How many of us were aware that Sept 21 was the International Day of Peace? Celebrated for the first time in 1982, this United Nations initiative is to remind all of us who inhabit this planet of the need to strengthen and preserve peace.
The UN had called for at least 24 hours of non-violence and cease-fire on Sept 21 but how many states or people answered the call? Fighting continued in all those places which are seeing conflict, including the Ukraine and Yemen.
The UN, however, recognises that achieving peace entails much more than laying down arms. And that is perhaps why this year’s theme for the UN’s International Day of Peace is “End racism. Build peace”.
As the UN says: “It (peace) requires the building of societies where all members feel that they can flourish. It involves creating a world in which people are treated equally, regardless of their race.”
According to UN secretary-general António Guterres: “Racism continues to poison institutions, social structures, and everyday life in every society. It continues to be a driver of persistent inequality. And it continues to deny people their fundamental human rights. It destabilises societies, undermines democracies, erodes the legitimacy of governments, and… the linkages between racism and gender inequality are unmistakable.”
I couldn’t agree more. But more on this later.
In declaring an International Day of Peace, the UN had hoped to see a culture of peace prevail; it had hoped to see conflicts resolved peacefully via dialogue and discussion.
Sadly, that doesn’t seem to have happened. The latest states that are attempting to resolve their differences via the use of weapons are Russia and Ukraine, the latter backed by the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation members.
Armed conflicts are continuing in various countries including Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Iraq, Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan. And, of course, the frequent clashes between Israeli forces and the Palestinians tell us that peace is elusive, often tentative.
In addition, there are two new areas of possible conflict that are worrying. One is the growing tension over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its confrontation with its Sunni Arab neighbours and the United States.
The other is nearer home. Already there is tension in the South China Sea but the US and China appear to be treading on dangerous waters in recent years. If a conflict breaks out, Malaysia will certainly be dragged into it directly or indirectly.
In May, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or SIPRI warned that world leaders were “failing to prepare for a new era of complex and often unpredictable risks to peace as profound environmental and security crises converge and intensify”.
This is because new dangers have arisen – such as climate change and resource scarcity. These will certainly increase the risk of more conflicts occurring within and between nations.
Somalia, gives a glimpse of the disastrous interplay of these various factors. SIPRI says “prolonged drought and other climate change impacts, combined with poverty, lack of preparedness and weak government, have driven people (of Somalia) into the arms of the extremist group al-Shabab.”
SIPRI’s Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk report says that between 2010 and 2020 the number of refugees and other forcibly displaced people doubled – to 82.4 million. In 2020, it notes, the number of operationally deployed nuclear warheads increased after years of reductions, and in 2021 military spending surpassed US$2 trillion for the first time ever.
The report recommends that “environmental stressors should be included in early-warning systems for conflict risk”. It also calls for treaties on sharing resources such as fisheries, water and forests to be updated to meet the new complex risks that are arising.
The UN says its main goal is to maintain international peace and security. “The United Nations was created in 1945, following the devastation of the Second World War, with one central mission: the maintenance of international peace and security. The UN accomplishes this by working to prevent conflict, helping parties in conflict make peace, deploying peacekeepers, and creating the conditions to allow peace to hold and flourish.”
So, the question arises: Has the UN failed? This is a question that was asked when I was studying in school – as part of an essay assignment – and continues to be asked today. Like the violence that continues to vex the world, this question will continue to be asked for a long while yet.
But all is not gloom and doom. Some scientists and thinkers, such as Steven Pinker, have argued that we live in less violent times. Pinker wrote in 2009: “In fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are today. Indeed, violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species’ time on earth.”
Providing data, Pinker said: “Since 1945 in Europe and the Americas, we’ve seen steep declines in the number of deaths from interstate wars, ethnic riots, and military coups, even in South America. Worldwide, the number of battle deaths has fallen from 65,000 per conflict per year to less than 2,000 deaths in this decade. Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, we have seen fewer civil wars, a 90% reduction in the number of deaths by genocide, and even a reversal in the 1960s-era uptick in violent crime.”
While this may be true when viewed overall through the lens of history, very recent studies show there is cause for concern.
According to the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index 2022 (GPI), since 2008, the level of global peacefulness has deteriorated by 3.2%, with 84 countries deteriorating and 77 improving in the GPI. The world, the IEP says, has become successively less peaceful each year since 2014.
It says in its latest report that the number of countries experiencing violent internal conflict rose from 29 to 38, but the number of people killed in internal conflicts has fallen since 2017. The number of forcibly displaced people around the world increased from 31 million in 2008 to over 88 million in 2022.
According to IEP, the global economic impact of violence was US$16.5 trillion in 2021, equivalent to 10.9% of global GDP, or US$2,117 per person.
How does Malaysia fare in the Global Peace Index? The next column will address this, and how Malaysia can provide hope. - FMT
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.
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