International Peace Foundation – International Peace Foundation

JAPAN – ASEAN BRIDGES EVENT SERIES

We are pleased to invite you to the JAPAN-ASEAN BRIDGES event series which the International Peace Foundation will facilitate in Japan and Thailand from November 2023 to March 2024. Commemorating the 50^th anniversary of official relations between Japan and the ASEAN region, BRIDGES will be one of the first major international event series after the covid-19 crisis, showing a way forward into a better future after the global crisis caused by the pandemic.

In an ongoing series of major events, all open and free for the public, BRIDGES will bring the brightest minds of the world – Nobel Laureates in Economics, Physics, Chemistry and Medicine – to both Japan and Thailand to stimulate exchange and to enhance further development through education.

It follows the successful ASEAN BRIDGES series of over 800 events which the International Peace Foundation has since 2003 continuously facilitated in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and the Lao PDR as an independent contribution to the United Nations’ Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence to support education in the ASEAN region.

49 Nobel Laureates as well as 21 other keynote speakers and artists including Vladimir Ashkenazy, President Jose Manuel Barroso, Hans Blix, Jackie Chan, Jesse Jackson, Vanessa-Mae, Jessye Norman, President Romano Prodi, Oliver Stone and James Wolfensohn participated, all waiving their request for an honorarium for the benefit of the events. In Thailand they were presided over by Her Majesty Queen Sirikit and Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn and reached an audience of 220,000 participants.

Events with Nobel Laureates and other keynote speakers were all free for the general public, events with artists raised funds for Tsunami victims, street children and people with AIDS in the slums of Bangkok. Meetings with the heads of state of Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Lao PDR and with other key decision makers complemented the events about which more detailed information is available on www.peace-foundation.net and www.youtube.com/PeaceFoundationNET.

Nobel Laureates who have participated in these BRIDGES events and have visited the ASEAN region for their first time now return on a regular basis to cooperate in joint research programs with ministries, universities and schools to continuously enhance education in the region which, in the long-term, provides the basis for peace.

This is why BRIDGES has not been designed as a onetime event, but as a continuing process of synergies over two decades to make the series of events a sustainable success for Southeast Asia as a whole.

We would be delighted if you would take part in BRIDGES, now linking Japan and ASEAN, and if we could welcome you at the events which may help us to facilitate a new culture of peace through dialogue, transcending its definition as merely the absence of war or armed conflict into a new understanding of what the basis for peace is: education.