“It is often easy to dismiss the weak and the poor as monsters trying to create disorder for the strong and rich as victims, without trying to find out the extent to which these so-called ‘monsters’ may have been created by the very unjust structures set up by the so-called ‘victims’”, Dr Ibrahim Seaga Shaw, IPRA Secretary General at the 2014 IPRA conference in Istanbul

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 “We who started IPRA were from the Northwestern part of the world; however, IPRA has, like the world, moved East and South, with a Turkish Delight and a Sierra Leone Diamond as secretaries, with a Prognosis: we will move on to Islam and China–India still needs time to grow with our Guiding Spirit: Gandhi. Then back to a more modest Northwest, circling on, as we should”, Professor Johann Galtung at the 2014 IPRA in Istanbul

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“But we differ, disagree? Incredible how far we can come if we identify and focus on the good and the positive in Kiev, Donetsk and Moscow, or husband and wife in broken marriages rather than what is wrong, and build new relations on that. Peace is a relation, not attributes of the parties. So also for conferences: focus on the best in paper, praise it; not on the dubious and missing.” Professor Johann Galtung at the 2014 IPRA in Istanbul.   

TOP IPRA QUOTES TO REMEMBER

"IPRA is a fascinating place where scholars and practitioners from different disciplines and continents   research and try to reconcile   competing peaces. IPRA   has changed.  It was a predominant Western and is now more and more   a cosmopolitan association.  Turbulence is   normal in transformation processes. The next global conference in Sierra Leone in 2016 will encourage us to   get out of our comfort zone,"  Professor Luc Reychler, former IPRA Secretary General in his blog ‘diplomatic thinking’ 2015.

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"In a fast changing globalized world, our temperament - the way we deal with time -will determine the success or failure of dealing with global crises, sustainable peacebuilding and development. Despite the urgency of handling time more effectively, too much time is wasted and misused. Let’s check our temperament   and adapt it for more effective peace work,"  Professor Luc Reychler, former IPRA Secretary General at the 2014 IPRA conference in Istanbul.

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“ A worldwide system had come about which gave special advantages to the developed countries, in ways whereby many developing countries had much of their wealth unfairly exploited and were unable, regardless of how much time might pass, to become ‘developed countries’ or to extricate themselves from poverty”, former IPRA Secretary General Professor Katsuya Kodama at the 2012 IPRA conference in Tsu city,  Japan 

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"When we respond to conflict, we are actually responding to the meanings we make out of it. Social meanings are constructed and disseminated by media, of all kinds. So it is to media, and to journalism – news about conflict – that we need to turn, if we are to create a symbolic climate that is conducive to nonviolent responses, and to exposing and challenging structural and cultural violence. Hence – Peace Journalism", Dr Jake Lynch, former Secretary General of IPRA at the 23RD IPRA conference in Sydney, Australia in July 2010