Transitions Abroad
Responsible Traveler Handbook
Peace Through Tourism
It is staggering to think that elephants sought higher ground immediately before the Tsunami hit Asian shores on December 26th last year, while no advanced technology existed in the form of an early warning detection suystem that could prevent the loss of human life… or so said a spokesperson for the Ministry of Tourism of Sri Lanka. I can’t say for sure, I wasn’t there. I was safe and dry in my apartment in Varese, Italy, at the time.
For the past several days, I have been honored to be on of the many panelists at the International Institute for Peace Through Tourism Global Summit in Pattaya, Thailand, an organizational conference dedicated to exploring ways in which tourism can and does promote peace. I am one of the only westerners here and am surrounded by Ministers, Members of Parliment and others dedicated to the concept of sustainable tourism and peaceful tourism.
While I have been speaking about the strategies that western tourism enterprise has utilized to confront terrorism and natural disaster in the U.S. and Europe over the past few years, my fellow panelists from Sri Lanka, Uganda, Cambodia and South Africa, to name a few, have been discussing the ways in which terrorism, internal armed-conflict, ware and poverty have affected their lives and those of their families and countrymen. Among a group of co-panelists at breakfast one morning, I was the only person to not have held the status of refugee at some point in my life. To the extent I have changed houses or homeland, it has been entirely through choice and a quest for new experience and I know nothing of fleeing for my life or the lives of my children. My colleagues from across the sea, in contrast, have been counting the years, and in some instances, months, days, hours and minutes of peace.
