“While countries keep enhancing military budget, Costa Rica has gone for over 70 years without an army.
Living in peace and relying on international agreements as its only means of defense, while dedicating larger portions of available public resources, not to prepare for war, but to enhance minds through an ever increasing public education program, to protect bodies by means of a universal health care system, and to protect and strive to assure an ecologically balanced environment.”
Delivered at: “In a Gentle way, you can shake the world” Mahatma Gandhi – The Man of Millennium Event
by H.E. Rodrigo A. CARAZO, Permanent Representative of Costa Rica to the United Nations
October 1st, 2019
Costa Rica’s Non-military Practices in Correlation with Gandhi’s Nonviolence and Peaceful Resilient
One hundred years back, India, a nation of 550 million habitants, occupied and deprived of basic rights for 200 hundred years rose to struggle for freedom.
In an age void of television, with limited medias one man, without any position, without any wealth or resources, Gandhi (He was not even Mahatma at that time) united the entire country to rise for the quest for freedom with only one weapon that, of ‘nonviolence’ while also forbidding to hate the enemy. This not a fairy tale! India won her freedom with no violence. Not only that, but the teaching of “not hating the enemy” has resulted in India and Great Britain becoming close friends today while Gandhi has become the spokesman for the conscience not just for Indians but for the entire world.
Even though we had the lesson of nonviolence demonstrated by Mahatma Gandhi, the majority of the world still choses a different path. Today, the number one business of the world is the sale of arms. There are legal treaties and formal contracts for the open sale of arms. And we have to ask: What is the ultimate use of these weapons? Killing people or for some, under the false pretext that if one wants peace, one must prepare for war. We have ourselves chosen the path of self-destruction.
Costa Rica stands as an exception. We have learned and followed the lesson of nonviolence of the Mahatma. I’d like to point out that India gained its independence on August 15, 1947 and Costa Rica got rid of its army on December 1, 1948, the year of my birth – which as you can tell, was a long time ago. Jose Figueres, the foreseer that did away with the army, reflected later:
“Suddenly, after a short and relatively bloody civil war, I found myself at the head of two armies, one victorious, and the other vanquished but both made up of young Costa Ricans who had only one wish, to go back home. Then it came to me the idea that the army should be abolished once and for all.”
As a result of the 70 years gone by without an army, we Costa Ricans practice nonviolence in our daily lives and are one of the most peace-loving people in the world. An Indian friend of mine, living in Costa Rican and who is familiar with the teachings of Gandhi, points out that there is no other country where the love for Mahatma Gandhi is so genuine and profound. In the cities and in the remotest parts of the country, Gandhi’s name garners respect and recognition by children of a very young age and people from all walks of life.
While countries keep enhancing military budget, Costa Rica has gone for over 70 years without an army. Living in peace and relying on international agreements as its only means of defense, while dedicating larger portions of available public resources, not to prepare for war, but to enhance minds through an ever increasing public education program, to protect bodies by means of a universal health care system, and to protect and strive to assure an ecologically balanced environment. All this is precisely because peace and nonviolence are instilled in the Costa Ricans. In fact, it was actually Costa Rica that proposed to the UN to create a university for peace based on the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. The University for Peace was indeed established in Costa Rica in 1980 and will soon celebrate its 40th anniversary, and it was proposed by the person about whom I will speak next.
A citizen of Costa Rica who became President of the country, my father, was gifted with a bust of Mahatma while visiting Gandhidham the birthplace of Gandhi in west of India. During the entire travel all the way back from Gandhidham to Ahmedabad by road, by plane from Ahmedabad to Mumbai to London to New York to Miami to San Jose, my dad did not put down the bust from his lap even once until he got home where he placed it on the table in the drawing room. Before leaving for India, he had already established the only University for Peace of the world founded on the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.
The influence of the nonviolence philosophy of Mahatma is so profound in Costa Rica that one of my close friends is developing a project to invite delegations of other countries to Costa Rica, particularly the countries in conflict, to demonstrate that people can live peacefully without an army.
The greatest contribution of the United Nations for the entire humanity at this juncture of increasing chaos would be by furthering the lesson of nonviolence of Mahatma Gandhi. And not by just highlighting it around his birth anniversary but by developing a serious, pragmatic and consistent mission to promote nonviolence and instilling it in every sphere of the society – a mission where the participation of Costa Rica as a concrete example, is imperative.
Thank you.
New York City on October 1, 2019.
Event Photo Album – I:
GANDHI-150 “IN A GENTLE WAY, YOU CAN SHAKE THE WORLD“
Event Photo Album – II: MAHATMA GANDHI ~ THE MAN OF MILLENNIUM
– Photos by Demet DEMIRKAYA, Representative of The Light Millennium to the United Nations Department of Global Communications
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