Peace - ours to cherish
Peace is precious
Peace and prosperity have been closely linked for a thousand years
For this 21st century – something different is needed
About Peace
There are good grounds for a day-to-day optimism about peace
….. many communities and nations live among others in peace
….. there is a widespread desire for peace
….. many individuals share their 'inner' peace with others
….. there's a lot more ‘good news' than is widely reported
….. decades of research have greatly enlarged our knowledge about peace
….. that knowledge is rebuilding peace in some of the world’s most afflicted places
Nevertheless, there are troubling concerns about peace
….. peace as we know it is fragile and easily broken
…… that familiar peace has been weakening globally since 2014
…… when peace is broken with violence there's indiscriminate local suffering
…… international responses to peace breaking spread suffering everywhere
…… the financial cost of violence is high - 13% of Global GDP[1]
…… international co-operation to preserve peace is under threat
Worse, ‘peace’ itself is a contested term - there is no widely shared agreement about what peace is.
Woodbridge Trees for Peace
These trees and the larger mantle of the Woodbridge Monument for Peace
have been established to encourage us, inform us and help us,
to do things together that will build the quality of peace and in that way make a better world.
What’s being done already
Many productive things are being done but the above indications are that they are not sufficient.
A century of Peace education –
Twentieth century wars led universities to establish new Departments to conduct extensive research about peace. New theories about conflict and violence were tested and refined in practical peace fieldwork. New college courses with titles such as Peace Education or Peace and Conflict Studies have shared with older students much of what is known about peace.
Some educators have explored ways of incorporating elements of Peace education into their schools. Suitable books, reading materials and professional guidance about teaching for peace are widely available. In practice young people learn from them and apply new skills in ways that improve their school’s climate for learning. Older student attainment has been impressively advanced by a post-16 peace education course.
But few schools have found the capacity to include an education for peace in their day-to-day work.
There’s a lot known and understood about peace that is not yet in our ‘general knowledge’’. What for example, makes the difference between negative peace and positive peace?
One aim of this website is to make learning such as that more widely accessible. [LINK to LEARNING for peace]
A century of building peace
Practical peace work based on a century of research is conducted by professional peacebuilders and researchers in some of the world’s most afflicted regions, for example in Africa and Kashmir.
Their close engagement, investigations and negotiations benefit those communities. They also add to our shared knowledge about peace and its challenges. Their work and reports illuminate, for example, the complexity of mending peace - reflected in the many ‘qualified’ terms used for different stages of its construction: terms such as contested peace, fearful peace, insecure peace, negative peace, partial peace, polarised peace, positive peace, regional peace, restored peace, stable peace, sustainable peace, unjust peace, unresolved peace
Their work has also identified practical responses and remedies for the fragility and breakdown of peace. Even if distant from our own communities the skills they use to build peace underline the practical value of some skills and capacities that we have and perhaps use relatively little; for example vigilance, sensitivity, consultation, objectivity, negotiation and mediation.
As with knowledge and understanding, there are a lot more practical skills that are relevant to peace.
So another aim of this website is to promote activities that keep such skills sharp. [Link to ACTION for peace]
More recently and currently . . .
Beyond those two fields of prolonged action, there are many smaller scale and individual projects: … list a few ….
Many more modern ones are promoted, like this one, through the internet; …. list a few ….
USP for this one
[1] GGDP – Global Gross Domestic Project – figures from 2024 report of the Global Peace Index project