 Welcome. Thank you for coming in this evening after I'm sure what's a very what has been a very very long day. We are going to plunge right in because we're running late and people have some very short time so we are not going to have a whole lot of introduction because well we have the president of Columbia here and you all know who he is and we have Kalish Satyarthi who is the founder of the Kalish Satyarthi Children's Foundation in India and he's worked with Malala Yusafi. So we're going to get started right away. This is a panel about envisioning and building peace and I'm going to start with President Santos. Fifty years of civil war how do you get people to even envision what a peace might look like? It's it's difficult because people get accustomed to all type of situations even war and they start seeing war as a something normal and then when you reach a peace agreement that we did after 50 years people then say no they don't believe that that could be true and then they are skeptic that this will not work. So you need a lot of persuasion and a lot of teaching to reconcile the society. I have learned many things in this process. I learned very clearly that leading in times of war is much much easier than leading in times of peace. In times of war you and I I was Minister of Defense. I made war as Minister of Defense against the people with which I made peace afterwards. The leadership in times of war is a very vertical type of leadership. You have the bad guys on the other side. You have the good guys here. You rally the forces and you go. That type of leadership is quite simple and easy so far as you're successful. Instead to make peace you need to change attitudes. You need to change perceptions. You need to teach people how to forgive and sometimes that is very difficult. When you have to sit down with somebody whose daughter or mother or father had been killed or tortured and say listen I'm going to sit down with the person who did this and I'm going to be more lenient in terms of applying justice. That is very difficult. And in the case of Colombia for so long that we lived through so many years the society in a way was losing something which is very important to have in any society compassion. How to how to understand the suffering of other people. We after so many years of war were losing our compassion. So now to build this in society to reconcile it's a long-term process. I compare that to the building of a cathedral. To build a good cathedral you have to have solid bases and then build it brick by brick. This will take a long time. People want change immediately and then you have to explain no this is a slow process for it to be a successful process. So you have to persevere. We reached the peace agreement through perseverance through goodwill through not this is important not letting yourself be guided by public opinion. Sometimes you go I have to go against the mood of public opinion. It's difficult when you have many people against you you think am I doing something wrong. But if you are convinced that what you're doing is correct you have to follow through and persevere. Well I'd like to turn to Mr. Mr. Satyarthi about the idea of compassion. So you work with children who I think probably have a different vision of the world than adults do. How do you see compassion and playing into peace building? Well as many of us agree that peace does not mean that sense of war or violence. Peace has many faces and many manifestations. For me I see peace on the face of a smiling child is careless who can cry who can laugh who can jump who can play this is peace for me. And if such children from different communities from different religions from different ethnical groups hug each other as children because there is no divide in them. They are much more united inherently. That is the manifestation of peace the true manifestation. I share with him that compassion is the key in whole my life what I say that I am trying to globalize compassion. The globalization of market economy knowledge technology products we have all seen. We have also witnessed the consequences good or bad both global warming and terrorism and all kind of things tensions inequality but this is the time to think and act differently that is the globalization of compassion because compassion is not just empathy. It is a feeling where you connect with others suffering and you drive there is a drive to change the suffering of other person and that will make the world is safer and peaceful place. So I have been working with children in whole my life freeing them from slavery helping them in education not only in India but I work across 140 countries including in his country and I love the children in Columbia and I have been to remotest places even when you were not the president and last time when we met I also met number of children former child slaves and so on. So I could feel that they are changing everywhere because children do not want war and in the human history there is no example where children were responsible for any war any poverty any kind of divide divide of cultures and religions children are not responsible we have created religions and cultures we have created walls and boundaries we have created all the wars and poverty. So why children should suffer that should be the starting point children are just victims and sufferers of what they have not responsible for they are just victims. So let us connect with our children through compassion and try to ignite compassion I tell that compassion is something a God given wealth it's a divine wealth inside each one of us but what we do this wealth we use only for ourselves for our own biological children siblings friends but this wealth could be invested in the world and we can make a world which is really safer which is really peaceful by learning from children what we have done in all our lives we keep on teaching our children you are Hindu you are Muslims you are Christians you are Cambodians you are Colombians you are Pakistani you are Indians so on and so forth the children don't understand this we teach them sometimes I say that this is the time to learn from children learn from children learn from them can I compliment on that sure I agree I agree 100% through children when you were saying children were born without prejudice and they don't want any walls if we can teach the children that we are one people which is called the world and we are one race which is called humanity and that no matter what religion or what color of your skin or what we are one that would help tremendously yeah yeah we did not agree or got together before this meeting but we yeah but at least there are so many things common compassion is common but both of us share Nobel Peace Prize well it's good to know that in a peace building session I won't have to break up any fight so I do want to delve a little bit more deeply into the idea of reconciliation because I think that that's the tough part you know you can sign a peace treaty but then you have to get people who have had years and years of war and conflict and have developed hatred to unlearn hatred so I'll start with you President Santos have you had the occasion to actually try and reconcile two people on opposite sides yes and let me tell you an anecdote which is a bit before that when when I started the peace process some very illustrious persons a professor from Harvard came to my office and said this is going to be a very difficult journey very difficult journey you need energy because you're going to feel some time that you're going to throw in the towel and simply don't continue and he said talk to the victims share with them their experience that will give you the energy to continue and I did that through five years every time and made and I felt that many times I was so disillusioned public opinion against it and why what is happening should I continue or not then I spoke to the victims and the victims I thought were going to be the most radically opposed to transitional justice to give some kind of leniency to the perpetrators and I came into the process with that prejudice and they taught me I was completely wrong the victims were the first ones to say continue we don't want other people to suffer what we suffered and they were the ones who said I want to meet the people who did this and so during the peace process we brought together the perpetrators and the victims and that was a great experience and see how reconciliation can be possible of course we had examples of every nature some that some that screamed some that said I don't want to ever you killed my daughter you did but overall when you start explaining to them that this is the only way that you you can leave a country in peace for the next generations people start to understand and in the transitional justice in every peace process where you draw the line between peace and justice is the key issue always you will find people against what you decide from one extreme and the other extreme but once you take the decision you have to start implementing the procedures to promote reconciliation one thing that is extremely important the truth to know what happened many victims didn't want even reparations monetary repression they just simply wanted to know why why did they do this or where is my son or where is my daughter simply by telling them that giving them that information they change completely the their propensity to reconcile so there are different ways that you can approach reconciliation but that word is the magic word for a peace process or peace to be really constructed on solid basis so there have been so many cases where people have tried to work with children in reconciliation I think about northern Ireland for example where do you think children can play a role in the reconciliation process and you have any examples of where you think it's worked very well well in India for example where we work with children there are certain pockets which are insurgency front pockets where some of the ultra Maoist pick up the guns and sometimes they're using children to use those guns young people and using them for violence and we started working there with the communities with the children and found that one of the reasons was that the children were not given a better alternative better choice an environment where they can feel confident and friendly and hope and more important they should have trust in the future or trust with the establishment so we started working in those pockets so some of these children were working as child slaves or child laborers but others were being used by these violent groups so when we started working there was some opposition from those violent groups but then we tried to tell them that look you are demanding equality you're demanding justice and that's why you are picking up the gun but justice and equality can never come without an education quality education so if we are preparing children through education and more secular education where they can learn love they can learn compassion and we tried to bring children and youth from different communities and different religions and they started working together and from both sides some of the perpetrators predators or violent groups as well as the children of ordinary people who are victims and we have seen tremendous change over the years where the people started feeling that no this is not good to give guns in the hands of tiny children after our younger brothers and sisters so in those places we have seen massive decline in the use of child slaves or child laborers but also use of children for the combatant activities but here I would also like to underline when we talk of the broader piece then just compare that world needs 40 billion dollars and additional money to ensure education for all children in the world annually primary and secondary education both this is this money is not a big thing because it is just less than the global military expenditure if the world decide that we are not going to invest in arms and emanations and all kind of fight and violence perhaps we can protect all generation the entire generation from all kind of miseries and difficulties and we can ensure education for them just less than a week global military expenditure can solve the problem of children in the world and we can save the generation but here in Europe who is the biggest arm trader who is the biggest manufacturers arms arms are manufacturers in manufactured in this country and they are used for violence eventually when you create when you produce a gun for what we are not able to give toys in the hands of our children we are not able to give books and pencils to our children and we are producing more bullets than books we have in a number of countries right from South Sudan to Austria and many places where the number of soldiers is bigger than the number of teachers so what kind of world we are going to create for peace we have to reverse this we have to reverse this children should be our priority now to make a sustainable human society and a peaceful world so we have a number of conflicts going on in the world right now north and south Korea there's all kinds of escalation going on in the Middle East what sort of advice and this is a question for both of you you can take turns no fighting do you think that we did any fight what what kind of advice would you give people who who want to get started who want to start to de-escalate a conflict well each conflict has its own particular conditions and to generalize conflicts is a mistake each conflict has peculiarities but there's some common denominators first try many people in our case thought that it was impossible that to make peace in Colombia with the FARC was impossible but you can then say that the impossible is possible and so the first the first ingredient the first step is try then I think that no conflict is impossible to resolve if there is good will from both parts the big challenge is to create the conditions that the good will is present in both both parts at the same time many times you can see that through history there's will from one part and no will from the other and then things change the other one one and the other one the other one does not so you have to in a way create the conditions for example in in the case of Colombia we we studied very very closely all the peace processes that had been negotiated before and we tried to extract what was applicable to our conflict and we said we need some basic conditions in our case first there was a necessity for the guerrilla to see the war as something that will never achieve its objectives for that we need to change the correlation military correlation of forces which we did second the leaders of the of the FARC visa the guerrilla personally had to change their their way of approaching the conflict that it would be for them a good business in terms of they will win out of a negotiation and third in our case very important in today's world the what the military called the asymmetrical wars need the support of the region so we went and made peace with the rest of the region and the case of Colombia for example with Venezuela with Ecuador where we didn't have very good relations and brought them in we brought in the military that are usually are perceived as enemies of peace because during times of war they have a bigger budget and they have their own interest we brought in the military so you have to start defining the conditions that would make a process successful and this needs to be done in a very I would say rigorous manner but there is no conflict that could not be solved there's good work for both parts yeah I fully agree with him and as a president and politician you can have this this political vision in my case being a social activist I think that the social solutions to these problems should also be found people's to people's connect more communication we have to create an ecosystem where people can meet each other like we have we tried in India between India and Pakistan but not just under the banner of peace otherwise it could have become a political issue and sensitive diplomatic issue so we said that both countries need education for their children we are investing so much on arms we must invest invest on education people liked it the parents liked it oh yes we want we want to invest on education why are we investing on this so what should be the priority so we tried to organize series of events like the youth and children's movement between these two countries and we have seen the results these young people when they met each other they said oh the Pakistani children come to India and feel that oh we are at home and so was the case of Indian children went to Pakistan they are so loved by people and taken care by the people and the parents of other children they have that lifelong impression if you are able to build up that it will definitely help people's to people's contact and learning understanding each other respecting each other's culture and language and issues instead of going into other details perhaps it cannot be done so easily with the most intelligent people but so-called innocent children can make it happen and it's possible some of the groups are doing good work between Palestine and Israel also and they have been much more successful in building the bridges through the young people so that is very much possible so I I I'm very optimistic and I'm hopeful that the future world would be led by youth we we should not consider young people as problem but we must consider them as solutions they are solutions they are changes the changes inside them young people are enthusiastic and energetic but they do have a strong element of idealism and that idealism has to be recognized and channelized to make this world a better safer peaceful place and that's why I have recently launched a campaign called hundred million for hundred million hundred million young people are victims of violence that includes slavery trafficking refugee crisis and so on but on the other hand hundreds of millions of young people in university colleges schools who are in well-off situations they wanted to do something good for the humanity for the society their hearts are more open and vibrant for others so we are trying to give them a platform so that these well-off children in schools universities can become the spokesperson change makers and leaders for those hundred million left out young people in the world and this way on one hand we are trying to practically globalize compassion but also we are trying to create a new culture of global citizenship among young people and we have to and I very much count on the power of youth it sounds to me very much that you're describing sort of a grassroots peace movement and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about whether you see a grassroots movement as something that a political leader could use well I see something that worries me which is social media and the polarization that we are seeing in many countries and the predominance of emotions over arguments and the social media is in a way tending to emphasize some prejudice that you have you you go and you see who talks to who and there's like a vicious circle you talk to people who think like you or or want to think like you and you reinforce your prejudice or your way of seeing certain things and so the emotions take over and that makes the dialogue much more difficult we have to see how we break that vicious circle because otherwise the extremes will be fed and one one thing that I learned in the process that we had and you see it all around the world when fear takes over in the emotions are multiplied fear is probably the most sought condition for the manipulation of a person or of a community and people many people are like to feed that fear that's why I say that I think that one basic move that we have to make around the world is to try to go again to the center in terms of not allowing emotions to take over the arguments and it's difficult manipulating through emotions from the political point of view much easier and but hopefully mentioned grassroots what we are starting to see is grassroots movements against that manipulation of emotions and hopefully they will be they will succeed because that will it make that up much easier so we are really quite out of time but let's just take one question from the audience that's okay with the two of you does anyone have anything yes I'm going to repeat that question for those who might be watching on the webcast but the question was how do you make adults if children are more have more tendency towards peace and playfulness how do you make adults act like that and our questioner notes that his children are always fighting so childhood does not mean an age factor childhood means transparency purity freedom of mind childhood means forgiveness childhood means quest for learning new things always so that means childhood for me so if we understand that children possess that these values and childhood becomes a bigger value or a virtue so instead of teaching our children sometimes you spend some time when you go back from here sit with your son or daughter or your sister brother just watch just watch for 10 minutes 15 minutes it's a practice and then you will learn that when these two children fight they just forget and forget forget they don't keep in mind they don't have any prejudice so learning from children the learning our own barriers and boundaries of mind and learning simplicity from children that can come through practice well thank you very much please join me in thanking both of our Nobel laureates