Born in Cyprus in 1921, a long and eventful life has given Eirwen Harbottle many insights and influenced her thinking as a committed international peacebuilder.

During her first marriage to a British Army officer, she lived in Cairo, Jerusalem (where her first child began to arrive during a gun battle outside the hospital), and the desert fastness of the sacred town of Taif in the Hedjaz mountains of Saudi Arabia. When her husband retired, they became flower farmers in Northern Cyprus on land surrounding their hilltop home that later proved to be a coveted military objective. The late ‘50s were dominated by EOKA nationalists: terrorists to the British but freedom fighters in their own eyes. Life for members of the British community became hazardous and as a florist, Eirwen was heart-seared by the numbers of wreaths she had to make for the funerals of young British soldiers killed in what had clearly become a bankrupt political situation. It proved a lasting influence on her desire to work for world peace. Gradually the belief in Old Empire began to drain away as the right to self determination increasingly gained influence in the public mind. Eirwen’s experience as a radio newscaster and TV presenter for the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation also gave her a wry understanding of the different cultural approaches to propaganda as Cyprus moved from a colonial possession to full independence in 1960.

There followed for her eight years of inter-communal violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots when living in a kind of buffer zone was anything but easy, particularly for her two young daughters. The presence in the area of first British units and then Canadian UN peacekeepers provided a welcome stability and Eirwen knows full well how much she has owed to United Nations peacekeepers – even though they were unable to prevent the exchanges of shooting and shouted curses from Greek and Turkish fighters ensconced in their mountain positions on either side of the Kyrenia Pass in which her hilltop home was sited.

In 1969, with a failing marriage, she left Cyprus to join the man who became her second husband. Thereafter their lives together became devoted to different aspects of international peacebuilding. Brigadier Michael Harbottle had been Chief of Staff of the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus – an experience that totally changed his understanding of military service to the extent that he opted for early retirement from the Army and wrote the first thoughtful book about UN peacekeeping – The Impartial Soldier was published for the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in 1970 by Oxford University Press. Soon he served as Vice President of the International Peace Academy of New York and for five years as a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the School of Peace Studies, Bradford University.

Besides supporting Michael, Eirwen also worked with Richard Hauser and Hephzibah Menuhin in their London Centre for Human Rights and Responsibilities; then for the Kurdistan Democratic Party London office and later the Vietnamese section of the British Council for Aid to Refugees. In 1980 she and her husband were invited to run the World Disarmament Campaign in UK which brought them both into a new field of lobbying for peace. Following the 1982 UN 2nd Special Session devoted to Disarmament at UN HQ New York, they decided to create their own Centre for International Peacebuilding which quickly became an accredited NGO to the UN.

‘Peacebuilding’ for them was a matter of facilitation – seeing where different groups nevertheless held the same goals, the same values, though perhaps in different countries and under opposing political systems. Thus it was they passed on a £1000 donation received for ‘confidence building’ to a team from the Department of Child Psychology in Birmingham University, initiating a visit to the Peto Institute for Motor Disabled in Budapest – a remarkable institution, founded after WW2 by Andras Peto, and using Russian psychology to help train and educate brain damaged children. From that first visit, a steady programme developed of sharing expertise between UK and Hungary, training British practitioners and reporting back on the benefits of ‘Conductive Education’ which eventually led to the establishment of the Institute of Conductive Education in Birmingham of which Princess Diana was at one time a patron.

Under the Centre’s umbrella came the publication of three books on Verification Technologies; on facilitating visits between schools in Britain and Estonia (still then politically divided by cold war rhetoric), and on initiating an elementary research project in which students of an East London school monitored seed germination and growth for a department of Kew Gardens. This latter project was later carried further by the Norton School in Stockton on Tees in conjunction with the Lenana School, Nairobi whereby students visited each other’s countries, working to the Kew Education Department and learning about their different cultures through homestays, etc. Norton School has won many awards for this project.

From 1984 onwards, Eirwen helped her husband by acting as rapporteur at the annual meetings of the group he created of retired senior officers from NATO and WTO countries, known as “Generals for Peace and Disarmment” (also accredited to the UN as an NGO and honoured by the UN as a “Messenger for Peace” in the 1986 International year of Peace). This offered her a unique insight into the minds of military men on both sides in the cold war. Global security in its holistic sense has since been her abiding concern.

The project that probably gave them the greatest pleasure was the creation in 1981 of a youth musical under the aegis of the World Disarmament Campaign. Despite initial opposition, they obtained their colleagues’ consent and “Peace Child” was performed to an audience of 3,000 in the R. Albert Hall in October 1981 on the last night of UN Disarmament Week. Since that debut, Peace Child International has grown to become one of the most influential international NGOs devoted to the empowerment of young people. Eirwen serves as Chair of Trustees of the charity bearing that name. (see www.peacechild.org)

Now she is a member of a small volunteer group assisting John McDonnell MP in his bid to create a Ministry for Peace in the UK. (see www.ministryforpeace.org.uk) In it she draws on her past experience of being a refugee, of understanding the need for responsibility to heed the rights of others, and the recognition that young people are not a Problem but a Gift – if only we could see them that way. She is also aware that beside the obvious violence of murder, bodily harm and environmental destruction, there is the more insidious “structural” violence of unfair economic practices and psychological torture, as well as the various forms of “cultural” violence which lie at the heart of so much conflict in every country. All this for her becomes a compelling holistic approach, a ‘Gaia’ appreciation of the inter-dependence of all aspects of life on this planet in which the proper balance between intellect, practicality, emotion and spirit is – as indigenous people know – the foundation of our wellbeing.