War & Peace
International Day of Peace falls on 21 September this year. To mark the occasion, we asked the Future Challenges community the following question:
Is peace between individuals and societies possible, or is conflict simply a part of human nature? Does it differ from culture to culture, religion to religion, nation to nation?
Even asking the question sparked a discussion, with Masha Egupova from Russia, Rabab Khan from Pakistan, Yohana de Andrade from Brazil and Kira Kariakin from Venezuela all responding to my initial request at some length. The conversation that has started is an important one; read what our writers (Local Views) have to say, and share your own opinions.
*Photo taken by Jayel Aheram, published on Wikipedia under a CC BY 2.0 license.
Tags: conflict, culture, International Day of Peace, peace, religion, war
Tom Fries
Most recent Local Views on ‘War - peace’
-
What’s the Deal, Bibi?
Written by Tom Tyler
on November 30, 2013. Israeli government ministers have taken a remarkably hard-line stance on the recent interim agreement with Iran. But the deal is nowhere near as bad for Israel as Netanyahu claims, and he knows it. The Israeli prime minister’s public opinion on the Iran deal is no secret; according to him, despite […]
-
La banalidad de la violencia
Written by vlemus
on November 28, 2013. Abstract: the amount of people murdered in El Salvador from 1992 until 2013 has long surpassed the number of civilians killed during the Civil War (1981-1992) and the political repression era (1975-1980). Even more so, both public indifference and our whole media consumption are designed to profit from violence: tabloid-like […]
-
Are Coup d’etats the new method of conflict resolution in Africa?
Written by Monica Jeannormil
on July 31, 2013. The recent events in Egypt caused me to take a closer look at Future Challenges article on International Day of Peace observed on September 21, 2013; “Is peace between individuals and societies possible, or is conflict simply a part of human nature? Does it differ from culture to culture, religion to […]
-
My childhood, their childhood and the missing peace
Written by Abdalhadi Alijla
on January 19, 2013. I was born in Gaza, a small, lovely coastal strip on the map. I am now 28 years old so I was born when the Palestinian territory was under Israeli control, and under occupation. I was three years old when the first intifada erupted. For a child like me, it […]
-
The resurgence of terrorism in Peru
Written by Juan Arellano
on January 14, 2013. During the 1980s and 90′, Peru was plagued by terrorism, mainly by the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) groups, but also – and to an extent never clearly determined – by human rights violations in which the various governments dealing with terrorism were complicit. In 1992, […]
-
(Mis)understanding Conflict
Written by Luis Felipe Morgado
on December 19, 2012. Social media have amplified the power of pictures, and with this the need to ponder the meaning of such pictures. Do they allow for deeper understanding, or rather mis-inform us? A voyage through Susan Sontag, the Gaza War and Facebook.
-
Transformational Diplomacy: Liberalism, not democracy
Written by Josh Grundleger
on December 1, 2012. On January 18, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new foreign policy called transformational diplomacy. Challenging old assumptions that the domestic character of other countries did not matter for foreign affairs or American security, Rice argued that: [The United States must] work with our many partners around the world, […]
-
War is a Human Matter
Written by Kira Kariakin
on November 23, 2012. Slideshow of a series of activities (January – November 2012) called ¿Qué es para ti la paz? (what is peace for you?) directed by La Rana Encantada in Venezuela. The objective of the activity is to instill children with the concept of peace. Published with permission of the director […]
-
Conflict is Here to Stay
Written by Josh Grundleger
on November 1, 2012. Conflict is an innate aspect of human nature and thus inevitable. Man can never realistically avoid every single point of discord. Different perspectives, disagreements, divergent values, competing goals, and overlapping claims will always exist. Individuals, and the states they construct, in the quest to achieve their goals, will thus indubitably come to loggerheads. To ignore this fact is to lead policymakers, and the people who they are supposed to protect, down a dangerous path.
-
Cultural Aggressiveness and Mexico´s War on Drugs
Written by Kapell
on November 1, 2012. In October 2012, the Canadian journal La Presse published “Sans son arme, un Américain se croit en danger au Canada”, a peculiar story about an American policeman and his wife who vacationed in Canada but complained about the strong Canadian restrictions on carrying weapons. The sarcastically written article told the […]
