Reverend Junsei Terasawa

Reverend Junsei Terasawa became a Buddhist monk at a young age, and thereafter spent six years in India intensively studying and practicing Buddhism, and involving himself in the social reform movement to end conflicts caused by communal and caste divisions. Later he contributed to the anti-nuclear peace marches and demonstrations throughout Europe, and established two Peace Pagodas in England.

In India, he initiated the Rajgir Symposium on the Victory of Law over the nuclear menace, producing the visionary “New Delhi Declaration to build a Nuclear-free Non-violent World.” He initiated the Peace Camp on the Iraq-Saudi border in a bid to avert the Gulf War, and more recently the three-month Pakistan-India Prayer March for Peace.

Reverend Terasawa represented the International Peace Bureau in annual sessions of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, and initiated the Inter-Faith Peace Mission to Chechnya, with the support of Prince Hassan of Jordan and Mikhail Gorbachev. He invested greatly in an effort to resolve the Iraqi crisis through his initiation of the International Inter-Religious Peace Mission to Iraq.