An interview with founder of Transcend International, Johan Galtung, on Democracy Now!:
From Transcend International:
TRANSCEND has as its mission: To bring about a more peaceful world by using action, education/training, dissemination and 
research to transform conflicts nonviolently, with empathy and creativity, for acceptable and sustainable outcomes.
TRANSCEND membership encompasses over 350 invited scholars/practitioners from more than 60 countries, with 22 Conveners in 14 World Regions.
- By peace we mean the capacity to transform conflicts with empathy, without violence, and creatively — a never-ending process;
- By transforming conflicts we mean enabling the parties to go ahead in a self-reliant, acceptable and sustainable manner;
- By without violence we mean that this process should avoid any cultural violence that justifies direct or structural violence;
- By with empathy we mean the ability also to understand the conflict the way the parties understand the conflict themselves;
- By creatively we mean channeling conflict energy toward new realities, accommodating the parties and meeting basic human needs.
TRANSCEND INTERNATIONAL was founded August 1993 by Johan Galtung and Fumiko Nishimura as a conflict mediation organization. Dietrich Fischer, the current director of TRANSCEND University Press, joined soon after and in June 1995 Dietrich Fischer and Johan Galtung invited 11 others. Mid 2010 TRANSCEND has 350 scholars-practitioners from 80 countries as members, one third women. TRANSCEND International, Inc., is registered in Hawai’i and has 501(c)3 tax-exemption number 990339345.
TRANSCEND International is a timely experiment in promoting peace by peaceful means throughout the world. Traditionally, institutes have been centered around a building where the people who work together meet on a regular basis. Since many people who share common interests in helping transform conflicts nonviolently and creatively are geographically scattered and cannot usually be physically together, our solution was to create an electronic network of members, which, in addition, to diminishing our carbon-footprints and contribute to attenuate the global warming crisis has allowed TRANSCEND INTERNATIONAL to connect autonomous individuals and academic and research centers from all over the world with a focus on peace by peaceful means, development by developmental means and environment by eco-consistent means.
More concretely, TRANSCEND practices mediation and peace-building around the world, with Manuals, a Code of Conduct, and Perspectives with diagnosis, prognosis and therapy for conflicts (see: 50 Years-100 Peace & Conflict Perspectives, TRANSCEND University Press, 2008).
Our mission-statement defines four pillars on which our ongoing work builds in order to bring about a more peaceful world. These are 1:action, 2:education/training, 3:dissemination and 4:research.
- TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU (www.transcend.org/tpu), for government and non-government practitioners and students at any level, with 12-week bi-semester on-line courses, and intensive TPU on-site training programs in several locations around the world (see announcements at the TPU website);
- TRANSCEND University Press-TUP (www.transcend.org/tup), which publishes high quality books and textbooks about peace by peaceful means, development by developmental means, and environment by environmental means;
- TRANSCEND Research Institute-TRI (www.transcend.org/tri), which publishes research papers and booklets for free downloading;
- TRANSCEND Peace Service-TPS, which offers mediation, conciliation and peace-building services by TRANSCEND members, and is open to anybody around the world with conflict and peace concerns and experiences; and
- TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS (www.transcend.org/tms), a Peace Journalism resource for journalists/media, professionals, students and the Internet public at large.
It is on this basis, that our members strive to handle conflicts with constructive empathy, concrete non-violent means and creativity for mutually beneficial outcomes. [see our code of conduct for more details] Notwithstanding the fact that for each of these four pillars, TRANSCEND has a designated body, the cornerstone of our daily work is the incessant interaction between these bodies.
A GENERAL PHILOSOPHY UNDERLIES OUR 13 PROGRAMS:
1. Peaceful Conflict Transformation
2. Peace-Building
3. Nonviolence
4. Reconciliation
5. Peace Education
6. Peace Journalism
7. Peace Business
8. Peace Systems
9. Peace and Gender
10. Peace and the Arts
11. Peaceful Foreign Policies
12. Peace Departments/Ministries
13. UN People’s Assembly
Source: Transcend International – About Us
To read Johan Galtung’s books and papers, click here, and for more of his interviews, click here.
