Category: Peace

Death of a child and the promises of peace dialogue

JOLeave a comment

By Chaiwat Satha-Anand

On a hot summer afternoon, nothing is better than an ice-cream. When you are nine, the summer ice-cream your mom bought for you when she took you to a fair or something like that attained beautiful meaning.

Nisofian Nisani was in front of the ice-cream shop on Suwanmongkol Road in downtown Pattani when the 5 kg bomb exploded and took away his young life back to the Mercy of God on March 21, 2013 at 1.30 p.m. Fourteen others including his mother were also wounded in the violence that has claimed more than 5,000 lives and physically wounded more than 10,000 people in the past 9 years in southern Thailand, marking this deadly conflict as one of the most mysteriously ferocious in the world today.

The death of this boy at this time assumes special significance since this was the first time an attack on civilians has occurred after the signing of the “General Consensus on Peace Dialogue Process” in Kuala Lumpur Read More »

Nepal – Six years of “transition”

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

From Kathmandu, Nepal

Three huge revolts in Asia in the last decades came to an end: the anti-Confucian cultural revolution in China 1967-76, the anti Phnom Penh Khmer Rouge revolution in Cambodia 1975-79, and the anti-feudal monarchy anti-caste maoist People’s War in Nepal that lasted 10 years from 13 February 1996, followed by 18 days of effective nonviolence in the streets of Kathmandu in 6-24 April 2006. The King abdicated.

Transcend mediated in May 2003, and identified, through dialogues with the parties, eleven deep faultline conflicts as roots of violence…Continue here

Share this article

http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#pubid=ra-4e9ecaf669e1e638

The history of Peace: The Past and the Future?

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

Review of The Glorious Art of Peace by John Gittings, NYC: Oxford University Press, 2012. Info about this book and a video with Gittings here.

Editor’s note
This is Galtung’s draft which has been submitted to International Affairs.

What a wonderful idea, the history of peace! Something most people want to learn about, the art of peace! Like the history of health, food and love, as opposed to the history of wars, illness and hunger, of generals, kings and empires. This is the history of something that can inspire people, statesmen-women among them, to do better. This is a more adequate textbook for schools than the usual list of kings (and queens, like “divorced-beheaded-died-divorced-beheaded-survived”).

Gittings’ historiography covers seven periods: “ancient peace” based on Greece and China; the “morality of peace” of the middle ages, from Jesus to the Crusades; the “humanist approach” of the early modern renaissance with a focus on Erasmus; then the “peace consciousness” of the enlightenment; the “alternatives to war” of the League of Nations, peaceful settlement of disputes, and nonviolence (Tolstoy, Gandhi); the “misappropriation of peace” from the UN to the Cold War; “giving peace a chance” from the Cold War to Iraq. The focus is on modernity with five of seven periods, and on the West, with laudable excursions into China and India-Russia for their impact on the West. Missing: the small non-West peace, like American Indian (Sioux confederation), Polynesian (ho’o pono pono), Zulu (ubuntu). Missing: the big non-West mega-peace between the biggest countries in the world, China and India. But Gittings covers a rich lot “from the Iliad to Iraq”.

Gittings’ methodology is empirical with events, countries and persons, and fascinating quotes and art photos; relating them causally and by similarities; always interestingly. Missing: theoretical explorations based on, say, conditioning by nature (geography, nutrition); by culture, like dualism for Greeks, yin/yang for Chinese; by structure, like caste/class verticality vs equity. But Gittings offers a lot of raw material for the theoretically minded.

The major impression from the book is the history of anti-war carried by persons and sometimes by groups; in other words, negative peace against violence. Of positive peace, like building equity and harmony, dissolving traumas and conflicts, there is close to nothing.

But Gittings is not to be faulted for this; rather, the civilizations he explored are. Read More »

Cultivating peace, preventing violence

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

… was the title of the Symposium at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia-USA 17-19 Nov 2012. An example of the blossoming wave of peace studies all over the US; inter-disciplinary and international. Most papers were given by very promising students on most aspects of peace studies. It is inconceivable that this will not have a major impact on US foreign policy in a generation or so, particularly with the demographic shift from the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) males voting Romney to the negations of all of that, including Blacks, Latins and women voting Obama. And with that shift the idea of a Chosen People with a Promised Land and a Covenant with the Almighty making them exceptional and indispensable, above the law of ordinary states, will slowly die.Read More »

Peace studies by peaceful means

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

Peace studies matter; same as health studies. We are born with the inclination to reject suffering, be it from violence or disease, and to seek wellbeing, call it peace, call it health. But we are not born with the knowledge and skills, theory and practice.

We have found causes and conditions for health in the body-mind-spirit context, as in the World Health Organization’s focus on health as physical, mental and social wellbeing. We rejected illness as divine punishment for the sick person’s Evil and explored pathogens–factors carrying diseases–such as traumas (also from violence, wars), contagious diseases, stress diseases (cardio-vascular, malignant tumors, mental disorders), chronic diseases that we can learn to live with, etc. To be adamantly against disease and in favor of health was seen as necessary – adding human will to the healthy as a sanogen, a factor carrying health. But health studies were needed. Knowledge and skills were needed. Theories were as indispensable for good health practice as vice versa.Read More »

Peace, human rights and development in multi-polar and evolving world

JO1 Comment

By Johan Galtung

Keynote Speech at the UN Human Rights Council SOCIAL FORUM – Oct 1, 2012

Your Excellencies!

The title for this Sixth Social Forum – in the context of the 10 Articles of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development of 4 December 1986 – is very well chosen. The focus is on people-centered development – as opposed to system – centered economic growth. And on globalization, a challenging process involving all states and regions, nations and civilizations, humans and nature – as opposed to a globalized market with only three free flows, of capital, goods and services, not labor; increasing the global economic gap.

And this in the context of rampant poverty, widening domestic inequalities, economic crises due to the disconnect between real and finance economies and greedy speculation, rising unemployment and popular unrest. Yesterday’s map dividing the world in developed and developing countries makes little sense when many of the developed are de-developing, declining, and many of the developing, emerging, on the way up–like BRICS–pass them on their way down. A new world.

Permit me Twelve Theses addressing this serious situation.Read More »

SABONA – from the Kindergarten to world politics

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

Kongsvinger is a small town in Eastern Norway, close to Sweden, with a small dedicated group working in kindergartens, elementary and more advanced schools to convey conflict and social skills to children from one to twelve years old. Recently they presented their experiences for a very grateful audience of children, teachers and parents.

Enters a teddy-bear, a key ‘person’. Child 1 grabs the bear and beats Child 2 shouting, “He is mine!” The teacher reports: “Of course I could scold, saying beating is not allowed. But that is not good enough.” So I said, “He is neither his nor yours, but the kindergarten’s. You wanted to hug him? OK, but no beating. You could have asked”.Read More »

Sustaining peace after war

JOLeave a comment

By Jonathan Power

When it comes to creating a peace in Afghanistan sufficient for the US and NATO to pull their troops out with some degree of confidence in the country’s future stability history offers conflicting lessons.

The mantra is that war-shattered states must be guided into a liberal democracy and a market-orientated economic system.

Yet there is much evidence that the process of political and economic liberalization can sometimes do more harm than good in states that have just emerged from civil war. Liberalization doesn’t always foster peace. Both democracy and capitalism are built on a paradox – the notion that societal competition can limit inter-communal competition and dampen conflict.Read More »

The Hexagon map of the multipolar world

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

How do we come to grips, intellectually, with today’s world?

Some time ago the geopolitical map was based on the direct East-West conflict, the two superpowers USA/USSR with alliances, and the neutral-nonaligned treated as a residual category. The world was Bipolar. The implosion of the USSR made it Unipolar, “the only surviving superpower”, 2-1 = 1. Or so we were told.

Today we have four huge states: the three largest in population, China-India-USA, and the largest in area, Russia. And the EU, a region with five middle-range states: UK-France-Germany-Italy-Spain.

But there is one more pole on the geopolitical map: Islam.Read More »