The most common perception of world peace is in terms of negotiations by world’s leaders and signing of treaties and peace agreements by them. Important as this is for world peace, experience has shown clearly that this by itself does not go far in creating a peaceful and safer world without continuing involvement of most people in peace efforts.
Horrible as the large number of deaths and disabilities caused by wars and terrorism are, these are nevertheless outnumbered by various kinds of violence in daily life.
Homicides take a huge toll of about 458,000 lives in a year, about 52 per hour. 316 million women experience physical and sexual violence by an intimate partner in a year. In the age group 2-17, 1 billion children experience physical, emotional and sexual violence (and neglect) in a year (latest available data at world level).
Such high levels of violence in daily life is perhaps the biggest and the most persistent cause of distress among humanity, particularly as this violence is often unleashed not by a perceived enemy but by someone who is supposed to be in a protective and trusted relationship.
While many-sided efforts to reduce this violence in daily life are being made, these generally lack a wider framework of reducing the root causes of violence in society and the violent tendencies existing among a significantly large number of people. Hence sincere and well-intentioned as these efforts are, in the absence of a deeper understanding of so much violence in daily life, these have generally not made any durable and wider impact, although shorter-term and localized successes are often recorded.
This can be seen even more clearly in the context of the tragic phenomenon of violence against the self. Nearly 727,000 suicides take place in a single year. About 20 times more suicide attempts are made, many of these resulting in serious injuries and disabilities. Thinking about suicides is much more common. In addition there are several other kinds of self-harm being inflicted. All these have increased significantly in recent times in several places and often among younger people. In this context too a very tragic situation has persisted and may have worsened in many places despite well-intentioned and sincere efforts being made to reduce this.
Learning from past experiences, any society that seeks effectively to reduce violence and self-violence must be willing to face more honestly and frankly the social causes that increase tendencies for violence and self-violence among a significantly large number of people, followed by equally honest efforts to resolve or reduce these social causes.
This is best achieved in conditions of vibrant and creative peace movements which seek to steadily reduce all causes and dimensions of violence and self-violence in daily life. As a part of these social movements people learn to have a better understanding of the distress and destruction inherently associated with violence in daily life and along with this understanding they are increasingly encouraged to make efforts to significantly reduce the violence in their life.
This can be a very creative process at the individual, family and community level, and at the level of educational, spiritual and other institutions. Finding peace in daily life can be a very important and creative part of education.
As such a highly creative peace movement contributes a lot to reducing distress in the life of common people, this goodwill and support of the people can be harnessed to achieve something even bigger that our deeply troubled world really needs—broad-based support of a very large number of people for peace at national, regional and world level.
In the course of ending or significantly reducing the violence in their daily life, people experience in real life terms how their distress and stress decrease to a significant extent, how social relationships improve very significantly and they are able to experience a deeper happiness. This also makes them increasingly more conscious of the much wider need for durable, continuing peace in their county and at world level.
Hence the cause of national, regional and world peace can get exactly what it has always needed but has not been able to mobilize—broad-based increasing support of a large number of people who firmly believe in reducing violence at all levels in our deeply troubled world.
Many sincere people and many dedicated organizations, guided by some of the best scholars, will no doubt have to make sustained and untiring efforts to take this forward, but once a strong peace movement that can link ending violence in daily life with strengthening wider peace is firmly in place, this will be a big step forward for world peace.
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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril and A Day in 2071. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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