{"id":117875,"date":"2018-09-03T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=117875"},"modified":"2018-09-03T10:18:36","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T09:18:36","slug":"the-paradox-of-the-united-nations-peace-vs-culture-of-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/09\/the-paradox-of-the-united-nations-peace-vs-culture-of-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paradox of the United Nations: Peace vs. Culture of Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

2 Sep 2018 – <\/em>If we consider the purpose for which the United Nations was formed: \u201cto save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,\u201d it is failing badly. This spring, when we hoped that the United Nations would convene a High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament, the meeting was cancelled due to pressure from the United States and its allies<\/a>. And most recently, we see that the proposal for a peacekeeping force <\/a>to protect the Palestinian people cannot be implemented because of the American veto.<\/p>\n

This month in the CPNN bulletin<\/a>, we look at recent moves towards peace in the Philippines, Colombia, Korea and Etheopia\/Eritrea. What is remarkable is the absence of the United Nations from these initiatives. Only in Colombia did the United Nations play an important role by supervising the disarmament of the FARC guerilla army.<\/a><\/p>\n

This impotence of the UN is not new. We saw it two decades ago when our work for peace in El Salvador and Mozambique<\/a> was not supported by the US and its allies.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if we look at the culture of peace, the 90% of the iceberg of peace which is not visible on the surface, we see that the UN is continually developing a culture of peace at the local level.<\/p>\n

Education for peace: the \u2018Back to Learning\u2019 education campaign of UNICEF <\/a>will benefit half a million children in South Sudan.<\/p>\n

Democratic participation: UN Women contributed to the historic leap in Tunisia <\/a>where women now make up 47 per cent of local government.<\/p>\n

Sustainable development: UNESCO and UNWTO are encouraging cultural tourism <\/a>as a means of fostering sustainable development.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s equality: As described in their annual report, UN Women <\/a>is supporting women politicians, electoral officials, voters, lawmakers, civil society activists and many others to claim their equal right to lead and be heard.<\/p>\n

Human rights: Although the task is often frustrating<\/a>, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights works for implementation of the UN Declaration on Human Rights which is the keystone of work in this area.<\/p>\n

Tolerance and solidarity: The United Nations continues to support youth projects for tolerance and solidarity through the Youth Solidarity Fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Free flow of information: In Africa UNESCO supports the development of local radio initiatives against gender violence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Disarmament: Although the UN is failing at the highest level for disarmament, it is quite capable of action when the member states support it, as described above in the case of Colombia.<\/p>\n

And on a more general level, the United Nations continues to hold annual high level forums <\/a>dedicated to the development of a culture of peace and UNESCO continues to support the development of a culture of peace in Africa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Imagine how effective the UN could be if the stranglehold of the member states as expressed by the veto of the United States were to be replaced by a radical revision of the UN management with direction by representatives of cities or parliaments, as I have repeatedly proposed!<\/a><\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Dr. David Adams is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a> and coordinator of the <\/em>Culture of Peace News Network<\/a>. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the UN International Year for the Culture of Peace.\u00a0 Previously, at Yale and Wesleyan Universities, he was a specialist on the brain mechanisms of aggressive behavior, the history of the culture of war, and the psychology of peace activists, and he helped to develop and publicize the Seville Statement on Violence. Send him an email<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 decade-culture-of-peace.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 Sep 2018 – If we consider the purpose for which the United Nations was formed: \u201cto save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,\u201d it is failing badly. This spring, when we hoped that the UN would convene a High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament, the meeting was cancelled due to pressure from the United States and its allies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}