[Park Sang-seek] U.N. International Day of Peace: How to build peace?

No person and state on earth opposes peace, but humanity has never enjoyed permanent peace since it appeared on the globe. Scholars all over the world have never ceased to write on war and peace. All religions have been constantly preaching peace, and great world political leaders have vowed to keep and build peace. 

Countless peace organizations and movements have emerged in every corner of the world. The U.N. was created for the maintenance of peace and security in the world “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” However, since the end of World War II the number of conflicts, domestic and international, has increased.

Many of the issues concerning war and peace were dealt with at a symposium jointly held recently by Kyung Hee University and the United Nations at the U.N. Headquarters in New York to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the U.N. International Day of Peace on Sept. 21. Yet the key question is: Why do conflicts occur and how can they be prevented?

The preamble of UNESCO seems to provide the answer to the question. The most frequently quoted sentence is: “(S)ince wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” What this rhetorical statement says is that the cause of war is the war-like mind, and therefore if the war-like mind is replaced by the peace-loving mind, there will be peace.

It is not clear whether this view is based on the premise that the human being has both aggressive and peace-loving minds or that his mind is a tabula rasa. However, it is clear that it rejects the view that humans are innately aggressive. The realist school of thought holds that man seeks power because he is innately aggressive and the state does the same. According to this theory conflicts among states or people are unavoidable. Another school of thought asserts that human mind is blank and it can become war-like and peace-loving, depending on situations.

The generally accepted view is that human mind and the environment are interactive. The environment includes human and natural environments. Specifically, the human environment refers to political, economic, social and cultural environments, while the natural environment includes geographical and geological conditions.

All these environmental conditions have national and international dimensions. Students of international studies agree that economic poverty and inequality; lack of democracy; ethnic, religious and regional diversities; ideological polarization; geographical propinquity and territorial disputes; status inconsistency; and historical grievances tend to drive humans and states into aggressive behavior.

Historically, Before World War II power configuration among the great powers in the international arena and during the cold war period ideological polarization between East and West were the main sources of conflict. Now in the post-cold war period ethnic, religious and regional diversities are becoming the main source of conflict. Another characteristic of conflicts is that domestic conflicts are increasing faster than international conflicts.

The next question is how to make man and the state peace-loving. UNESCO asserts that only the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind can guarantee lasting peace and that it can be nurtured by the culture of peace. According to UNESCO the key values of the culture of peace are tolerance, solidarity, sharing and respect of every individual’s rights, and the means to realize the culture of peace are awareness, mobilization, education and information at all levels of society and in all countries. Every individual should participate, every country should cooperate and international organizations should coordinate.

How to realize these lofty ideals is questionable. More realistic solutions should be to reduce and ultimately eradicate the causes of conflict mentioned above. Specifically, states and international organizations should cooperate and coordinate their efforts to eradicate extreme poverty within states and economic inequality between states, stop democratic evangelism, to promote power sharing among different ethnic, regional and religious groups, and to intensify cultural and educational exchanges among states to develop universal culture and values.

In this connection, it is necessary to protect cultural diversity but not necessary to promote it because if it is rejected, people may revolt, while if it is promoted, it will become difficult, if not impossible, to nurture universal values. The most effective way to build permanent peace on earth is to shift the foundations of identity from blood ties to cultural ties. Nationalism is based on cultural ties but these ties have not completely been divorced from blood ties. In other words, the umbilical cord of nationalism is an imagined common ancestry. This imagined common ancestry should be humanity as a whole, not any particular ancestor. Until humans obtain such an identity, there will not be peace. The U.N. should become the center for promoting such culture.

By Park Sang-seek

Park Sang-seek is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University. ― Ed.