3 mei 2025 – Herdenking Diever – Toespraak

The year is 2025: 80 years after the end of the second World War. Tomorrow we commemorate all those who lost their lives, as soldiers, as civilians, who were killed because of their religion or race, because
of their political opinions, because of their sexual orientation, or because of their disability. And the day after tomorrow we celebrate 80 years of freedom….

Today we commemorate the 7 brave young men, who lost their lives on our soil, close to this village. And by knowing their name and age, we can picture each of them as the individual he was: someone’s son or friend or fiancé, the dreams he had, the love he felt or the fear.

The year is 2025 and it is 400 years ago that the Dutch scholar Hugo de Groot (Grotius) wrote his book “On the Law of War and Peace”, considered to be the foundation of international law. He builds on the words of the Spanish scholar Suarez, who wrote in 1612: “Humanity, though divided into numerous nations and states, forms a political and moral unity bound together by charity and compassion; Therefore, although each republic or monarchy appears to be autonomous and self-sufficient, none of them is, but each of them needs the support and brotherhood of others, both in a material and moral sense.”

In his book Grotius broke with the idea that war was just a fact of life, a necessity, or even a duty. When a ruler wanted to go to war, who would stop him? Grotius maintained that the sum total of all international
relations is subject to the Rule of Law. He does not want to know of any exceptions. He rejects the idea that States do not need justification for waging war. States are part of an interconnected international community and are all bound by international law.

Grotius states that it is important to have knowledge of this international law, because (referring to Machiavelli) “there are those who regard the law with contempt, who think that for a ruler or a state
nothing is unjustified that is expedient, and that the state cannot act without injustice”. The mark of wisdom for a ruler, says Grotius, is that he acts not only in the interest of his own country, but in that of all mankind; And the latter is ultimately in the interest of one’s own state.

400 years ago Grotius was completely convinced that there is a common law among nations, which applies to war as well as in war. And 80 years ago this idea was the basis for the Charter of the United Nations,

Today, 400 years after ‘The Law of War and Peace’ and 80 years after the end of World War 2 and the signing of the UN Charter, we witness a world in which international law seems to be absent, in which political leaders maintain that – just because they have the power – they can claim or occupy the territory of other states, they can kill civilians, elderly, children at random, they can in fact dispel people from their
homes, erase their existence, while other political leaders turn away and ignore. But all those victims in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Eastern Congo, in the Sudan, in Myanmar, are persons with a name and age, just like the 7 buried here.

So we need to continue striving for an international order, based on law and cooperation, instead of on power and competition, based on human rights and inclusion, instead of on exclusion and discrimination, based on sharing instead of taking, on love instead of hate. We need to do that, because – as the Preamble to the UN Charter says – ‘we, the peoples, are determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom