Thinking About Peace

1
Thinking About Peace

• The End of the Cold War

and, end of surrogate wars

• Yet militarism and violence persist

• What are the examples?

• What is the New World Order?

why might peace be affected by it?

• positive versus negative peace

2

• realist school?

the inevitability of war...

• positive peace

promotion of social justice
Human Rights
Peace studies is the systematic study of the
causes of war and violence and the conditions of
peace.
3
From Conflict to Community

• Why has the decade been described as marked by
• chaos, confusion, rejection, and self-protection?

• relationship between democracy and world-wide
• electronic communication

• Why is it that political systems seem unable or
• unwilling to build the conditions for peace as
• enthusiastically as they prepare the weapons of
• destruction?

4

• social injustice caused by the traditional
  growth
• economy conflicting with the limitations of the
• biosphere

• pollution and population
• http//www.census.gov/ftp/pub/ipc/www/worldpop.htm
  l
• http//www.undp.org/popin/popin.htm
• http//www.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Environme
  nt
• _and_Nature/Pollution/

• Why do some people think that violence is an
• inevitable part of human nature?

5

• What is the Globalization of world society?

• Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace
• http//www.un.org/Docs/SG/agpeace.html
• http//www.un.org/Docs/SG/agsupp.html
• http//www.un.org/Docs/SG/agdev.html

• A new definition of security
• http//www.cgg.ch/cgg_home.htm

• The non-military sources of instability in the
• economic, social and humanitarian and ecological
• fields have become threats to peace and security.

6

• The search for human security
• - poverty
• - environmental degradation
• - absence of democratic values

• Social Development
• http//www.iisd.ca/linkages/wssd.html

• The Concept of positive peace
• - Human Rights
• - political and civil
• - economic, social cultural

7
Peace Studies and its subfields

• The traditional topics
• violence and warfare
• militarism
• nuclear weapons
• global conflict and cooperation
• racism and sexism
• class and underdevelopment
• human rights and repression
• global movements
• social change

8
The New Topics

• common security
• economic justice
• racial and ethnic conflict
• nuclear proliferation
• military conversion
• violence against women
• cultural violence
• North-South and South-South conflicts
• interrelationships the bomb, debt, rainforest
• gender, militarism, development

9
The methods of peace studies

• promotion of critical thinking
• consideration of competing perspectives
• questioning of conventional wisdom
• multidisciplinary and global
• celebrate cross-cultural linkages and
  differences
• emphasize the inter-connectedness of the worlds
• peoples and problems

Peace studies should promote

• social responsibility
• sense of global citizenship
• motivation toward service and public
• participation

10
The Social and Cultural Roots of Insecurity

• Do current conflicts spring from structural
  reasons
• that divide national societies, are they the
  result of an
• implementation of emerging political powers or
  are they
• a recycling of old political powers that are
  seeking to
• adapt to a new order? (Paris UNESCO Seminar
  12-14 June, 1996)

11
Conditions of the Security of Development

• Since peace is inseparable from development, why
  not propose
• a culture of development program that would
  permit a remedy
• for the poor development factors witnessed in
  Africa by the
• World Bank
• - the single party adopted after independence,
  which
• is the source of a deadlock in social dialogue
  
• - dictatorial ultra-presidential regimes
• - corruption
• (Lamine Fofana, Major-General, Senegalese Army)

12
A Culture of Peace

• Peace is a mode of behaviour (UNESCO,
  Yamoussoukro, Côte dIvoire, 1989)
• Peace is a Process, a way of solving problems (
  John F. Kennedy, 1963)
• The foundations of peace are to be constructed in
  the minds of men (UNESCO Constitution)

13
UNESCO AND PEACE

• Peace is a value to be realized in conditions of
  justice, equity, respect for human rights,
  non-violent conflict resolution, tolerance of
  diversity, human harmony with the biosphere, and
  democratic procedures for achieving these
  conditions.
• These values form a Culture of Peace

14
The Realist Perspective
Is the realist assumption that hostility
and aggressivity are inevitable a valid one?
What is the role of popular culture in promoting
power through military prestige?
15
The Realist Perspective
Is the realist assumption that hostility
and aggressivity are inevitable a valid one?
What is the role of popular culture in promoting
power through military prestige?
16

• Global Security Issues
• soil erosion
• deforestration
• desertification
• depletion of fresh water
• overpopulation
• poverty
• disease
• famine
• debt
• adverse conditions of trade