Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) cooperating with Perdana Global Peace (PGPF), Malaysia conducts the fifth Mahathir Global Peace School (MGPS) on 25 November – 5 December 2015. The previous ones only engaged students and researchers, but the fifth MGPS involves people from various backgrounds as institutions, government, students, lecturers, activists, journalists, researchers, non-governmental organizations concerning with issues of peace and conflict resolution.
In an interview on Thursday, 27 October 2016, one of the board members of the fifth MGPS, Sri Atmaja P. Rosyidi, ST., MSc.Eng., Ph.D. PE informed that engaging participants from diverse backgrounds aims at promoting the peace issues to broader community. “MGPS was firstly conceptualized as a short course addressing peace issues so that the participants were only students in the final year of their study from various departments, graduate students, and researchers. Then, we thought that it was diminutive scope if only academicians were engaged in the peace issues, conflict resolution, as well as inter-religious dialogue. The mission had not been delivered to wide community yet. Thus, we attempted to invite participants from different backgrounds,” Sri told.
The fifth MGPS will be dissimilar from the previous ones in term of the participants. “Many governmental and non-governmental institutions focusing on peace, conflict resolution, and inter-religious dialogue are involved in this MGPS. It is expected that they can collaborate to possess the same perspective on peace. The institutions may also create generations understanding global peace and being able to confront diversity issues in this nation,” he wished.
Even though the results of MGPS cannot be noticed immediately, UMY and PGPF have attempted to contribute to prepare for future generations. “The generations may be able to comprehend that peace is most likely possible to be true and war is not the foremost conflict resolution. Although we live in a highly heterogeneous country, we can foster cultures to tolerate one another and to maintain peace. Conflicts can most likely occur and cannot be restrained. However, the crux is that we recognize how to resolve the conflicts,” he asserted.
Sri contended that the MGPS will bring a lot of positive impacts for the participants. “A number of participants of the previous MGPS finally become active in non-governmental organizations concentrating on peace. Hence, this MGPS is also expected to enable students as the participants to possess thoughts and comprehension of global peace and to implement what they learn during MGPS in their community,” he envisaged.
