for motivating peace between democratic states. Individual theorists maintain "monadic" forms of this theory ; "dyadic" forms of this theory ; and "systemic" forms of this theory.
The Niwano Peace Prize is given to honor and encourage those devoting themselves to interreligious co-operation in the cause of peace and to make their achievements known. Its foundation hopes that the prize will further promote interreligious co-operation for peace and lead to the emergence of more people devoting themselves to this cause.
Janet Elizabeth Bloomfield was a British peace and disarmament campaigner who was chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from 1993 to 1996.
Peace Direct is a charity based in London, England, which supports grassroots peacebuilders in areas of conflict. Peace Direct focuses on supporting grassroots peacebuilders who are local to the conflict and have a clear vision of what needs to be achieved. Peace Direct funds this work, promotes it and learns from it. The current CEO of Peace Direct is Dylan Mathews.
Lorna Margaret Arnold was a British historian who wrote several books connected with the British nuclear weapons programmes.
Oxford Research Group (ORG) was a London-based charity and think tank in Cambridge Heath, working on peace, security and justice issues. Its research and dialogue activities were mainly focused on the Middle East, North and West Africa, as well as influencing UK and international security policy.
Charles Frank Barnaby was an English nuclear physicist who served as the Nuclear Issues Consultant to the Oxford Research Group, a freelance defence analyst, and a prolific author on military technology. He was based in the United Kingdom.
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Some of the methods used to achieve these goals include advocacy of pacifism, nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, ethical consumerism, supporting anti-war political candidates, supporting legislation to remove profits from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating tools for open government and transparency, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and political lobbying. The political cooperative is an example of an organization which seeks to merge all peace-movement and green organizations; they may have diverse goals, but have the common ideal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those against peace often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
The Gandhi Foundation is a United Kingdom-based voluntary organisation which seeks to further the work of Mahatma Gandhi through a variety of educational events and activities.
The effects of the Cold War on nation-states were numerous both economically and socially until its subsequent century. For example, in Russia, military spending was cut dramatically after 1991, which caused a decline from the Soviet Union's military-industrial sector. Such a dismantling left millions of employees throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed, which affected Russia's economy and military.
The application of nuclear technology, both as a source of energy and as an instrument of war, has been controversial.
Gabrielle Rifkind is a British mediator who has specialised in international conflict resolution working through non-governmental organisations, (NGOs) in the Middle East and United Kingdom. She is the Director of Oxford Process. She is known as a commentator on international peacemaking and related themes and author of several titles. Her work considers the role of human relationships in managing parties with "radical disagreements" with the goal of establishing areas of potential mutual self-interest.
The post–Cold War era is a period of history that follows the end of the Cold War, which represents history after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. This period saw many former Soviet republics become sovereign nations, as well as the introduction of market economies in eastern Europe. This period also marked the United States becoming the world's sole superpower.
Elworthy may refer to:
Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh is an Iranian-American researcher, university lecturer, and United Nations consultant in peacebuilding, conflict resolution, counter-terrorism, and radicalization, best known for her work in "Human Security" and for contributions in the republics of Central Asia and Afghanistan, as cited by the New York Times and other publications as well as hundreds of scholarly publications. Currently, she is a lecturer at Sciences Po, researcher, and consultant to the United Nations.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It opposes military action that may result in the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and the building of nuclear power stations in the UK.