ABOUT JULIA T. ALVAREZ

Julia Tavares de Alvarez is Ambassador, Alternate Representative of the Dominican Republic to the United Nations. She began her diplomatic career in 1978 when she accepted the appointment for the nominal payment of one dollar a year -- that continues today.

During her tenure, she has come to be known at the United Nations as "Ambassador on Aging." At age 72 she has not let up her tireless representation of aging issues, and particularly the concerns and needs of aging women around the world. After years of lobbying for greater attention to aging and the global longevity revolution, in 1992 she was instrumental in establishing a UN "International Day of Older Persons," and then the "International Year of Older Persons" set for 1999.

Born in the Dominican Republic, Ambassador Alvarez went to boarding school in Andover Massachusetts and later attended the Connecticut College in New London, where she majored in psychology and sociology. Under the Trujillo dictatorship, she and her husband, Dr. Eduardo Alvarez, a surgeon, and their four daughters, moved to New York City. While managing her husband's group medical practice in a Spanish speaking neighborhood of Brooklyn, she first witnessed the problems of the Hispanic elderly. These experiences were the seeds that later evolved into her leadership role in representing the interests of the elderly worldwide.

Ambassador Alvarez has even taken the UN to task for its mandatory retirement age of 60 (except for a few senior positions). She recently bluntly reminded Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, that the UN charter does not stipulate retirement at 60.

Julia Alvarez as "Ambassador of Aging" is a great asset to the United Nations and the world community in our age of longevity. Her proposal for harnessing the energy and talents of the world's elderly for the cause of peace launches a bold new chapter of her vision.

(Based on an interview by Bernard Starr, October, 1998)

ELDERS FOR PEACE: A PROPOSAL
by Julia T. Alvarez

In the new millennium, we will need a peace that is not kept but made. One that is forged from the ground up, with a foundation of steel strong enough to stand up to hardened weapons of destruction and the rigid ideas and attitudes of rationalization.

We need a summit on peacemaking because peace is too important to be left to the after-the -fact business as usual intervention of the forces of peacemaking. In its slightly more than half a century of existence, the United Nations has often kept peace. But this "kept" harmony has too often been no more than a prolonged (and sometimes brief) cease fire -- a fragile, temporary cessation of bloody conflict.

This summit conference must produce not another empty call for panels of experts, ad hoc working groups, and yet more meetings. Instead, the participants must begin to take practical steps to make peace. To accomplish that, they must be aware of the essentially local genesis of peace. Peace begins "in place" -- where we are, where we live. It arises from who we are and the choices we make in our daily lives. It's seedbed is the wisdom that allows us to act from our better natures, rather than from our base instincts.

The international stage of world events is too often just that--a platform for play-acting. Let us leave to the "statesmen" the behind-the-scenes negotiating and public posturing. But genuine peacemaking must be an internal, not a foreign affair. It begins at home, in one's backyard. It comes from the cities and the countryside; it comes from plain citizens.

How might we build the mechanism of peace? And who will be the movers and shakers? Let us be optimistic and assume that within our societies there exists the energy, good will and wisdom to make a lasting peace. But we need to devise strategies for finding and tapping these peace-making resources.

Among the leading candidates for peacemaking, perhaps the most appropriate - and the ones most likely to succeed - are older adults. Elders would make excellent peacemakers. Many have the time, experience, energy and commitment necessary for the demanding work of peacemaking.

It's easy to push a button, act without thinking, or even impulsively start a war. But older people have the wealth of experience to know when not to act -- when to stop, think and reconsider. Older people have witnessed war, sometimes many wars. More important, they know the pain, suffering and tragedies that war brings. Does that mean they are necessarily wiser? No. But they are more reflective than the young because they have more lessons to reflect on. Their experience and vision can be the impetus to create the structure of peace.

Older adults are a natural pool of potential peacemakers because they are at the heart of an important phenomenon that has arisen in the waning years of this century. In the 20th Century, the word "generations" has become more than an academic term. It has insinuated itself as yet another dividing line in society, along with gender, class, race, and ethnicity as one of the seams that can potentially rip society apart.

The danger of a clash of generations is another socially destabilizing force that could threaten peace. Who is in a better position to bring wisdom to bear on this issue than the one group that has already lived through the generational cycle of life?

Ideally, making peace is a collaborative, selfless process. It requires putting aside struggles for self-aggrandizement and egocentric accomplishment. It should not be seized as another opportunity to build a public career, or gain personal glory while ostensibly striving for higher ground. Older persons are most likely to be beyond the need for career enhancement, the quest for the glare of the spotlight, or the petty ego satisfactions that seem so important while one is "on the way up."

Those who would make peace must appreciate the fragile line between policies that bring life and those that bring death. Who has a greater appreciation of the polarity of life and death than older people? They have raised children, and often grandchildren, and because of their age are more keenly aware of mortality. They are, therefore, more likely to appreciate the alpha and omega of our worldly experience.

Of course, we should not romanticize any group. The accumulation of years does not erase ego. One is not angelic just because age has brought him or her closer to the end of earthly life; Nor does self-interest disappear with advancing age, even among aging leaders. And we know that aggression can be initiated by people of all ages. But age does bring something that is so often missing in efforts to bring peace. Older people, on average, have greater perspective, more angles from which to view the world, and more points of comparison for the unfolding events of each new day. Perspective is the essence of wisdom -- without wisdom, we stand no chance of making a lasting peace.

How can we facilitate the recruitment of older people for the peacemaking process? First, we must focus on local and national action. The United Nations and non-governmental groups of various kinds have provided us with an institutional structure to span borders, but we are lacking sufficient foundations to build from the ground up. We need a local and national peace corps in all nations -- and we need to build networks within nations to unite and strengthen local action.

We must seed the interpersonal efforts that will grow peace "on-site." The most basic principle underlying this process should be the one-to-one propagation of wisdom, the kind that the Bible recognizes in the story of the mustard seed. It is embodied in the African-American community slogan of, "each one, teach one."

Toward the goal of peace, older people should be organized to pressure legislatures at all levels of government to view peace-making measures as essential to their work -- as essential as fixing roads and providing for national defense. Let us use the perspective of age to remind younger lawmakers of the success of initiatives toward peace, like the one in Costa Rica made fifty years ago when it gave up guns for butter. Let older people teach the most basic lesson: Peace is practical. It works!

Most of all, let us bring older people throughout every level of society into contact with the young. Let's create whatever kinds of organizations, programs and open lines of communication that are appropriate and useful for this purpose. Such interaction can bring us closer to peace for two reasons. First, it can defuse the demographic upheaval that is creating the dangerous potential of age wars in some nations. And it can encourage more equitable sharing of limited resources to further head off generational clashes. We can go far toward preventing destabilization of the social mix by insuring that elders do not become the "others," or "the aliens," to youth. The young need to learn that aging is a continuum on the human journey, not a stop-and-go trip between discrete points that creates different types of human beings. Young people need to learn that elders are people like themselves, just later in life.

It is also crucial to join young and old in a dialogue because, ultimately, the accumulated wisdom of age must be handed down, lest it go for nothing. The young must learn the elements of peace, and what it takes to make peace, while they are still young and malleable. They must be introduced to the spirit and ways of peace while they are still spirited and unencumbered by the responsibilities of adulthood and mid-life. It is easier to learn how to make peace before getting totally absorbed in making a living, building a career, and facing the demands and responsibilities of daily life. We need to reach people at that point in life where everything still seems possible. The time before cynicism sets in. Before it becomes too easy to come up with reasons why something can't be done, isn't practical, or is too "idealistic."

Finally, older people are the most appropriate candidates for the role of peacemakers because they have a vested interest in leaving a legacy and being remembered for the good they have done. They have the most compelling basis for social vision -- they can see the future in their grandchildren's eyes. For that reason, a program that puts forward older people as peacemakers would even have a natural name: LEGACY.

Dominican Republic Mission to the United Nations
New York City
October 8, 1998

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