{"id":119454,"date":"2018-10-01T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T11:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=119454"},"modified":"2018-09-30T13:08:04","modified_gmt":"2018-09-30T12:08:04","slug":"campaign-to-get-peacebuilding-in-dictionaries-gains-traction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/10\/campaign-to-get-peacebuilding-in-dictionaries-gains-traction\/","title":{"rendered":"Campaign to Get ‘Peacebuilding’ in Dictionaries Gains Traction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Words in the dictionary: Warmongering, Fighting, Battling, Warfare, Hate Speech. NOT in the dictionary? Peacebuilding.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LjRuVbIh_QI<\/p>\n

29 Sep 2018 – <\/em>\u2018Peacebuilding\u2019 was coined in the 1970\u2019s by Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung, who defines it as projects that involve \u201cconcrete action\u201d towards peace. The word gets 7 million hits on Google, but is not in most dictionaries. Now a campaign has started to get \u2018peacebuilding\u2019 included.<\/p>\n

Mike Jobbins from Search for Common Ground says it\u2019s been a real frustration in the peacebuilding field to constantly get the Microsoft Word red squiggle from the spellchecker.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have UN departments, we have legislation in the States, we have governmental departments from Nigeria to Myanmar that use the word peacebuilding, but fundamentally we’re not well understood in the general public,\u201d Mr Jobbins said. \u201cYou sit next to someone on an airplane and say \u2018I work for a peacebuilding organization\u2019 and people don’t really know what that means, and there’s so many great people doing such amazing things around the world that we thought it was time to make sure that gets recognized.”<\/p>\n

Harriet Lamb, CEO of International Alert, pointed to the variety of new words that have recently been introduced to dictionaries that are being recognized as part of the English language. \u201cYou\u2019ve got words like \u2018hangry, which means you\u2019re so hungry you\u2019re angry, through to \u2018instagramable\u2019, \u2018bingable\u2019, \u2018totes\u2019 and \u2018adorbs\u2019. Yet peacebuilding \u2013 an incredibly serious concept that\u2019s been around for 40 years has still not been recognized in our lexicon of words, so that\u2019s why we launched this campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

The campaign, led by several organizations such as Alliance for Peacebuilding,\u00a0Conciliation Resources,\u00a0International Alert, Peace Direct and Search for Common Ground,\u00a0seems to be gaining followers on social media and has had some success. “We’re super pleased that in the last week, we’re now in three – Collins Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary and Macmillan Dictionary have all added it in so it’s fantastic progress in just a week after 40 years of set-backs,” said Mr Jobbins.<\/p>\n

Oxford University Press confirmed that while \u201cpeacebuilding\u201d is not currently covered in the Oxford English Dictionary, it will be considered. \u201cWe have collected evidence for the term and will consider it for potential inclusion in a future update,\u201d their publicist said.<\/p>\n

Leaders of the campaign have been inspired by the response they\u2019ve received from the public, said Ms Lamb. \u201cWe\u2019ve had lots of positive responses, and from the dictionaries themselves, so we are really hopeful the campaign will achieve its first objective of ensuring peacebuilding takes its rightful place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Lamb said getting the term peacebuilding into the dictionary is a first step in a much larger issue. Peacebuilders\u00a0are keen to see peacebuilding used as a viable option in conflict zones, and for policy makers to know that it works, is popular<\/a><\/u>, and is cost-effective.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>International news today is driven by sensationalism. From conflict zones, we hear stories about killings, bombings, and the views of violent extremists. This type of coverage tends to inflame passions and perpetuate negative stereotypes, fueling distrust and violence.\u00a0<\/em>Peace News aims to present the other side \u2013 stories from conflict zones we often don\u2019t hear. Our stories are about people taking risks for peace. We highlight the opinions of ordinary people who want non-violent solutions to their political differences. Our stories aren’t always about shootings and explosions, but they do tell you stories from war zones that hopefully go some way towards building trust and reconciliation.\u00a0Founded by Dr Babak Bahador<\/a>, and launched in 2015, Peace News is a non-partisan, independent, news agency. We are based in New Zealand and Washington D.C., USA, and\u00a0Kate Roff<\/a> is the founding, and current, editor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 peacenews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

29 Sep 2018 – \u2018Peacebuilding\u2019 was coined in the 1970\u2019s by Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung, who defines it as projects that involve \u201cconcrete action\u201d towards peace. The word gets 7 million hits on Google, but is not in most dictionaries. Now a campaign has started to get \u2018peacebuilding\u2019 included.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":91341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[195],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conflict-resolution-mediation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119454","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=119454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}