‘ Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding ‘.

Alber Einstein would

defined peace. I wondered how everyone define peace? Here's my ideas about some attributes of
peace. Peace is more than just the absence of war and violence. Peace is not the absence of conflict but
the ability to manage conflict constructively, as an important opportunity for change and increased
understanding. When people are able to resolve their conflicts without violence and can work together
to improve the quality of their lives. Peace is when everyone lives in safety, without fear or threat of
violence, and no form of violence is tolerated in law or in practice. As for me,
If we go through the history of the world we would find that the history of mankind is full of violence.
Though there have been great men like Gautam Buddha, Christ and Mahatma Gandhi, who taught the
world lessons of non-violence and peace, and though they achieved some success in their mission, yet
the whole history is an arration of victory of swords. Violence is in the blood of men. Survival of the
fittest is the law of the nature. The weak have to suffer injustice at the hands of the strong.

So far as peace and its maintenance is concerned, everybody wants peace. Everybody would agree that
there should be complete peace in the world. Nobody wants war and no one would like to claim to be a
defender of war. War is bad and peace is certainly good for the world. Peace brings happiness,
prosperity and stability. Everybody condemns war because it results in destruction, misery and loss of
life. But peace has unfortunately all along been pious wish and a dream.

The basic question, therefore, is how to prevent war. Some people may say that the best security for
peace is peace. They may argue that those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword. They may
also assert that preparation for war and armaments have failed to prevent war that they are themselves
the real cause of wars. They may express the high hope that with better understand-ing and wider
sympathy war would become a thing of the past.

According to me, Peace is the feeling that all's right with the world. When everyone around me in my
family, my friend circle and my neighbourhood is happy, eager to love, accept and relate… I feel at
peace. Also, to me it means following what my heart says and sharing mutual trust and respect for
people around me.

However, in today’s world, peace and harmony face various threats. Terrorism, regional imbalance,
economic disparity, and social inequality are some of the factors which threaten peace today. We all are
so engrossed in our busy lifestyles and yet want our lives to be peaceful. We expect that peace to be
omnipresent but what we need to realize is the fact that if we want peace- we have to live peacefully,
love everyone, forgive, forget, etc.

The issue of war and peace has always been a focal issue in all periods of history and at all levels
relations among nations. The concern of the humankind for peace can be assessed by taking into
account the fact that all religions, all religious scriptures and several religious ceremonies are committed
to the cause of peace and all these advocate an elimination of war. The Shanti Path recited by the
Hindus, the sermons of Pope and the commands of all the holy scriptures of the Christians, Muslims,
Hindus, Sikhs and all other communities hold out a sacred commitment to peace.

Yet the international community fully realized the supreme importance of the virtue of peace against
the evil of war only after having suffered the most unfortunate and highly destructive two World Wars
in the first half of the 20th century. The blood soaked shreds of humanity that lay scattered in several
hundred battle grounds, particularly on the soils of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cried for peace, peace and
peace on the earth.

1. The effects of conflict are far-reaching.

The majority of those risking their lives trying to reach Europe are from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and
other areas beset by violent conflict, insecurity or political repression.

Globally, the numbers of those forced to leave their homes due to war, persecution or natural disaster
have reached staggering heights: at the end of 2014, United Nations estimated 19.5 million of these are
people who have fled their country as refugees and half of them are children.

Seen in economic terms, the impact is also huge. The Global Peace Index calculated the cost of conflict
to the global economy last year to be 9.21 trillion pounds ($13.7 trillion) as a result of increased military
spending by states and more people driven from their jobs.

2. Military answers to political problems alone don’t work.

At the heart of many violent conflicts lie issues of inequality, injustice and exclusion.

While criminality can feed on and into a conflict, there are often genuine and unaddressed grievances at
play and expressed in violence. Many extremist armed groups don’t start out that way, they radicalize
over time — all the more reason to engage with the underlying issues fueling radicalization early on.

And while military force may be deployed to counter a military threat such as the Islamic State group, it
cannot resolve profound underlying political, social, economic and governance problems or sustain
peace. In fact, it can sometimes complicate that task.

One of the four major shifts recommended by the eminent High-level Independent Panel, which
reviewed the U.N.’s peace operations this year, was for the “primacy of politics”: “Lasting peace is not
achieved nor sustained by military and technical engagements, but through political solutions … political
solutions must guide all U.N. peace operations.”
Building peace together: Local voices — promotes the importance of peacebuilding and places a focus
on local peacebuilders who are making a real difference in various conflict affected regions around the
world including West Africa, Caucasus, the Philippines and Colombia.

3. Conflict shatters lives and stunts development.

More than 1.5 billion people live in countries affected by violent conflict, and the gap between those
countries enjoying relative peace and those afflicted by conflict is growing. The newly adopted
Sustainable Development Goals respond to the fact that no low-income conflict-affected country
achieved a single one of the framework’s predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals.
Peacebuilding approaches, including mediation and diplomacy, dialogue and participation, are an
essential part of the toolkit we need to meet Goal 16: to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for
sustainable development.”

But how we go about the task of building peace and preventing conflict also matters.

The idea of local ownership is well established in the development field; building up and on people’s
own approaches and capacity to move out of poverty. But crises and conflicts — by their scale and
nature — tend to produce responses from external governments and multilateral organizations, which
seek to protect, rescue and, well, sometimes take over.

In order for a sustainable peace to stand any chance, those affected by — and involved in — conflict
must own and identify with the responses and solutions to it. The breakthrough agreement in Havana,
Cuba in September between the Colombian government and the FARC, on the issue of transitional
justice — which in turn has paved the way for a date to be set for the signature of the final peace
agreement — was in part aided by the fact that victims were central and had direct access to the
negotiating table. This was a first for peace negotiations anywhere.

Participation and inclusion are also needed beyond the signing of any peace agreement. In the
Philippines, following the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed last year, in order to secure women’s
participation in the new self-governing institutions, my own organization, Conciliation Resources,
worked with four women’s organizations to conduct over 70 consultations with around 3,000 women to
gather and feed in their inputs and perspectives.

Participation and inclusion can also start from the point of understanding a conflict, from conflict
analysis. The analysis process should find ways to include perspectives of those who don’t shout the
loudest: women playing vital roles for peace beyond the spotlight of international negotiations; youth;
displaced people; ethnic minorities; or those living in remote and unstable border regions, for example.
Admittedly, an inclusive approach is not without challenges and dilemmas. It may well need to include
“difficult” actors, including the Taliban and other armed groups, who may hold unpalatable views, but
command support from sections of society.

Giving people the space and support to collectively reflect on and explore solutions at a local level can
help them discover their own agency. We have seen this many times over. In areas of Central Africa
affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army or LRA for instance, participants in analysis workshops started
out with the view that it was a foreign rebel group from Uganda, a problem for the Ugandan authorities
to solve: “We are victims and what can victims do?” Yet as discussions went on, it became clear how
much they had to offer, in terms of capacity, insights, ideas and local leadership.

Encouragingly, inclusion and participation are increasingly features in key international strategies and
operational guidance. Another of the High-level Independent Panel’s recommendations was for U.N.
missions to shift from “merely consulting with local people to actively involving them in their work …
Engagement must increasingly be regarded as core to mission success.”

Such statements are a reminder that these conflicts are not ours to resolve, the peace not ours to
design, and that effective external support is that which responds to local needs, and works with local
ideas and initiatives for peace.

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The 21st of September will be International Day of Peace. It may seem a little premature to declare that
world peace is due to break out by the end this month. I do not deny that the amount of killing and
death and war and torture and death and coercion and abuse and death all over everywhere can be
overwhelming. Nor do I deny that considering this it is a natural assumption to believe people are
sinners, destined for extinction. However, I do argue that compassion is as much a part of human nature
as cruelty.

There is evidence that humankind did not always live violent lives. In fact, I assume most people reading
this article are not habitually violent, and do not desire to watch someone suffer. All animals have the
capacity to enrich the lives of others. We have the capacity to be both selfish and kind. What matters is
which quality we chose to focus on; bringing that quality into focus within ourselves, the world, and our
children.

Our changing culture

Our surroundings are beginning to change for the better; the United Nations General Assembly, has also
adopted annual resolutions in support of a ‘culture of peace’ since 1997. One cultural change is the
number of countries abolishing state-sponsored execution, which has doubled, from 48 in 1991 to 97
today.

It has been found that a major shift may be occurring in the basis of human thought and discourse. On
an individual level for example, around 20% of Europeans have been found to deeply care about
"ecology and saving the planet, about relationships, peace, social justice, self-actualization, spirituality
and self-expression". It has even been said that there is an "explosion in empathetic behaviour." A
symptom of the change may be seen in the growing appetite for plant based diets; around 10% of the
population of Israel, Sweden, Italy, and Germany, are now vegetarian or vegan.

Our peaceful past

Will Tuttle explains in World Peace Diet how peace among humans is influenced by peaceful behaviour
towards nonhuman animals. Farms did not always exist in their present form, and indeed did not always
exist at all. Changed farming systems is given as one factor which normalised institutional killing in a
human species which had previously lived predominantly without killing.

The Centre for Global Nonkilling has produced several books which explain how it is possible to bring
about a world without war. In ‘Nonkillng Futures’ (PDF), Dennis Morgan finds that it is now common
among academics to believe human civilisations have existed which did not demonstrate signs of
organised violence. Evidence suggests the likelihood that there was no organised violence among
humans between at least 5000 and 7000 years ago, or even longer. In more recent history, Georgia Kelly
from the Praxis Peace Institute explains (PDF) that the city state of Dubrovnik, Croatia, was consciously
created in the 1200s to be a state which would not engage in warfare. It accomplished the span of its six
hundred year existence in peace.

Peaceful societies

Hunter-gatherer societies rarely engage in war. The website Peaceful Societies describes highly peaceful
societies which exist around the world, some hunter-gatherer and others not. The populations range in
number from hundreds to thousands. While their characteristics vary, the societies tend not to glorify
leadership or individualism, and all have convictions in nonviolence. It has also been found that more
equal societies have less homicide. Our society could become more peaceful if resources are distributed
more equally, and children are not raised to believe that war in inevitable.

Peaceful people
In the Metta Centre report Michael Nagler identifies (PDF) souls such as Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi and King
as ‘beacons of what is to come’, since they demonstrate to us that it is possible to settle conflicts
amicably, and to expand our consciousness to cherish all beings. However, nonviolent conflicts do not
need to have charismatic leaders, as demonstrated by the democracy movement in Serbia. Where there
are leaders these are supported by the persistence of other activists, such as in Bashah Khan’s 100,000
nonviolent soldiers and countless other people we usually have not even heard of. Peace is made
between non famous individuals on a daily basis. Beyond Right and Wrong and The Forgiveness Toolbox
document moving stories from people who found strength in justice and forgiveness.

Wise words from the Metta Centre

Conclusion

The references here suggest that different expressions of violence are related. For example, acceptance
of interpersonal relationship violence relates to state sanctioned violence, such as militarisation and
corporal punishment. Untangling such a complex web will not be easy, and can only be approached from
all sides. This means that different types of contributions are all useful, and, as the evidence also shows
us, people power has achieved a lot already.

The idea that violence is inevitable is normalised through childhood socialisation and depressing media
narratives, which teach us to accept coercion, competition and authority. On the other hand, listening to
uplifting stories inspires positive action, and reminds you that you are not struggling alone,
Permaculture News is a good place to find such stories. It is isolating and disempowering to believe that
humans are bad for one another and the planet. We are interconnected. Nature is neither negative nor
positive. It is not dualistic or linear. It does not progress, but evolve.