EUROPE

Pierre Marchanda

Overcomes Violent Childhood to Work for Peace

“We believe that each child can discover, by themselves, that violence is not inevitable. We can offer hope, not only to the children of the world, but to all of humanity, by beginning to create, and build, a new culture of nonviolence.”

Text of For the Children of the World, an appeal to the United Nations Pierre Marchand is from Compiegne, near Paris. As a boy he experienced severe violence including rape and torture. His life might well have continued in a destructive direction, but he rose above his pain.

Marchand learned about the nonviolent resistance to evil practiced by Gandhi and King. He became active in Amnesty International and in the French Fellowship of Reconciliation. He founded Partage, an organization to help children affected by war and disaster around the world.

Marchand heard Thich Nhat Hanh talk about teaching nonviolence to children in school and about the importance of each school setting aside a place for meditation and conflict resolution. He heard Marie Pierre Bovy of the Community of the Ark, call for a “Year of Nonviolence.”

Combining these ideas, Marchand went to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to talk with Mairead Corrigan-Maguire. She agreed to lead a Nobel Peace Laureates campaign for a Decade of Nonviolence. After writing the text of the appeal in a Children's Village in India, Pierre began visiting Nobel Peace Laureates to get their signatures. All of them signed on—an unprecedented show of unity. Eventually the United Nations proclaimed 2001- 2010 as the Decade of a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence, largely because one man stood up for peace.