Peace Planners: Awake!
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 24 Jul 2023
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service
19 Jul 2023 – The recent NATO Summit in Vilnius is an indication that the war planning community is busy at work in the spirit of Von Clausewitz that war is a continuation of politics by other means. Thus, there is a need for the peace planning community to be awake and be equally busy. The challenges which humanity faces today: armed violence, persistent poverty, mass migration, and the consequences of climate change, require strong collective action at the local, the national, and the world level.
For peace planners, we need to analyze current armed conflicts and the strong tensions which may lead to violence. Sometimes these tensions start as small localized events, such as tensions between military forces on the India-China frontier, but such tensions contain the seeds for later armed violence. The recent trip of the 100-year-old Henry Kissinger across the Pacific to discuss with the Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu is an indication that tensions in the Indo-Pacific area are being taken seriously.
For peace planners, there is a need to strengthen measures for early intervention. Too often intervention by the United Nations or other intergovernmental agencies such as the African Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe occurs only once the conflict has become a serious dispute involving violence.
For those of us who are outside of governmental institutions, there is a need to strengthen the capacity of non-governmental organizations (NGO) for peace planning. NGOs can bring their early warning capacities and problem-solving knowledge to the United Nations and regional intergovernmental organizations. Among NGOs, exchanges of information, the creation of regional or thematic working groups, and coordinated information campaigns are vital needs. As soon as well-researched material is available, the issue is to get the information to the right people, at the right time, and in the right wording. Timeliness and clarity of message are crucial. Many governmental decision-makers receive thick reports, jargon-laden faxes, and briefing notes.
The challenge for us who plan for a more peaceful world is to help develop processes for dialogue. As Adlai Stevenson said at the U.N.,
“We do not hold the vision of a world without conflict. We do hold the vision of a world without war – and this inevitably requires an alternative system for dealing with conflict.”
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René Wadlow is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. He is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues, and editor of Transnational Perspectives.
Tags: Conflict Mediation, Conflict Transformation, Peace, Peace Building, Warfare
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 24 Jul 2023.
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