John Hume: Respecting differences in the peace process

John Hume received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 for his work in advancing peace in his home of Northern Ireland. A member of the British Parliament and leader of Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labour Party, Hume shared the award with David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. Hume joins us from Oslo, Norway, where the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

CNN: Welcome to CNN.com Newsroom, John Hume. We are pleased to have you with us today.

JOHN HUME: Thank you very much for having me. I'm pleased to be talking to you, and I look forward to a very positive discussion.

CNN: You and David Trimble were recognized in 1998 with the peace prize for your work in Northern Ireland. Since then, how would you describe the health of the peace movement in your country?

EXTRA INFORMATION In-Depth: Conflict and hope in Northern Ireland  In-Depth: Nobel Centennial    RESOURCES Message Board: Peace in Northern Ireland?

HUME: I think that we've made very positive progress in our situation. No one could have forecast a number of years ago that we would be where we are today. We reached an agreement which respected both of our identities, in both sections of our community. We created democratic institutions that would ensure that all sections of our community are represented. Those institutions are now fully in place, and that leads us to working with the next stage of our solution, which is what I have called the healing process. That means that the representatives of all sections of our people are working together in our common interests, which is basically the social and economic development of our community as a whole, real politics. As we work together, as I have said, spilling our sweat, and not our blood, we will break down the barriers of distrust and prejudice that have divided our people, and a new society will evolve, based on agreement and respect for difference, with no victory for either side.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Mr. Hume, can you almost feel like there's a real chance of children having a childhood for the first time in three decades?

HUME: There is not only a real chance, but it's now a matter of fact on our streets, that people who grow up, and children in particular, will grow up in a peaceful and stable society. As I've already said, their public representatives will be working together to build that new society.

Naturally, one of my main hopes is that given our peace and stability, we will be able to attract much more inward investment into our community in order to create jobs for our young people, so that for the first time, we will live in a society in which young people will not have to leave to earn a living, but will earn a living in the land of their birth. And of course, in such a new community, there will be a lot more contact, particularly at community level, between young people from different sections of our community. Of course, that again will be part of a healing process, breaking down the barriers of the past and underlining the fact that our common humanity transcends our differences.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Mr. Hume, is it reasonable to compare the war between Irish Catholics and Protestants, to the war between the Jews and the Palestinians?

HUME: Of course, as I have said, our particular conflict isn't specifically about religion, it's about identity because the Protestant people regard themselves as British, and the Catholic people regard themselves as Irish. Therefore, our conflict isn't about religion, but identity. The accommodation of both identities is central to our peace process. But I believe there is a great lesson for the people in the Middle East, from our experience, because at the end of the day, as I have often said, all conflict is about the same thing. It's about difference, whether the difference is religion, nationality or race. Given the difference is an accident of birth, it is something that we should respect, rather than fight about.

Of course, it's also true in many conflict areas, as it was in Ireland, and is in the Middle East, that control of territory is at the heart of conflict. As I have often said in Ireland, and not only does this apply to Ireland, it also applies to the Middle East and other areas of conflict, that it is people who have rights, not territory. Without people, any piece of earth is only a jungle, and when people are divided, and in Ireland and in the Middle East it was the people divided, not the territory. So it should be clear to the people of the Middle East, as was learned eventually in Ireland, that when people are divided, violence in any shape or form has no role to play in solving their problems. It will only deepen the divisions and make the problem more difficult to resolve. Indeed, when one side uses violence, the other side will reply with violence. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, the old doctrine of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

When both sides engage in conflict and in violence and sit down through dialogue to reach agreement, the first principle of such agreement, and this applies to the people in the Middle East, should be the respect for the identity of both peoples. Then they should, rather than quarreling about territory, create institutions which respect the differences (which is the third principle), and which create the circumstances where they work together in their common interests that promote the economic development of the territory where both peoples live. As they do that over generations, spilling sweat and not blood, a new type of society will emerge in the Middle East, and a totally peaceful situation. Palestinians will still be Palestinians, and Israelis will still be Israelis. In other words, it's crucially important that both sides agree that people are more important than territory.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Mr. Hume have you been asked or consulted about Afghanistan and their peace process [and what are your thoughts about the war there]?

HUME: My thoughts about Afghanistan were expressed clearly the day after it happened, and it was a statement of total sympathy for the people of New York and Washington, particularly the families of the victims who had suffered from this terrible atrocity. And, as I said, there should be total support across the world for the United States government and democratic governments across the world working together to bring to justice the people who committed these terrible atrocities. But it was essential to make sure in the methods to bring them to justice, that innocent people did not suffer. In dealing with the overall problems of the people of Afghanistan, it was very welcome that the United States was sending direct humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan, because as everyone knows, 70 percent of the population are undernourished.

But in order to solve the long-term problems of that people, given the shocking situation that 85 percent of the women of Afghanistan cannot read or write because women are not allowed to go to school, and of course 65 percent of the men can't read or write either, and all of that underlines a necessity that the real long-term aid to the people of Afghanistan is to take the natural steps to set up a permanent system of education for all of them.

It should be said often [that] the only wealth we have in this world is people, and the more educated the people are, the more their creativity will be fully involved in building and developing their community. It is no accident that the most successful economic communities in the world are countries and communities that have a total education system for all their people. What that means in practice is that people are then capable of using all their talents to develop their community socially and economically. So aid to Afghanistan to set up an education system will provide the foundations to ensure that in the future they will become a self-sufficient country, not needing humanitarian aid from the rest of the world. Indeed, the provision of education to all Third-World countries who are in consistent need of humanitarian aid should be a central international policy for countries who are keen to help the Third World.

CNN: Do you have any closing comments for us today?

HUME: As we enter the new century, the new millennium, that we should all be doing everything in our power to ensure that it is a century and millennium in which there is no conflict or war. In that regard, I would appeal to the most influential country in the world, the United States, to ensure that the rest of the world puts into practice the principles of the founding fathers of the United States. It is often forgotten that the United States was founded by people who were driven from other countries by serious humanitarian needs, by intolerance, by deprivation, by famine. The founding fathers decided to build a country in which these matters would not occur, and their philosophy is summed up in three words, which were so important that they are written on their cents, and written large on the grave of Abraham Lincoln. The words are in Latin, e pluribus unum, from many, we are one. This is the essence of unity, the respect of diversity.

Given that now, in the new century, the new millennium, we are living through the greatest revolution in the history of the world, the technological, telecommunications, and transport revolution, the world is a much smaller place. We are obviously much closer together. We cannot live apart, and therefore the fundamental principles of e pluribus unum, the essence of unity is respect for diversity, is a very powerful message of peace.

CNN: Thank you for joining us today, John Hume.

HUME: Thank you very much.

John Hume joined CNN.com chat via telephone from Oslo, Norway. CNN provided a typist. This is an edited transcript of the interview which took place on Monday, December 10, 2001.