Islamabad is not short of international conferences, seminars and meetings of all kinds. That is to be expected of the capital city in a large country. But not all such public meetings offer new insights, and perhaps too often, a good number of the participants are just made up of the same people; diplomats, UN representatives, NGO staff, retired military men and well-educated upper class women.

Last week there was a different event in Islamabad. It was a social science conference about the history of non-violence in Pakistan. And it became a conference about the main speaker, too, Professor Johan Galtung, a globetrotting Norwegian peace educator and activist and the principle founder of peace research as an academic discipline two generations ago.

“Johan Galtung is to social scientists what Michael Jackson is to music lovers,” mused Asif Noor and his wife Farhat Asif of the Institute of Peace and Diplomacy in Islamabad. They were the chief organisers of the conference, which had received funding from the German Hanns Seidel Foundation in Pakistan.

The inaugural speech at the conference was given by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz. The two elderly gentlemen are old friends, hence Professor Galtung was also invited to Sartaj Aziz’ office to give a talk on local and regional peace issues.

The conference emphasised the importance of ‘thinking outside the box’. Peace solutions can only be found through new and creative suggestions. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is a fact that injustice has been done to many groups of people, much caused by the British colonial rule; the Pashtun people are split between countries; the Kashmir people have a similar fate.

Several speakers underlined that when seeking solutions to age-old problems, one must go beyond old ways of thinking, one must transcend into a new realty, to find solutions for the future.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t put peace negotiators in large meetings if you want any results. That is not dialogue. Even if the other party has a good idea, nobody on the other side wants to admit it,” said Galtung.

Siddiq Mansoor Ansari from Afghanistan agreed.

“I came to speak at the conference, but I have been lucky to learn many new things, which I will use in my peace education and humanitarian organisation at home in Afghanistan,” Ansari said.

“If you want results, nobody should lose face or be humiliated. There should be no winners and losers. All should feel that they have succeeded together. And remember, most problems have many more solutions than just two. Peace is transcending old and outdated ways of thinking,” the elderly professor Galtung (84) stressed.

Galtung is a master of using humour in his talks, sometimes with a direct or indirect sarcastic tone, keeping his audience entertained and attentive.

“I remember that ‘formula’ from his time as a professor at the University of Oslo in Norway in the 1970s”, said an enthusiastic Norwegian participant at the conference. “We always found it a special treat to sit in his crowded auditorium in the social science block when he taught for a few weeks. He would do it that way because the rest of the year he would travel the world, and he would carry out research, write books and guest-lecture elsewhere.”

“His ability to inspire young and old, radical and conservative, and everybody else, is amazing,” said another conference participant.

“We enjoyed his talks, and those of the other speakers. Now, it is our job to go and think outside the box, or transcend old ways, as the conference speakers recommended.”

“Galtung’s mastery of old-fashioned teaching methods is interesting. He doesn’t seem to need modern power point presentations or other gimmick. His main medium is lecturing and conversing with the participants. Yes, he may need some time, but he can be precise and crisp, listing his three or four or five points for each sub-theme.”

Among Galtung’s over 150 books, there is also one children’s book, A Flying Orange Tells Its Tale, about a very global and unique orange that even flies! It can be read by children and adults alike. One lesson from one story is simply that we should not assume and have preconceived opinions before we ask people what they want. If you have one orange and four children who want an orange each, the common thing to do would be to split the orange in four equal pieces.

But we don’t know if that is what the children want. Maybe one wants the peels only to make a cake; and another one may want the seeds to plant and get more trees. Or maybe one wants to use the orange as a football, and the last one perhaps wants to see how an orange looks inside – before and after it has been used as a football, or was it cricket ball?

“In life, too, it is important that politicians and we all ask people what they want before we make decisions. We should not assume we know. We don’t have the right to decide on behalf of others. It is the people themselves that must find fair solutions that are acceptable to all,” a conference participant said, and she underlined that although much attention at the conference had duly been given to Professor Galtung, who came from afar to Islamabad for a few days, there were many other excellent speakers, too.

The renowned and controversial writer, Tehmina Durrani, was a popular speaker. Her recent book, Happy Days in Sorrow Times, which also includes a large number of her water colour paintings, focuses on how to give another chance to children of war, and indeed the Afghan children and adolescents who have seen more of war, conflict and displacement than anyone deserves for the last 35 years.

At the conference she underlined the duty everyone has to contribute to help correct injustice and oppression in all forms.