Toda Institute Annual Report (fwd)

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

Happy Holidays and Merry Millennium (2001).  Below please find the Annual
Report of the Toda Institute for your information.   Please do not
hesitate to ask questions on any aspect of the report.  With warmest
peersonal regards, Majid Tehranian










ANNUAL REPORT

1999











Toda Institute
For Global Peace and Policy Research
3-10-18 Kita-Aoyama, Minato-ku
Tokyo 107, JAPAN
Tel.: 81-3-5469-0321; Fax: 81-3-5469-0320
Email: todainst@mb.infoweb.or.jp

Honolulu Center:
1600 Kapiolani Blvd., Suite 1111
Honolulu, Hawaii 96814, USA
Tel.: 808-955-8231; Fax: 808-955-6476
Email: toda@toda.org; Webpage: http//www.toda.org
 





In 1999, the Toda Institute had a bumper crop.  Four years of
collaborative international research on its main research project, Human
Security and Global Governance (HUGG), began to bear fruit.  The first
three volumes of the Toda Institute Book Series were published in 1999,
while the next three volumes were approaching publication for 2000.   The
list and its contents reveal global scholarly collaboration, for which we
are deeply grateful:

 Worlds Apart: Human Security and Global Governance, edited by Majid
Tehranian.
London: I. B. Tauris, 1999

 Asian Peace: Security and Governance in the Asia-Pacific Region, edited
by Majid Tehranian.  London: I. B. Tauris, 1999

 Not By Bread Alone: Food Security and Governance in Africa, Edited by
Adelane Ogunrinade, Ruth Oniang'o, and Julian May.  Johannesburg:
University of Witwaterstrand Press, 1999

 Nuclear Disarmament: Obstacles to Overcome, edited by Jozef Goldblat.  
London: I. B. Tauris, 2000

 Globalization, Employment, and Quality of Life, edited by Don Lamberton.
London: I. B. Tauris, 1999

 Globalization, Migration, and Cultural Security, edited by Jonathan
Friedman and Shalini Randeria.   London: I. B. Tauris, 1999

As part of its HUGG West Asia, Peace and Policy, the Institute's journal
also published a special issue on the problems and prospects for a new
regional security regime in the Persian Gulf.  The Institute's new
brochure reflects the increasing depth and breadth of its work.  Among
others, this includes collaborations with the Berlin House of World
Cultures in a conference on cultural security, with the University of
Hawaii in a project on international refugees, and with the Queens College
on a project on peace in Northern Island.  

Preparations for the next phase of the Institute's research project also
were completed in 1999.  Three consecutive and collaborative international
conferences were planned for the years 2000-2002 to take place in Okinawa,
Moscow, and Beijing.  All three conferences focus on "Dialogue of
Civilizations: A New Peace Agenda for a New Millennium."  The first
conference comes at the end of four years of the HUGG Project.  It may be
viewed as the epilogue of the previous conferences and publications as
well as the prologue to a new phase.  All three conferences focus on a new
peace agenda so on the basis of our past findings and future projections.
While the Okinawa conference focuses on cultural responses to
institutional challenges and different cultural visions for global
institutional transformation for peace, the Moscow and Beijing conference
will concentrate on the problems of the world's Northern and Southern
hemispheres.   

As a new century and millennium unfolds, the Toda Institute hopes to make
its contributions as part of a growing global civil society and an
international peace movement.  This movement is ecumenical in spirit
drawing from the wisdom of all past civilizations but laying the
foundations for a global civilization unique in all human history.
Instead of attending to details of the Institute's projects, which can be
read elsewhere (see the Institute brochure and journal), this report
presents a perspective on the new peace movement, and within that context,
a projection of the Toda Institute's mission in the new century.

The Growing Global Civil Society  

As The Economist (December 11, 1999, 20-21) among other sources has
recently noted, a growing global civil society is beginning to make its
impact on the world scene.  In response to the forces of globalization
from above, led by the Global 1000 transnational corporations (TNCs) and
the major industrial states (OECD 29), a global peace movement from below
is also taking shape.  Although at times this movement may appear as
reactive, and sometimes reactionary as in the fundamentalist religious
movements, its overall impact must be considered as progressive.  If
continued and firmly institutionalized, its net effect will be to check
and balance the forces of the global market and national states that have
so far led the way without much attention to the desperate needs and
aspirations of four-fifth of humanity.  

Despite its social inequities, global capitalism or Pancapitalism, for
short, has created a dynamic world economy.  It has induced a new
international division of labor in which the previously industrialized
countries (PICs) have led the new high technology industries in weaponry,
computers, aerospace, telecommunication, biotechnology, and genetic
engineering.  At the same time, the newly industrialized countries (NICs)
are taking over the old labor-intensive industries such as textiles,
steel, microprocessing, shipbuilding, etc.  That has led to higher
standards of living for vast numbers in East and South Asia as well as
Latin America.  But it also has led to unemployment and a tangible
lowering of standards of living for the aristocracy of the world's working
classes in the North America and Western Europe.  The confrontation in
Seattle at the World Trade Organization conference of 1999 between
advocates of globalization and the anti-globalization forces led by the
American labor unions must be understood as part of this drama.  

Pancapitalism also has unwittingly brought about Marshall McLuhan's global
village in ways that he could not foresee.  Instead of a homogenized mass
society, it has empowered the unheard voices to be heard.  Time and again
in recent years, the peripheries have challenged the centers of power
through their tele-access to the new information and communication
technologies (ICTs).  In Iran, through the use of cassette tapes and long
distance telephony that transmitted the Ayatollah's messages from Paris,
the Shah's regime came to an end.  In the Philippines, through the use of
radio and pamphlets, the world witnessed the fall of the Marcos regime
directly on global television (notably CNN).  In China, through the use of
fax machines, the students let the rest of the world learn of their
challenge to the Beijing potentates.  In the Soviet Union, through the use
of computer networks, Yeltzin's messages of defiance against the military
coup mobilized the Russian population.  In Mexico, through the use of
laptops and the Internet, the Chiapas brought their grievances against the
government to the attention of the world community.  In Ottawa, in 1997,
about 130 states signed a treaty to ban landmines that was pushed by a
coalition of 1000 Internet-mobilized, non-governmental organizations.  In
Seattle, in 1999, the World Trade Organization's meeting was sabotaged by
a coalition of American workers and militants.  In Vatican, through the
use of the Internet, a Jubilee 2000 movement has been mobilized to demand
debt forgiveness for the less developed countries.

Although some may lament this phenomenon as a shift of power to "unelected
and unaccountable special interest groups", others consider it the rise of
a global civil society capable of challenging the states and the TNCs
(Ibid., The Economist).  A greater balance between states, markets, and
civil society-the democratic holy trinity-might be emerging.  In our own
era of globalization, markets have rapidly grown in power and reach while
smaller and medium sized states have lost much of their sovereignty and
power.  Mobilization of civil societies is a force that can somewhat
correct this imbalance.  Thanks largely to the global communication
networks developed by transnational media corporations (TMCs), ICTs have
assisted civil societies to mobilize against the mounting domination of
the Global 1000.

An emerging global village is not, however, "global".  Computers,
telephones, and modems are the linchpins of "the global" in the so-called
global village.  However, as pointed out by International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), four-fifths of the world's population has
no telephone.  Half of the world's population has never used a telephone.
The sixty-seven highest income countries account for only 15 per cent o
the world's population, but they are served by 71 percent of the world's
main telephone lines.  The lowest-income countries account for 59 per cent
of the world's population, but only 4 per cent of main telephone lines.
If we consider the latest ICTs such as cable, satellites, mainframe and
personal computers, the global gaps will appear even more staggering.

A global village is nonetheless emerging for those plugged into the
corporate and knowledge networks in the midst of many global ghettoes for
the poor.  A neo-feudal regime is in formation.  Instead of the moats
around the medieval castles, we now have the ghettoes of the rich and the
poor each cordoned off by electronic surveillance.  What separates the two
worlds is not so much physical location as cyber-access.  You may live in
New York's ghettoes and yet have no tele-access.  If you are part of the
transnational corporate community in New Delhi, you are certain to have
tele-access to the headquarters in New York, London, or Tokyo.  The two
worlds of rich and poor live in separate physical and moral geographies
colliding sometimes in wars, riots, terrorism, and the Internet.  Can such
a world survive for long?  As a feudal regime buttressed by severe
security measures, maybe.  As a modern democratic system, probably not.

Toda Institute's Mission

        In such a world context, peace scholars and activists cannot
afford to be complacent.  The world continues to be an increasingly
dangerous place.  Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including
their planned or accidental use, mounting manufacturing and trade in
conventional arms, and the development of new high tech weapons of mass
destruction such as those employed in the bombing of Iraq and Kosovo, all
add to national and international insecurities.  As documented in the
United Nations Human Development Reports, increasing global warming and
pollution, growing gaps in wealth and income within and among nations, as
well as natural and human-made disasters, are lowering the quality of life
for the majority of humanity.  

        However, as a Chinese saying wisely reminds us, it is better to
light a candle than to curse darkness a thousand times.  That is where the
mission of the peace movement and peace institutes should come into play.
As the micro and macro challenges to our understanding of the problems of
positive peace and order, the Toda's Institute's focus on the dual
problems of human security and global governance will continue in the near
future.  During the past four years, the Institute has managed to consider
such issues as nuclear, cultural, and employment security in the context
of a globalized economy.  It has also focused on problems of national and
international security in two particular regions, including the
Asia-Pacific and the Persian Gulf.  In collaboration with others, it also
has addressed the problems of institutional reform in the United Nations
system and global governance.  However, many other vital human security
issues, such as gender, child, water, and environmental security, remain
to be studied.  In a globalizing world, all these security issues must be
studied in the context of clash or dialogue of cultures and alternative
visions of the futures.  All the conflicting perspectives will continue to
converge on issues of governance at the local, national, regional, and
global levels.  

        The Toda Institute's mission therefore will continue to be studies
of the problems of human security and global governance with a focus on
positive peace and order remedies and recommendations to the policy
community.  This mission, as in the past four years, will be undertaken in
collaboration with other peace and policy research centers and institutes
throughout the world.  Priority will be given, however, to the empowering
of the unheard voices in an international communication order currently
dominated by the voices of wealth and power.  In this enterprise, the Toda
Institute looks to all peace scholars, policymakers, and community leaders
for collaboration. 

Acknowledgements 

Without the unfailing support of the Institute Founder Daisaku Ikeda,
Chairman Einosuke Akiya, as well as the Board of Directors and the
International Advisory Council, the Institute would not have been able to
achieve what it has in the last four years.  The Institute's small staff
at its Tokyo headquarters and Honolulu Center has faithfully provided the
logistical support for the international conferences out of which the Toda
Institute Book Series is emerging.  Without the hard and dedicated work of
Masaichi Ueda, Tomosaburo Hirano, Koichi Taniguchi, Satoko Takahashi,
Hau'oli Busby, Hiroshi Morita, Aiko Egami, and Chie Sunada, the Toda
Institute would not have been able to conduct its extensive international
collaboration.  Thanks are also due to the Peace and Policy's associate
editors, Farideh Farhi, and Celine Shinbutsu.  The Institute's webmaster,
Anne Smith, has opened Toda to the rest of the cyber-world.  My teaching
and research assistants, Randall Larsen, Maryam Kia, Brett Keating, Amber
Guillory, and Allison Taguchi all helped enormously when the going was
rough.  

The collaborators in the Institute's international conferences and book
series have worked beyond the call of duty.  In 1999, the following peace
and policy centers were our partners: 

 Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo (Director Sverre
Lodgaard), 
 Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, Copenhagen (Research Director Bjoern
Moeller), 
 Center for Islamic and Arab Studies of the Australian National
University, Canberra (Director Amin Saikal), 
 Institute of Political and International Studies of Tehran (Directors
Seyyed Sadeq Kharrazi and Seyyed Kazem Sajjadpour) 
 Berlin House of World Cultures (Director Hans-Georg Knopp) 
 School of Politics of La Trobe University, Melbourne (Professor Joseph
Camilleri) 
 Focus on the Global South, Bangkok (Dr. Kamal Malhotra). 
  
On the editorial front, Jozef Goldblat, Ade Ogunrianade, Ruth Oniang'o,
Julian May, Don Lamberton, Jonathan Friedman, and Shalini Randeira must be
recognized for their invaluable collaboration in the publication of the
book series.  The contribution of all of the above and those members of
the International Advisory Council who have counseled us from time to
time, represents a labor of love for a just world without wars. 

        There are few pursuits as rewarding as peacemaking.   There are
also few pursuits that can be as humbling.   The Toda Institute has
offered its director and collaborators an exceptional opportunity to be
exhilarated and humbled.  Words are too inadequate as expressions of
gratitude for this challenging opportunity.  

Respectfully Submitted, 
Majid Tehranian
Director, Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research 
December 28, 1999