Global South, Global Peace: How to Achieve Sustainable Peace on a Global Scale

On 17 April 2024, UNU will host “Global South, Global Peace: How to Achieve Sustainable Peace on a Global Scale”, a conversation with Kiichi Fujiwara, Professor at the Faculty of International Liberal Arts, Juntendo University. This event will start at 18:30 in the 2F Reception Hall at UNU Headquarters in Tokyo.

We live in a time of war. Escalating conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Palestine, and great power competition between the United States and China are only a few significant cases of war and geopolitical confrontation.  

The wars, moreover, have highlighted the global gap between Western industrial states that have been brought together by military alliances and other states that have been left out from the West, who now call themselves the Global South.  The views and interests of the Global South are often not adequately represented in existing security alliances between industrialized states. Furthermore, these alliances often neglect conflicts that are of great importance to the Global South, including ongoing regional conflicts in the DRC, Sudan and Myanmar.

Professor Fujiwara will join UNU Rector Tshilidzi Marwala for a conversation exploring how we can achieve a common peace that encompasses geographical and cultural orders, where the value of human dignity can be treasured across regions. How can we achieve sustainable peace on a global scale? How can we bring back the idea of common security supported by international organizations? And what role can, or should Japan play in achieving global peace that can be shared by both the Global North and Global South?  

The UNU Conversation Series aims to foster audience participation; you are encouraged to engage with the speakers during the conversation and at the reception that will follow, where all event attendees are invited to enjoy hors d’oeuvres and drinks while exchanging ideas and making new contacts.

Please note that this event will be in English. Advance registration (by 16 April at 15:00) is required. Please click on the REGISTER button above to access the online registration page. 

Please be prepared to present identification at check-in.

We also ask guests to be aware of the following event-related policies:

• UNU Code of Conduct to Prevent Harassment at UNU Events
• UNU Data Protection Notice for Meetings and Events 

About the speaker

Kiichi Fujiwara is Professor of the Graduate School of International Liberal Arts at Juntendo University, Guest Professor of the Institute for Future Initiatives and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, majoring in international politics, comparative politics, and Southeast Asian studies. A graduate of the University of Tokyo, Professor Fujiwara studied as a Fulbright student at Yale University before he returned to Japan at the Institute of Social Science (ISS).  

He first joined the faculty at Chiba University, and then returned to ISS as an Associate Professor for seven years, and then taught International Politics at the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics until 2022. From 2022 to 2024 he was professor of Institute for Advanced Research (Special Advisor to the President) at Chiba University, and has moved to Juntendo University from April 2024. He also has taught at the Graduate School of Public Policy of the University of Tokyo since its inauguration.  

Professor Fujiwara founded the Institute for Future Initiatives, a university-wide think-tank that engages in multidisciplinary approaches to global challenges, and served as its director for two consecutive terms, where he remains as guest professor since 2022. He has held positions at the University of the Philippines, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Bristol, and was selected as a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center at Washington D.C. from 1995 to 1996. He was the president of the Japanese Comparative Politics Association from 2008 to 2010.  

Prof. Fujiwara has published extensively on international affairs, whose works include Remembering the War (2001, Korean translation 2003); A Democratic Empire (2002, Korean translation 2002); Is There Really a Just War? (2003, 2022); Peace for Realists (winner of the Ishibashi Tanzan award, 2005, substantially revised in 2010), Constructing Peace (edited with Ryo Oshiba and Tetsuya Yamada, 2006), International Politics, 2007; War Unleashed, 2007, Conditions of War, 2013, A Destabilizing World, 2020, as well as a chapter in The Age of Hiroshima, edited by G. John Ikenberry and Michael Gordin, 2020, which was translated into Japanese from Iwanami Shoten.  

Professor Fujiwara is a regular commentator on international affairs and Japanese foreign policy in NHK, TBS, BBC, and CNN, and writes a monthly column for Asahi Shimbun. He is also a film buff, and writes a weekly column on current cinema for the Mainichi, as well as serving as a film reviewer for NHK and Mainichi Shimbun. His writings on film have been published in America in Film (2006) and That’s a Movie! (2012).