Before we all dive into the peacebuilding field, the most important aspect we need to clarify is, what we, for ourselves, define as peace. When learning new ideas/ theories/ concepts, a common methodology we resort to, is holding onto what we know already, our founding pillars, and then adding additional information around it, to build our knowledgebase. In terms of the concept of peace, what was our first founding pillar? War. We were first acquainted with war and hence, the concept of peace followed, being the opposite of war. However, this is a very misleading approach when thinking of peace.
As Johan Galtung said, if we define peace as the opposite of war, then we are motivated to think of peace as a way of preventing war only. However, when we look at peace in this light, we get a skewed image of the bigger, whole picture. For example, looking at interventions to prevent war only would be through arms control, military recruitment laws, budgets, ammunition laws, etc, and then, it is assumed, that that conceptually would be enough to promote peace.
Another misleading understanding of peace is associating it with calmness and quietness. A huge part of the illusion of peace comes from how we use the word in the English language, or the feeling or emotion we try to convey with the word. For example, peace can be used to convey the idea of serenity, tranquility, calmness, etc. It is my opinion that calmness and quietness, as much as it is preferred by everyone, gives us the illusion of what we should define as peace. When talking of peace, or a peaceful environment, we are talking of a reality where everyones needs are being met, nobody’s human rights are being breached, there are no mechanisms of structural violence ingrained in society and justified by cultural violence, and other such injustices. However, for that to be a reality, people need to voice their opinions, they need to be able to tell their stories and ensure their needs and rights are being met. This equates to people in society making “noise” and then those who make the noise are portrayed as the disturbers of peace, when actually, they are the ones fighting to move towards peace.
On similar lines, another example inspired by Kazu Haga is the difference between non-violence and nonviolence. The former implying the negation of the concept of violence and the latter implying a concept by and of in itself. Here again, non–violence talks about what is not to be done as defined by what violence is, whereas, nonviolence talks about what are we going to do about that violence which is where the emphasis on justice, communication, peacebuilding, conflict transformation, etc, all come in.
This in my opinion is a crucial area that needs to be conceptualized and understood before we even begin talking about peacebuilding. Why, you may ask? Because these very first steps define majorly how we approach peacebuilding and what we hope to achieve from it or what we strive for with it.
