History of the Rasur Foundation initiating and passing the Ministry for Peace bill in Costa Rica
2005: Rita Marie met Dot Maver, Director of the Peace Alliance, in the US at a conference in 2005. Dot explained how they were working in the US to implement a Department of Peace and that other countries were working on this as well. This gave Rita Marie the idea to introduce a Ministry for Peace in Costa Rica.
When Rita Marie returned to Costa Rica, she began to research the idea of a Ministry for Peace in Costa Rica. She searched the internet and talked with the Rasur Foundation Board members, experts on law and peace education in Costa Rica and Costa Ricans in general. After gathering all of this information, Rita Marie wrote an initiative for changing the name of the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Justice and Peace. She presented it to the Rasur Foundation Board and got important feedback from Alexandra Kissling, Vice President of the board, in making changes to it. After integrating feedback, the final document was completed. Alexandra Kissling called Rodrigo Arias, Minister of the Ministry of the Presidency, and requested a meeting about this initiative.
Monday, May 29, 2006: Rita Marie and Alexandra Kissling met with Rodrigo Arias at the Casa Presidencial to present the initiative of the Ministry for Justice and Peace. He was interested and proposed a second meeting with the Minister of Justice and Minister of Education in late June, as Rita Marie would be gone most of June.
June: Rita Marie attended the Global Summit for Ministries and Departments for Peace in Victoria, Canada and learned more about this movement.
Friday, June 30: Rita Marie and Alexandra met with Laura Chinchilla, Leonardo Garnier and Rodrigo Arias to present the initiative for a Ministry for Justice and Peace. The three government officials agreed it was a good idea and that it would be followed up.
July: Rita Marie and Maribel Munoz, Director of the Academy for Peace, met on July 21 with the Vice Minister of Justice, Magella Coto, the Director of the Office for Prevention of Violence, Jorge Delgado, and the Assistant to the Minister of Justice, Max Loria. They informed us that President Arias told Laura Chinchilla, Minister of Justice, to move forward on the Rasur Foundation initiative for a Ministry for Peace and Justice by creating a bill. They wanted our help in writing and supporting this bill that will include a name change of the Ministry and also adding the function of promotion of the peace to the ministry. They said their intention was to present the bill to the Congress on September 21, the International Day of Peace (see information on this special day below).
September: The bill was not ready to be presented on September 21. Rita Marie had asked architect, Jose Salom, for ideas for constructing a house on her property. While he was there, she mentioned the Ministry for Justice and Peace bill. He said that his father, Alberto Salom, would be interested in this and might be able to help. Consequently, Rita Marie and Maribel Munoz met with Congressman Alberto Salom to discuss how to move it forward.
Congressman Salom liked the bill but wanted to make a few changes. He talked with Max Loria about this. As a result, Max met with Jens Pfeiffer, Congressman Salom’s assistant to work on changes in the bill. One of changes that Congressman Salom insisted on was a sentence that acknowledges that the Rasur Foundation initiated the bill.
October: Rita Marie received a copy of the bill that Jens and Max wrote. She realized that the new Ministry for Justice and Peace functions as described in the bill did not include working with NGO’s to establish a culture of peace. As this was an important part of the initiative, she and Maribel met with Max Loría. He agreed that this had been left out and said he would include it.
Maribel and Rita Marie also presented a draft diagram of the governmental infrastructure to be established by the Ministry for Justice and Peace. Max made some changes on this draft and then approved it. After this meeting, the Rasur Foundation finalized the diagram and sent it to Max, who wrote back saying it had been approved.
November: Rita Marie was notified by Max that the bill had been presented to the Legislative Assembly with the signatures of 19 of the 57 congressmen. The next step would be for the President of the Assembly to refer it to a commission for study.
With the permission of the Ministry of Justice, Rita Marie presented Costa Rica’s Ministry for Peace bill in Japan on six different occasions to about 1000 people.
After returning from Japan, Rita Marie heard that the bill had not yet been referred to a committee. She attended the Abolition of the Army ceremony and had the opportunity to ask Congressman Pacheco, President of the Assembly, if he would refer the bill to the Human Rights Commision, as Laura Chinchilla had suggested it as the appropriate commission. Pacheco said that he would assign it to that commission.
A phone call confirmed that the bill had been assigned to the Human Rights commission.
Maribel met with Congressman Oscar López of the Accessibility without Exclusion Party. He expressed that he thought it was very important to create this ministry.
December: Maribel Munoz met with the assistant of Congressman José Manuel Echandi of the National Unity Party. He expressed support for the bill and said that it should be put on the “light agenda” of Congress in January.
Jens Pffeifer, assistant to Congressman Alberto Salom, also advised that this bill should be put onto the “light agenda” in the first days of January.
Dec. 22: Rita Marie wrote a letter to Laura Chinchilla asking her to put the bill in the light agenda of the Congress in January.
2007: On January 8, Laura sent a letter to Minister of the Presidency, Rodrigo Arias, requesting that this bill be a priority.
February: On Feb. 26, a decree was published that listed the bill as one of those that must come to vote during the extraordinary session. Poder Ejecutivo 3-16438 Citizen participation.
We found out that new bills related to the CAFTA had to pass before the referendum scheduled for October 7. Therefore, our bill would be lower on the list.
August: On August 3, Maribel called and found out that the bill had been sent to a Sub Commission of the Human Rights Commission for study. The chair of the Human Rights Commission is Lesbia Villalobos.
After August, we continued following up on the bill and advocating for it. There were many hopeful moments when we thought the bill would make it onto the agenda and then disappointments when it didn’t.
2009: Finally, two years later, the bill passed without opposition on August 19, 2009.
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