Are killing-free societies possible? Evidence suggests that by working with committed organizations, leaders and individuals like you we can signficantly reduce and eventually eliminate human killing. This goal belongs to everyone, across political, religious or ethnic affiliations. The development of truly civil societies, and nothing less than the future of humankind, depends on our joint success.

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    • Nonkilling Leaders

    Ultimately the roots of a nonkilling society lie in the biography of humankind. Men and women, singly and in concert, celebrated and unsung, past and present, demonstrate potential for combining commitment not to kill with positive pursuit of social change. What some can do, others can do also.

    Anonymous millions respond to the nonkilling leadership of a small, fivefoot four-inch Indian, Mohandas K. Gandhi. Culturally violent Pathans respond to the nonviolent Muslim leadership of Abdul Ghaffar Khan. As the great Gandhian educator Dr. G. Ramachandran has observed, "The unknown heroes and heroines of nonviolence are more important than those that are known". In the United States a small group of African-American college students, trained in Gandhian methods, initiate the civil rights movement that thrusts into leadership the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Nonkilling Americans, such as Adin Ballou and Henry David Thoreau inspire Tolstoy; Tolstoy inspires Gandhi; Gandhi inspires King; all inspire German Green Party founder Petra Kelly and many others in a cumulative global diffusion process of emulation and innovation. In 1997 and 1998 Gandhi was chosen as most admired world leader by more than two hundred young leaders from over sixty countries participating in the first two training programs of the United Nations University’s International Leadership Academy held in Amman, Jordan. Their admiration echoes that of many independence movement leaders in the post-1945 breakdown of the world colonial system.

    Nonkilling leaders continue to arise throughout the world: among them Maha Ghosananda of Cambodia, Ham Suk Hon of Korea, Ken Saro-Wiwa of Nigeria, A.T. Ariyaratne of Sri Lanka, Sulak Sivaraksa of Thailand, Lanza del Vasto and General Jacques de Bollardière of France, Ronald Mallone of England, Aldo Capitini of Italy, N. Radhakrishan of India, Dom Helder Camara of Brazil, A.J. Muste of the United States, Guillermo Gaviria of Colombia.

    Reversing historical neglect of Gandhi, Nobel peace prizes begin to recognize leaders with salient commitments to nonkilling: Albert J. Luthuli and Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel of Argentina, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, the Dalai Lama of Tibet.

    Women—each with her story—courageously step forward to challenge nonkillingly conditions of violence in every aspect of society: Queen Liliʻuokalani of Hawaiʻi; Bertha von Suttner of Austria; Gedong Bagoes Oka of Bali; Medha Patkar of India; Dorothy Day, Barbara Deming, and Jean Toomer of the United States. Collectively women take powerful stands against militarist human rights atrocities (Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires), ethnic slaughter (Women in Black, Serbia), preparation for nuclear war (Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Britain), ecological destruction (Chipko hug-the-trees movement, India), and many other injustices.

    See Nonkilling Global Political Science (2002; 2009).