"A privilege to do this work, building a better world.” Douglas Roche receives award for Distinguished Achievement in Nuclear Disarmament.

Every year since 2011, the Canadian Leadership for Nuclear Disarmament and the Centre for International Policy Studies has given an award for Distinguished Achievement in Nuclear Disarmament.

This year’s recipient was special, said presenter Alex Neve, since he was “not only in a world all his own, but a universe all his own.” 

That recipient was Douglas Roche, for his “many decades to the vital cause of nuclear disarmament and, ultimately, the global abolition of nuclear weapons.” 

Roche, a former Senator, Member of Parliament, Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament, visiting professor at the University of Alberta and author of 25 books, received the recognition on Oct. 23 in Ottawa. 

According to Neve, chair of the Canadian Leadership for Nuclear Disarmament, Roche is Roche is a most fitting recipient because of his “passionate and irresistible in his mission to eradicate nuclear weapons in our world.” 

Roche has, Neve said, showed generations diplomats, students and government officials what is needed to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and “given us hope there is another world where we don’t have to look into the abyss of nuclear devastation.” 

Neve praised Roche for his how he had challenged everyone to “make our contribution to a peaceful and just world” through “intellectual rigour and everyday common sense.” 

For those reasons, “we are immensely proud to give him this award . . . no one else has been so resolutely focused on ridding the world of the arsenal of nuclear weapons, no one else so steadfast in showing us what is at stake is our very survival.” 

In response, Roche, 96, delivered a lecture titled “Creative Dissent: A Politician’s Struggle for Peace.” 

Prior to beginning his lecture, Roche said he accepted the award not for a lifetime of work towards eliminating the threat of nuclear weapons, but as a “spur to action to do more in my own small way move the world towards peace . . . I pledge never to quit until the last nuclear weapon on earth had been dismantled.” 

In a nod to his age, Roche added he is “still hanging around because I love this beautiful planet so much, I’m in no hurry to leave it.” 

His simple message to the government of Canada is that it should “do more to fulfill its legal obligation to secure a nuclear weapons free world,” he said, adding that his visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where he met survivors of the two atom bomb explosions, influenced his lifetime of work to eliminate those weapons. 

Those visits “deepened my commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons of great evil,” he said. 

Roche tied his mission to end the threat of nuclear war, and the militarization of the planet in general, to his belief that money saved by not buying and building arms could be used to help feed and assist the world’s poorest people. 

“Development demands disarmament,” Roche said, adding that the question of security is more than just a military matter—it’s also about ecological and economic security for the world’s citizens. 

At the end of the Cold War, Roche said, he thought the world was start to learn that. But such a “peace dividend” never happened. “It’s a disgrace,” he said, of how the world spends 750 times more on arms than it does to support the development programs of the United Nations. 

“We have entered into age of relentless destruction and human suffering,” he stated, adding that while that was disappointing, “much of my public career was marked by dissent and I’m not stopping now . . . I will continue to dissent the spending that is happening for war.” 

Governments, he added, “must cease pretending that military might will bring us security . . . every human being has the sacred right to peace.

He challenged his listeners to “aim for a world without war,” adding the acceptance of the existence of weapons mass destruction “is incompatible with the human right for peace.” 

With the 100^th anniversary of the first use of atomic weapons on the horizon in 2045, Roche expressed the hope that enough people would stand up against them that the world would be “free from the specter of nuclear weapons.” 

“We can achieve a world that builds and protects peace, justice and development, a world where everyone lives in a clean environment and has human rights. The politics of the last century brought us untold war and suffering. It’s time to try something better.” 

Roche concluded his lecture by rejecting the critique that what he believes is idealism. “It is the pragmatic demand of the human race,” he said, adding that as human beings we need to move from a “culture of war to culture of peace.” 

“We need to build a new basis of hope,” he said. “Not a blind assumption that the world will turn out alright/ Hope is a verb, and we will it through our actions. It activates us and provides pathways from vision to reality . . . it’s a privilege to do this work, building a better world.” 

The award ceremony was attended by participants in Peace Train Canada, in Ottawa from Oct. 21-25 to engage politicians about the need for a renewed commitment to peace by the Government of Canada. Last year, Roche spoke to Peace Train participants at their stop in Edmonton.

Photo above: Douglas Roche (l) receives the award from Alex Neve.