MODULE 3: A CULTURE OF PEACE

Soc Sci 2: Peace and Development

1st Semester SY 2020-2021

The United Nations, in an effort to prevent more violence and conflict, developed a program
known as the Declaration of a Culture of Peace in 1998. It was created in preparation for the International
Year of Peace in 2000, which aims to celebrate and encourage a culture of peace.

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in September 11, 2001 kind of ruined everything,
but points on them for trying.

A culture of peace is a “set of values, attitudes, traditions, modes of behavior, and ways of life
that reflect and inspire:

 Respect for life and for all human rights;

 Rejection of violence in all its forms and commitment to the prevention of violent conflict
by tackling their root causes through dialogue and negotiation;
 Commitment to full participation in the process of equitably meeting the needs of present
and future generations;
 Promotion of the equal rights and opportunities of women and men;
 Recognition of the right of everyone to freedom of expression, opinion and information;
 Devotion to principles of freedom, justice, democracy, tolerance, solidarity, cooperation,
pluralism, cultural diversity, dialogue and understanding between nation, between
ethnic, religious, cultural and other groups, and between individuals.”

In other words, respect others, see things from their point of view, and don’t be mean.

The UN highlighted 8 action areas for a culture of peace. According to the UN, for peace and non-
violence to prevail, we need to:

 Foster a culture of peace through education

 Promote sustainable economic and social development
 Promote respect for all human rights
 Ensure equality between women and men
 Foster democratic participation
 Advance understanding, tolerance, and solidarity
 Support participatory communication and the free flow of information and knowledge
 Promote international peace and security.

You can learn more from this link: http://www.peacedayphilly.org/wp-

content/uploads/2012/11/Culture-of-Peace-Action-Areas.pdf

The culture of peace encompasses three continuums, Social, Political, and Economic continuums,
three aspects of society that, before positive peace must be achieved, must first be achieved in each of
these three categories. Holistically, they form the requirements of what needs to be done to achieve
lasting peace. Castro and Galace (2010) further subdivides the promotion of a culture of peace into six
dimensions and operative values.
Social Continuum

 Personal & Family Integrity – Spirituality

 Intercultural Understandings & Solidarity – Dialogue

Political Continuum

 Human Rights and Democracy – Justice

  Disarmament & Cessation of Hostilities – Active Non-violence

Economic Continuum

 Poverty Eradication – Compassion

 Environmental Protection – Stewardship

Personal & Family Integrity – Spirituality

Keeping the self and the family whole is a foundation of a peace culture. When the family is kept
whole, they impart values, traditions, and faith to the individual. At the same time, keeping the family
whole gives a sense of spirituality to the individual.

More than just the values and experiences found in family members, it is also important to
integrate the learnings of the community outside of the family. In an increasingly connected world, family
values are becoming less involved in the growing and experiences of the individual. An idea that
encompasses unity beyond the family, therefore, is needed for peace and development.

Spirituality, while sometimes interchanged with religion, is different and distinct from it. A person
can be spiritual without being religious. Religion is an organized system of faith, with rituals and traditions
that help define the culture of the religion. Spirituality, on the other hand, are belief and practices that
are immaterial and concern more than just the self. At the practical level, it is seen in the way an individual
expresses concern for other beings and nature. Religion is thus one way to achieve spirituality, but not
the only way.

Being able to feel a sense of unity with other people and the world is an important step to
attaining peace.

Intercultural Understandings and Solidarity – Dialogue

Wars happen for many reasons, one of which is a lack of understanding of the other person’s
cultures and traditions. Even within countries, the diversity of culture is more than likely to cause
problems between groups. Refusal to understand the culture of others is a sure way of generating conflict.
Racism in the United States, for example, is the result of white Americans feeling superiority over blacks.

In this world of globalization where one can learn the culture of a tribe at the other side of the
world with a click, the ability to have a fair and unbiased view of cultures is more important than ever.
Culture as we see it on the internet are usually just surface level parts of a whole. There is more to the
Philippines than just bayanihan and fiestas, after all. Thus it is important to look at culture not just from
the perspective of one’s own culture, but also from the view of other cultures. How would other cultures
view your own culture? No culture is superior to another, and helping to understand the how’s and why’s
of one culture may also help to understand why one’s own culture is the way it is.

Multicultural education needs to start at an early age, to help young children see the culture of
others as well as their own. They are much more susceptible to learning and internalizing negative
stereotypes of another culture, thus it is important to eliminate these biases early, and enable children to
learn that every culture is equal.
 Except for cultures that advocate human sacrifices, those need to go extinct, living only in the
history books.

Human Rights and Democracy – Justice

Human rights are the basic laws and freedoms belong to every person in the world. They aspire
to protect everyone from legal, political, and social abuses. These rights cannot be taken away from an
individual, and are universal in their protection.

Needless to say, these rights are very important to attaining and preserving peace. These rights
are unfortunately not observed by everyone. Some may even argue that certain groups don’t have these
rights. In Australia, the native Aboriginal people were once hunted for sport.

The United Nations are the current body that observes and enforces these rights. Their Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was drafted and signed in 1948 as a standard of achievements for all peoples
and all nations. The UDHR essentially lists the rights that each person has, no exceptions. The observation
and education of these rights is the most basic step towards the elimination of conflict and war. (Aside
from, you know, just not going to war)

The UN listed 30 rights, called articles, on what are considered to be the basic rights of every
individual.

Article 1 Right to Equality

Article 2 Freedom from Discrimination
Article 3 Right to Life, Liberty, Personal Security
Article 4 Freedom from Slavery
Article 5 Freedom from Torture and Degrading Treatment
Article 6 Right to Recognition as a Person before the Law
Article 7 Right to Equality before the Law
Article 8 Right to Remedy by Competent Tribunal
Article 9 Freedom from Arbitrary Arrest and Exile
Article 10 Right to Fair Public Hearing
Article 11 Right to be Considered Innocent until Proven Guilty
Article 12 Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
Article 13 Right to Free Movement in and out of the Country
Article 14 Right to Asylum in other Countries from Persecution
Article 15 Right to a Nationality and the Freedom to Change It
Article 16 Right to Marriage and Family
Article 17 Right to Own Property
Article 18 Freedom of Belief and Religion
Article 19 Freedom of Opinion and Information
Article 20 Right of Peaceful Assembly and Association
Article 21 Right to Participate in Government and in Free Elections
Article 22 Right to Social Security
Article 23 Right to Desirable Work and to Join Trade Unions
Article 24 Right to Rest and Leisure
Article 25 Right to Adequate Living Standard
Article 26 Right to Education
Article 27 Right to Participate in the Cultural Life of Community
Article 28 Right to a Social Order that Articulates this Document
Article 29 Community Duties Essential to Free and Full Development
Article 30 Freedom from State or Personal Interference in the above Rights

Disarmament & Cessation of Hostilities – Active Non-violence

Speaking of war, we learned in the previous module of Gandhi’s non-violent revolution against
British rule. He got assassinated for it, but he was ultimately successful in liberating India from its
colonizers.

Gandhi’s movement sparked other non-violent revolutions around the world, from Martin Luther
King’s own civil rights movement in the US, the Dalai Lama was inspired by him. The People Power
Revolution, while not influenced directly by Gandhi, still draws parallels to its non-violent means of
protest.

Disarmament is the act of reducing the size and strength of a country’s military. Just from that
very definition, it is an act that is impossible in the current time. Though peace movements and advocates
might talk about the need for everyone to lay down their arms, the fact remains that it is difficult to
convince a country to disarm themselves unless they were forced to, such as what happened to Japan at
the end of World War II. Despite the agreement on the ban on nuclear weapons, the US and Russia still
hold thousands in their arsenal.

Active non-violence (ahimsa in Hinduism and Buddhism) is the refusal to harm other humans, or
any other living thing, in the belief that all life is sacred. We turn back to the Golden Rule, do not do unto
others what you do not want others do unto you, as this saying is both morally correct and highly practical.
For one, with less of a country’s budget going into the military, it means more of the budget goes into
health and education, things that increase a nation’s productivity.

Poverty Eradication - Compassion

One of the most common reasons for conflict is lack of resources. When the ancestors of humanity
encountered the Neanderthals, the two species came into conflict over hunting spots and land.

(They also got into relationships and had children, but that’s another story.)
 The study of economics is the study of how society uses these scarce resources. While economics
is traditionally studied with the intent of making the production of goods and services as efficient as
possible, a branch of economics known as peace economics have evolved to study the use of resources in
order to prevent conflict as much as possible.

To this end, the first step is the eradication of poverty. Poverty is the lack of resources for day to
day living, and is a major source of conflict all over the world. Historically, the French Revolution and the
Russian Revolution were caused because the serfs and peasants of France and Russia have had enough of
the oppression of the nobility and overthrew them. In the modern day, most crimes and thievery are due
to simply having no other way to live. Unable to find jobs or having a family to support, people turn to
crime to survive.

Thus, poverty eradication is a major goal on the road to peace. Karl Marx and Adam Smith are
such thinkers, who are the fathers of communism and economics, respectively. Their books, Das Kapital
and The Wealth of Nations, talk about the distribution of resources and ultimately the functions of each
member of society.

Marx, or rather his followers, believed that everyone should be given an equal amount of
resources. His famous slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, is a
reflection on what his vision of communism should become. The interpretation of this statement will be
left as an activity. Smith, on the other hand, believe that a free market will allow goods and services to be
priced at the amount that is equal to what the people demand and what the business owners can provide.

The ultimate goal of these two thinkers, however, is to distribute the resources of a country
effectively and efficient, such that everyone is given their due, and inequality is reduced to a minimum (or
abolished entirely, in Marx’s case).

Later in this course, the topic of inequality will be discussed again, specifically on the causes of
inequality, globalization, and how to mitigate it.

Environmental Protection – Stewardship

Remember what we discussed before on spirituality? The feeling of unity with everything? That
also applies here.

As with poverty above, the lack of resources is a major source of conflict. At the same time, the
coveting of resources has also led to wars, particularly in the Middle East where oil is plentiful.

The main problem with protecting the environment is that everyone thinks everyone else should
do it. The Tragedy of the Commons, they say, where because a resource is free and abundant, everyone
wants to take the lion’s share of it, causing the resource to dwindle without the people really changing
their behavior. This eventually causes the resource to be depleted, while everyone else points their fingers
on whose fault it is.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change was a conference of world leaders on how to
combat the rising problem of global warning and environmental destruction. In particular, it aimed to
reduce the increase of world temperatures from 2°C to less than 1.5°C. This is significant because even a
very small increase in the world temperatures will raise the sea levels drastically. For island countries like
the Marshall Islands, this means doom.
 This Wendover Productions documentary on the Marshall Islands sheds more light on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J06af5xHD0

What does protecting the environment have to do with peace? On the practical side, caring for
the environment ensures that we have enough resources for everyone, preventing conflict from a lack of
resources. We only have one earth, and we should do our best to take care of it.

Conclusion

So what is a culture of peace? It is a culture of respect and learning, of giving rather than taking,
of helping rather than harming.

In other words, respect others, see things from their point of view, and don’t be mean.

Activity

Pick ONE (1) question from the list and answer it as thoroughly you can.

1. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” What does this quote from
Karl Marx mean?
2. What is the importance of human rights to development?
3. How does freedom of information lead to peace?
4. Give another example on why it is practical to practice non-violence.
5. Globalization in an instrument of peace, but it also hinders peace. Why?

References

Navarro-Castro, L., & Nario-Galace, J. (2010). Peace education: a pathway to the culture of peace.
Center for Peace Education, Miriam College.
Walsh, F., & Pryce, J. (2003). The spiritual dimension of family life. Normal family processes:
Growing diversity and complexity, 337-372.

Internet Sources

https://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/13/the-age-gap-in-religion-around-the-world/

https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights-human/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/people/reference/mahatma-gandhi-changed-political-
protest/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Paris-Agreement-2015/Negotiations-and-agreement

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/

https://www.adamsmith.org/the-wealth-of-nations

https://www.peacepalacelibrary.nl/research-guides/war-and-peace/disarmament/