Peace Day - September 21, 2008 - 62
Quest for a New World “There are always going to be conflicts, but you don’t have to resort to violence to resolve them,” Abkin points out, “in fact, violence never really does resolve conflicts, it just perpetuates them and breeds new ones. This is about supporting a culture of peace in society that knows how to resolve conflicts without violence and supports programs for the prevention of at the root causes of violence at all levels. Its not just war, but domestic violence, family violence, gang violence, school shootings, as well. What makes people do these things and how can you get at the root cause? Not just throw people in jail afterwards or clean up the mess afterwards, or put up walls and guards and fences – how do you reduce the motivation to have violence, the sense that we can use violence as a recourse, and to know that there are other recourses. That’s a lot of what ministries and departments of peace will do A ministry of peace will have to do with how people treat one another in their own countries, keeping people in right relationship, helping people treat one another in nonviolent ways.” Common GoalS While each nation will design its own vision and mission, one of the first goals of the early summits was to determine what the common goals might be. “We’re always going to have conflict,” says Abkin, “People have conflicts about things. But we want to get at the root causes of violence.” The Global Alliance calls upon governments of the world and civil society organizations everywhere to: • Develop necessary resources and infrastructure for resolving conflicts effectively by peaceful means • Establish, train and develop civil peace services and the human resources and capacities for peacebuilding and conflict transformation • Incorporate conflict resolution and peacebuilding into school curricula from primary schools through university • Actively engage youth, women, and all communities to participate as equals in peacebuilding, to ensure participation and representation of all. JoIN THE GLoBaL MaSTErMIND your two cents could be the key to our future! Peace Partnership International and the 35 Ministry and Department of Peace Initiatives have been working with PATRIR of Romania to understand the causes of violence and to generate ideas that will help us create a culture of peace. We invite you to join this Global Mastermind. Your ideas are important and could help create new models that would produce peace both domestically and internationally. With the help of Johan Galtung’s Iceberg model – we invite you to join this discussion. Mike Abkin explains, “The concept is a triangle of violence (see diagram on next page), like an iceberg, where what you see, direct violence, is only the tip of the iceberg – the observable physical violence, emotional violence, the way people treat one another, war, shootings. But that’s supported by and the result of what’s underneath. The other two corners of the triangle below the surface are structural violence and cultural violence. Structural violence is violence that’s built into our social, economic, legal and political systems and institutions that produce the economic disparities, political repressions, even being left out of the political system, discrimination, segregation. Violence is a function and result of the way the system is structured. And that structural violence, that corner of the triangle, is also a result of the third corner of the triangle, cultural violence. Cultural violence is our values, our belief systems, our world view. We create the structures ourselves as humans. Our social systems and our economic systems are invented by us. There is nothing natural about them.” In a Triangle of Peace, structural peace and cultural peace support peace and create a culture of peace as their result. The Global Mastermind is a place for us to explore these concepts and to begin designing new structural systems and cultural norms that support the world we want to live in. The challenge is “How do we create and cultivate this transformation from the violence triangle to the peace triangle? Please join us. To participate click here: www.TriangleofPeace.com 62 Peace Day 2008