IS THE WORLD BECOMING WHAT WE REALLY WANT IT TO BE?? An eye opening atricle by Carl Stauffer, PhD, is the Academic Director of the Caux Scholars Program Amidst the flurry of media analysis on the current State of the Union in the United States, I find myself reflecting on the state of peace in our world. Judging from the continual deluge of media drama covering violence at home and abroad (e.g. wars in Syria, South Sudan, and nonviolent protests in the Ukraine and Thailand), we might be tempted to succumb to despair feeling like our world is only becoming increasingly chaotic and dangerous to live in. I have been working in the peacebuilding profession since 1991 and when talking to others outside of this discipline, I am often asked, So, are you accomplishing anything - it certainly doesn’t seem like conflict and violence in the world are getting any less? Once I got over my initial defensiveness to this repeated question, I was mostly able to find a humored response. Do we question the role of medical personnel because sickness still exists? Or, the function of criminal justice and law enforcement officials because crime still exists? Or, the need for teacher-educators because illiteracy still exists? Or, the effectiveness of development-economics professionals because poverty still exists? Of course we don’t. So then, why do we put peacebuilding practitioners under such a test? There are many reasons for this, both practical and political. First, being that peacebuilding is a relatively new field of study and application, many people are not aware of what the concept entails. Second, being that peacebuilding is a highly trans-disciplinary discipline some people perceive it to be a generalist’s profession that lacks exacting effectiveness in theory and practice. Third, successful peacebuilding efforts provide an immediate threat to a long established Military-Industrial-Complex that would like to keep its hold over the political-economic means of war. Whatever the perceptions, the peacebuilding field has now been in existence long enough to have accumulated sufficient decades of research to quantify the global impact of its work and the findings are highly impressive. Since the seminal Human Security Report of 2005, we now know two very important facts about violent conflicts worldwide. First, since 1989 (the end of the Cold War) all wars measured on an aggregate basis have been shorter in length than in anytime of recorded human history. Second, to further fortify this startling finding, research indicates that world leaders are turning to peace talks and negotiation processes (either by self-selection or through pressure from other peer leaders) much sooner than ever before. On a related note, recent empirical research on the effectiveness of nonviolent civil resistance has emerged that has shed a great deal of light on the effectiveness and power of nonviolent strategic action. The authors, Chenoweth and Stephen, studied 323 violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns occurring between 1900-2006 and among many significant findings, the most striking was that nonviolent resistance campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve full or partial success as their violent counterparts. These are promising signs for the global impact of the peacebuilding field as a whole. From the level of the United Nations to the grassroots efforts of local peacebuilders around the world, we can be encouraged in these developments knowing that our collective struggles for conflict transformation, justice and reconciliation are ultimately paying off. The Caux Scholars Program is a proud contributor to this construction of a more just and peaceful world. Carl Stauffer, PhD, is the Academic Director of the Caux Scholars Program NOTE: Individuals of many cultures, nationalities, religions, and beliefs are actively involved with Initiatives of Change. These commentaries represent the views of the writer and not necessarily those of Initiatives of Change as a whole.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:03:44 +0000
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