"Dispatches from the Global Village" is a collection of 30 columns by Derek Evans, former Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International. While the entry point for these columns (first published by the Naramata and Penticton, B.C., newspapers) is often something seemingly innocuous, perhaps even mundane - like a cup of tea, a croissant, a picture on a wall - the essays themselves are not for the faint of heart. As the leader of more than 60 Amnesty International delegations, and more recently as a consultant to the United Nations and other international organizations, Evans has travelled the globe to meet with African warlords and the Dalai Lama, heads of state and the leaders of rebel armies, victims of torture and peasant farmers; his single-minded objective, to challenge the forces of injustice, violence, and all things that separate people and nations from each other. Yet what shines through in each story - whether he's negotiating with rebel factions in the Sudan; or meeting, under threat of death and in the dead of night, with the families of "disappeared" children in Sri Lanka - is Evans' unfaltering hope that people can find within themselves the wisdom to choose a different path, that somehow we can learn to live in peace despite our differences. Informing, challenging, and inspiring, the stories, images, and hope contained in Dispatches from the Global Village will stay with the reader long after the book is set down.
