THE SEVILLE STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE "The same species who invented war is capable of inventing peace" Support Network c/o David Adams, Wesleyan Psychology Dept Middletown, Connecticut, USA, 06459-0408 NEWSLETTER - VOLUME 6. NUMBER 2, DECEMBER 1991 --- Now that the Seville Statement brochure has been printed by UNESCO, we enter a new stage in our work. By now you should have received a copy of the first, preliminary printing which was distributed to the General Conference of UNESCO last month in Paris, and then to everyone on the mailing list of this newsletter. A second printing will now be made in response to your bulk orders - see the enclosed order form. Please order as many as you can for mass distribution to your constituency (your organizational membership, schools, national networks, eta) The second printing will correct a few errors that you may notice in the preliminary version. --- If you cannot afford the money required to order the brochures in bulk, you may write us a "grant request" in which you specify the use that will be made of the brochure, and we will try to obtain funding to have the brochures shipped to you at a lower cost. First, however, please try to find funding within your own organization, country, etc. --- Taha Malasi, the psychiatrist from Kuwait who helped draft and signed the Seville Statement, has written from England that he and his family narrowly escaped from the Gulf War. For many of us, the loss of contact with him for over a year symbolized the tragedy of that war. --- The issues raised by the Seville Statement continue to generate fruitful discussion and debate. The debate from the Yamoussoukro Conference in the Ivory Coast sponsored in 1989 by UNESCO has now been published and distributed to the UNESCO General Conference. The section on the Seville Statement is excerpted and included with this newsletter. --- We have received a critique of the Seville Statement from the perspective of the Association of Women in Psychology. It is enclosed with this newsletter in order to stimulate further discussion and debate. Your replies and contributions will be published or summarized in future editions of this newsletters --- Another recent debate may be found in the most recent newsletter of the International Society for Research on Aggression. Stimulated by the Presidential address of Leonard Eron and a rebuttal by Seville signatory Santiago Genoves, the recent round of debate includes an article on "Limitations of Genetic Determinism" by Seville signatory John Paul Scott, further comments by Genoves, and a criticism by Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt of Aggression and War, the book edited by Seville signatories Jo Groebel and Robert Hinde. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, who was invited to take part in drafting the Seville Statement, points out that its thesis is foreshadowed in his own books, beginning with The Biology of Peace in 1975: "There I point out that war is a result of cultural evolution and that therefore it can be overcome culturally, provided that we realize that war fulfills certain functions such as the acquisition and defense of resources which in the absence of war, must be secured by other nonviolent means in order to achieve a balance and state of peace."