According to a recent report released on September 23, 2024, by the United States Embassy in Addis Ababa, in celebration of the International Day of Peace, the US Government through USAID reaffirmed its commitment to sustaining sustainable peace and stability in Ethiopia. A Peace Walk was held in the eastern Ethiopia city of Dire Dawa on September 21, 2024. The theme of this year’s International Day of Peace is, “Cultivating a culture of peace.”
The press release from the US Embassy further noted that, “True peace is not just the absence of conflict but the presence of justice, dialogue and mutual respect. For Ethiopia to achieve stability and unity communities must embrace tolerance and ensure that the voices of all Ethiopians are heard.
According to the same report, the International Day of Peace celebrations also included a roundtable discussion entitled “Let’s talk about peace”. The meeting was attended by partners for peace, community leaders of Dire Dawa, and interfaith council members who discussed peace and tolerance and discuss peace and tolerance in Dire Dawa and how it can be emulated in other areas.
If we look at the issue of peace building from a broader perspective, we realize that the main problem is that there is no strong culture of peace not only in Ethiopia but also across Africa where active conflicts are still going on and the possibility of enduring peace is still one of the most enduring challenges in many African countries.
It is therefore important to approach the issue of peace building or the absence of a culture of peace as something that is relevant to the future of Africa that is aspiring for socio-economic development. It is obviously impossible to dream of economic development without lasting peace and stability across Africa. By the same token, one part of Africa cannot enjoy peace and stability while another part of it is engulfed in conflicts.
A discussion about the prospects of durable peace is something that needs to be addressed not only sporadically but also sustainably, because the struggle for peace and stability in Africa should always be on top of the agenda and assume a new dimension. The long term prospect should be the long-term need to lay the basis for a vibrant culture of peace. This work also needs to be started not tomorrow but today through discussions at higher intellectual levels and through permanent dialogues at lower community levels.
Generally speaking, culture is a broader and holistic concept that includes politics, economics, history and other related disciplines. Thus we have what we call the culture of peace as clearly defined nowhere else more than in the global covenant following the establishment of the United Nations.
As defined by the United Nations, “The culture of peace is a set of values, attitudes, modes of behavior and ways of lives that reject violence and prevent conflicts by tackling their root causes to solve problems through dialogue and negotiation by individuals. This is however easier said than done as the ways of achieving or implementing a culture of peace have already proved extremely difficult or impossible unless the psychological, emotional and sentimental conditions are not conducive to the emergence of a genuine and lasting peace in any part of the world.
According to studies conducted in this area, “ A culture of peace includes being in peace with oneself, others and the natural world. The primary tool to promote a culture of peace is peace education, which must be taught in families, all levels of education, workplaces, and disseminated through the media, and encouraged at all levels of society.”
At the global level, conflicts may be prevented or resolved whenever they turn deadly, with a global and effective peace movement that would impact the attitudes of the conflicting parties long before cold war turns into a hot one. This is the most important factor that has allowed the actors to seek for emotional rather than rational solutions long before the conflicts turn deadly. Even after hostilities start, outside players need to keep cool heads and seek balanced, responsible and feasible solutions instead of taking sides that only exacerbate the situation.
Although it is a relatively less developed part of the world, Africa is currently better poised to try and make its real weight in international affairs to be felt by following a diplomatic road least trodden even by nations with a long history and experience in international relations. Africa has therefore a better and realistic perspective on global peace and conflicts because it has itself been a victim of great power policies during the colonial era and it is presently the only continent that is not actively and openly disputed as an object of great power hegemony.
Africa is a continent that is struggling to develop economically and not a continent that pursues ambitious plans or strategic interests in other parts of the world. For this and other reasons, Africa has a better chance of generating ideas that benefit world peace both for its own development and useful for regional and global peace. The only shortcoming in Africa is its failure to deal with its own problems of peace effectively or seek outside help for one reason or another. This does not however prevent it from working for its own and for world peace because the two are organically linked and their solutions can only be applicable in internal as well as external situations.
The culture of peace in the world was born in the aftermath of WWII at a moment when the horrors humanity went through during the last war were still fresh in its collective consciousness. People scrambled to establish peace movement and build memorial to past atrocities in their bid to warn the world that it should work harder to avert hell from engulfing us again.
When we look at the situation from the post-WWII perspective, we realize that, “during the post-war occupation, a peace movement grew out of the suffering caused by nuclear weapons. The Bikini Incident in 1954 catalyzed a great expansion of these actions. In august the following year, the First World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs was held in Hiroshima.”
For instance, what is known as the peace history society, “was established 1964 to encourage and coordinate national and international scholarly work to explore and articulate the conditions and causes peace and war and to communicate the findings of scholarly work to the public.”
The world is now facing the possibility of going into a global inferno once again after witnessing less than 80 years of relative world peace punctured by smaller wars in Vietnam and Indochina and near misses in Cuba in 1960, and permanent bloodshed in the Middle East as a result of the failure to settle the Palestinian-Israeli historic enmity once and for all. Nowadays, the realities of conventional wars are becoming more and more rearing their ugly heads while the world is inching closer to nuclear conflicts or the possibility of conventional wars turning into deadlier nuclear conflagrations.
The end of WWII had given rise to a powerful global movement for world peace and the creation of the United Nation as a beacon of it. Whether the UN has lived up to its mission of keeping world peace and preventing another global conflagration might be something highly debatable although it has so far prevented the eruption of another World War.
Traditionally, new global peace movements emerged in such dangerous situations in order to stem the tide of wars and save the world from greater destructions. But this is not the case nowadays, as nations and people hasten to take sides with this or that power for starting a new conflict while bitter and more venomous wars are going on over the social media that prepare the psychological environments for accelerating the momentums of new conflicts. Nowadays, wars are first fought on the social media and then continue on battlefields.
The weight and capacity of international institutions to resolve these conflicts are decreasing. In this context what may be palatable to launch a new international peace movement that would put pressure on national government and international institutions and boldly work in the preservation of humanity irrespective of race, color, ethnicity and economic conditions. It may not be too late but not impossible to start such a peace movement. Better late than never as they say.
As far as Africa is concerned, the task of building a culture of peace should not be left only for global or local institutions or organizations. The process should be owned by the people directly or indirectly affected by the absence of peace and through their national governments. It should also be a multifaceted struggle on all fronts, including the media and educational institutions, non-governmental organizations and think tanks. Most of all, this is not a challenge that need not be postponed for tomorrow. Building a culture of peace in Africa is of course a long-term process that needs to be started today.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The Ethiopian Herald September 29/2024
