Finnish MP: 'We need historians to secure peace'

Finnish MP Erkki Tuomioja has attended more Nordic council meetings than most politicians, and few can remember him leaving a meeting without delivering a passionate speech or tabling a motion for better peace mediation worldwide.

"I would like to see a much stronger Nordic involvement," he said on Tuesday (9 April) in the Danish parliament, Folketinget, where researchers and politicians from the five Nordic countries met to discuss recommendations for future Nordic cooperation on peace and conflict resolution.

"History continues to play negative role in many conflicts", Tuomioja explained, suggesting that historians "can contribute substantially to conflict resolution".

The need for peace mediation in the world is clear enough. There were at least 59 armed conflicts recorded last year worldwide.

"We see a decrease of people being killed in armed conflicts but the number of mediated conflicts are decreasing as conflicts tend to become more fragmented, internationalised and radicalised in the sense of religion", Isak Svensson, professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, said.