Chapter 17

The Gift of Peace

The Carter Center

Jimmy’s work as a church leader, teacher, writer, and home-builder has helped thousands of people. But it is his work for the Carter Center that has helped millions. From the beginning, he relied on experts to help design and plan the Carter Center’s many programs. The presidential library, which is an important resource for historians, was only a small part of the Carter Center. The Carter Center developed programs to provide food to starving people, medicines to those in pain, and peace to a world often at war.

Jimmy gathered experts in many different areas to help. One of the first programs focused on peace. Beginning in 1983, Jimmy arranged conferences with world leaders to bring peace to troubled areas of the world. Since then he has visited many regions of the world to try to stop the fighting. He has helped resolve conflicts and prevent wars in Haiti, Sudan, Uganda, Liberia, Nepal, Korea, and the Middle East.

In 2012, the Carter Center celebrated thirty years of “waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope.” Jimmy finds the work rewarding. He says, “We have seen time and again that when we share with the most disadvantaged people the knowledge and tools they need to achieve peace and fight devastating diseases, they can transform their own lives, gain self-respect, and build hope for the future.” Jimmy Carter loves these ideas.

Human Rights

The Carter Center continues President Carter’s work on human rights by helping to free political prisoners around the world. Many times Jimmy Carter has written letters urging a leader to release prisoners. Often, Jimmy’s words have worked. Other times, he has traveled overseas to personally arrange for a prisoner’s freedom. For example, in August 2010, he traveled to North Korea to help Aijalon Gomes, an American who had been teaching English in South Korea. Gomes had visited China, and he made the mistake of crossing over the North Korean border. North Korean soldiers captured him and accused him of spying. Gomes was sentenced to eight years in a North Korean prison camp. Jimmy Carter brought him home seven months after the trial. Gomes is not the only one who owes his freedom to Jimmy Carter. Carter’s efforts have freed hundreds of others.

Human rights also means protecting children. In many countries, children work long hours under dangerous conditions. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, children as young as two-years-old work in the mines. They carry, wash, and crush minerals. During the summer of 2012, the Carter Center created a series of radio ads to warn parents of the dangers faced by these working children. They also encouraged the government and the mining companies to share their profits with the community so that parents are not forced to let their children work.

In December 2012, Chinese leaders invited Jimmy and Rosalynn to visit China. The Carter Center has several projects in China, and the Carters have visited several times.

Fair Elections

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush asked Jimmy to go to Panama to make sure that Panama’s elections were fair and honest. Free elections are often a first step in establishing a government that protects the rights of its citizens. In Panama, Jimmy noticed serious problems. After the voting ended, he gave a speech in Spanish declaring that the elections were dishonest. The people of Panama trusted Jimmy Carter, and soon the government was forced to change.

When trusted, outside observers like Jimmy Carter oversee an election, voters know that they can vote safely and secretly. Since the Panama election, Jimmy has overseen elections in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. In 2012, Jimmy traveled to Egypt to oversee the presidential elections there. By 2013, Carter Center observers had been invited to monitor ninety-four different elections in thirty-seven different countries.

Food and Medicine

When he was a peanut farmer, Jimmy learned how to make his land more productive. He was convinced that better farming could help farmers in Africa too, where hunger was killing millions. Through the Carter Center he has helped more than eight million farmers in fifteen African nations to double or triple their harvests. More food means fewer starving people.

When he learned that 3.5 million children were dying because they didn’t get vaccinations against common childhood diseases, Jimmy launched a Carter Center program called “Shot of Love.” The program began in three countries — Colombia (South America), India (Asia), and Senegal (Africa). It grew to include dozens of other nations and to save millions of lives.

The Carter Center’s health programs focus on many neglected diseases. These are diseases that no longer exist in the developed world, but that affect millions of people in Latin America and Africa. Guinea worm disease is one of these neglected diseases. In 1986, about 3.5 million people in Africa and Asia suffered from guinea worm disease. It is caused by drinking water containing guinea worm eggs. They grow inside humans, causing great pain and distress. Carter Center scientists found ways to prevent this disease by filtering the water. In 2012, there were only 542 known cases in the world. Those cases were limited to four African countries: South Sudan, Chad, Mali, and Ethiopia. Soon, the disease may be gone forever.

Today, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are working through the Carter Center to prevent two diseases which cause blindness: river blindness and trachoma. At first, they hoped to control river blindness. In February 2013, Jimmy announced that river blindness no longer exists in Latin America. Now he believes that it will be wiped out everywhere by 2015.

The Carter Center helps fight many other diseases, including malaria that kills or disables millions of children throughout the world. Malaria is spread by infected mosquitoes. Bed nets with a special mosquito repellent help prevent the disease. So far, the Carter Center has given out nearly 14 million bed nets in Ethiopia and Nigeria.

In 2007, Jimmy and Rosalynn visited Ethiopia to distribute life-saving bed nets in the fight against malaria.

In addition to fighting specific diseases, the Carter Center works to improve sanitation everywhere. Many communities lack proper toilets. When human waste seeps into wells and rivers, it can cause serious illness, especially for babies and young children. So, the Carter Center has helped African communities build 2.3 million latrines, or outdoor toilets. In a 2013 speech, Jimmy joked that in Africa, he’s known “as the person who builds the most latrines on earth.” Building latrines saves lives.

A World Leader

Today, Jimmy Carter is one of the world’s most respected leaders, even though he doesn’t hold any official political office. In 2002, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Jimmy Carter the Nobel Peace Prize for his “decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” He has received dozens of other honors including the United Nations Human Rights Award, the Presidential Medal of Honor, and the American Peace Award. When he looks back at his many different roles in life, he says, “My life since I left the White House has been most enjoyable and gratifying and unpredictable and adventurous.”

He’s also received lots of criticism. Jimmy knows that he can’t please everyone. He once told his Sunday school class that Christians should “serve God with boldness, and who knows what wonders the Lord may work.” When he faces a difficult decision, he asks, “What would Jesus do?” Following the teaching of Christ is more important than the awards or anything else.

In 2002, Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless efforts to find peaceful solutions to world problems.

Waging Peace

Some people slow down as they approach their ninetieth birthday. Not Jimmy Carter, who turned ninety on October 1, 2014. He continues to work on various projects at home, at church, and for the Carter Center. On some days, the Carters live a quiet life in Plains. Jimmy still works with wood, and he enjoys painting. Rosalynn spends time enjoying her garden. They shop at the Dollar General store and attend services at Maranatha Church. Jimmy continues to teach Sunday school in Plains. His classes attract people of all faiths.

Jimmy Carter comforts six-year-old Ruhama Issah while she is treated for a painful Guinea wound in Ghana. Through the Carter Center, Jimmy is leading a campaign to eradicate Guinea Worm disease worldwide.

On other days, the Carters go to Atlanta where Jimmy teaches at Emory University or attends meetings at the Carter Center. There’s a small apartment in the Carter Center with a pull-down bed where they stay overnight.

Family is important to the Carters. They celebrate family events and take vacations with their twenty-three children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Their oldest grandson, Jason, has followed his grandfather into politics. He’s serving in the Georgia State Senate, just like Jimmy did.

Much of the Carters’ time is still spent traveling the world for the Carter Center, resolving conflicts, observing elections, freeing political prisoners, and overseeing health programs. In his 2011 book of meditations, Through the Year with Jimmy Carter, he wrote: “God can use us in many places, where, with faith and an element of humility, we can make a difference.” Jimmy Carter, through his work with the Carter Center, continues to make a difference in the lives of people throughout the world. Rosalynn calls it “building hope.” Jimmy calls it “waging peace.”