Fall / Winter 2006
Less Violence, Fewer Wars?
Far from the splashy front-page news on
the latest terrorist alert, it’s possible to
find hopeful items on peace tucked onto
the back pages, usually under miniscule
headlines.
Last October, for example, the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia (UBC) released a report showing that the number of genocides and violent conflicts has declined dramatically since the early 1990s.
“The global media give far more coverage to wars that start than those that quietly end,” said Andrew Mack the UBC professor who directed the study and its report.
UBC’s findings received confirmation from Yearbook 2006, released in June by Sweden’s Uppsala University. The Yearbook said active major armed conflict worldwide stood at 17 in 2005, the lowest point in a steep slide from a high of 31 in 1991.
The 17 major armed conflicts listed in 2005 are all situations known well to CJP faculty, staff, students and alumni. We have people working in 16 of the 17 conflict zones listed in the report: Iraq; Afghanistan; Burma; Burundi; Uganda; Sudan’s Darfur province; Colombia; Peru; the U.S. campaign against al-Qaeda; Middle East, notably Israel, Palestine, Turkey; the Russian republic of Chechnya; Philippines; Sri Lanka; Kashmir region of India and Pakistan; Nepal.
This August, the Canadian group Project Ploughshares also reported a reduction in worldwide violence, noting that armed conflicts that cause 1,000 or more deaths in a year have fallen from a high of 44 in 1995 to 32 in 2004.
Explaining the Swedish report, Uppsala researcher Caroline Holmqvist noted that “war as a ‘continuation of politics by other means’ has been delegitimized over the past 50 years.”
Professor Mack attributed much of the decline in war deaths to the end of proxy wars fostered by the U.S. and Soviet Union and to the United Nations’ growing role in preventive diplomacy and peacemaking missions.
The cessation of armed warfare – as has happened in Rwanda, Bosnia, Liberia, Namibia, El Salvador, Mozambique, and Algeria – is only part of the task of peacebuilding. The roots of the conflict must be addressed, or the conflict will continue to fester. Those involved in the conflict must learn new ways of interacting and living with each other to stop the cycle of violence and vengeance. See the STAR stories in this issue for an insight into this.
A perusal of the “People of CJP” will reveal that CJP alumni tend to position themselves for the long haul – for dealing with the roots of problems, for nurturing conflict transformation from the ground up. It tends to be “track 2” work, which can be loosely defined as working with citizen groups to prevent or de-escalate conflict by reducing anger, fear, and tension and by improving communication and mutual understanding.
But CJP alumni and faculty also know that working with “track 1” - the level of leader-to-leader - is also important. The story of Hizkias Assefa’s role as a cease-fire mediator in Sudan shows track-1 work in all its messiness… and with all its potential.
Finally there are times that CJP feels helpless. Not hopeless. Helpless, at least in the immediate moment. See “Mideast War Engulfs CJP Alums” to see what we mean, or read about Tom Fox’s death.
Yet these tragedies and setbacks only rekindle our determination to continue sowing the seeds of justice and peace as widely as possible. Which is widely indeed, as you will see from the map and the pages of Peacebuilder.
Ruth H. Zimmerman and Howard Zehr
Co-Directors
Center for Justice and Peacebuilding