Culture of Peace

Taken from the United Nations Association of Canada website:

"The expression “Culture of Peace” implies that peace means much more than the absence of war. Peace is considered as a set of values, attitudes and modes of behaviour promoting the peaceful settlement of conflict and the quest for mutual understanding. In fact, peace is one way to live together. The expression “Culture of Peace” presumes that peace is a way of being, doing and living in society that can be taught, developed, and best of all, improved upon.

The culture of peace is peace in action. Introducing such a culture is a long-term process requiring both a transformation of institutional practices and individual modes of behaviour. Finally, in order to survive and become entrenched in our values, a culture of peace requires non-violence, tolerance and solidarity.

The idea of consensus, or peace, is sometimes mistaken for an absence of conflict or for society’s homogenization process. However, in order to achieve mutual understanding, there must first be differences with regard to sex, race, language, religion, or culture. The quest for mutual understanding begins with the recognition of these differences and of a will to overcome them to reach a common objective. Achieving mutual understanding protects a society from self-destruction by letting it build foundations so as to design a new way to live together. Indeed, mutual understanding fosters certain values vital for peace, including non-violence, respect of others, tolerance, solidarity and openness to others.

Mutual understanding does not mean homogenization of society. On the contrary, a culture of peace is enhanced by the variety of traditions. The fact that a common vision emerges from a multi-cultural society proves that living together is possible and that this society lives according to the pulse of a culture of peace.

Therefore, as UNESCO says so well, the culture of peace is intrinsically linked to conflict prevention and resolution. The key-values of this culture are tolerance, solidarity, sharing and respect of every individual’s rights—the principle of pluralism that ensures and upholds the freedom of opinion; that strives to prevent conflict by tackling it at its source, including new non-military threats to peace and security such as exclusion, extreme poverty and environmental degradation. Finally, it seeks to solve problems through dialogue, negotiation and mediation, so that war and violence are no longer possible.

But how can the culture of peace become a concrete and lasting reality? In the interactive world, everything is a matter of awareness, mobilization, education, prevention and information at all levels of society and in all countries. The elaboration and establishment of a culture of peace require the whole-hearted participation of everyone. Countries must cooperate, international organizations must coordinate their different actions and populations must fully participate to the full in the development of their societies."

A culture of peace requires strong leadership and a huge shift in conciousness. Is it too idealistic? Too unattainable? When we have leaders who believe that violence and killing are the means to an end; who believe that they have the right to live above the law while holding the highest office of the United States of America; when there is a leader overseeing the most powerful nation in the world who has never taken any ownership for mistakes made from bad decisions, we don't have a hope in hell.

What we can hope for is a future American leader who is not a self-serving good ol' boy, but who is someone with integrity, intelligence, grit and the gifts to help shape a world that is striving for balance and harmony. That would at least be a positive step forward in the direction of eradicating a culture of violence that permeates our global society.