World Peace


Book Description

For as long as there has been war, there have been demands for its elimination. The quest for world peace has excited and eluded political leaders, philosophers, religious elders, activists, and artists for millennia. With war on the rise once again, we rarely reflect on what world peace might look like; much less on how it might be achieved. World Peace aims to change all that and show that world peace is possible. Because the motives, rationales, and impulses that give rise to war - the quest for survival, enrichment, solidarity, and glory - are now better satisfied through peaceful means, war is an increasingly anachronistic practice, more likely to impoverish and harm us humans than satisfy and protect us. This book shows that we already have many of the institutions and practices needed to make peace possible and sets out an agenda for building world peace. In the immediate term, it shows how steps to strengthen compliance with international law, improve collective action such as international peacekeeping and peacebuilding, better regulate the flow of arms, and hold individuals legally accountable for acts of aggression or atrocity crimes can make our world more peaceful. It also shows how in the long term, building strong and legitimate states that protect the rights and secure the livelihoods of their people, gender equal societies, and protecting the right of individuals to opt-out of wars has the potential to establish and sustain world peace. But it will only happen, if individuals organize to make it happen.




World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements


Book Description

“His ideas will help anyone who has the courage to understand that a real education must go beyond filling in circles on a standardized test form.” —Rafe Esquith, New York Times-bestselling author of Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire Can playing a game lead to world peace? If it’s John Hunter’s World Peace Game, it just might. In Hunter’s classroom, students take on the roles of presidents, tribal leaders, diplomats, and military commanders. Through battles and negotiations, standoffs and summits, they strive to resolve a sequence of many-layered, interconnected scenarios, from nuclear proliferation to tribal warfare. Now, Hunter shares inspiring stories from over thirty years of teaching the World Peace Game, revealing the principles of successful collaboration that people of any age can apply. He offers not only a forward-thinking report from the frontlines of American education, but also a generous blueprint for a world that bends toward cooperation rather than conflict. In this deeply hopeful book, a visionary educator shows us what the future of education can be. “The World Peace Game devised by fourth-grade teacher Hunter has spread from a classroom in 1978 to a documentary, a TED Talk, the Pentagon, and now finally a book, in which he describes the ways his students have solved political and ecological crises that still loom large in the world of adults . . . Hunter’s optimism is infectious.” —Publishers Weekly “Inspired, breath-of-fresh-air reading.” — Kirkus Reviews “Hunter proves the value of ‘slow teaching’ in this important, fascinating, highly readable resource for educators and parents alike.” — Booklist







The Moral Architecture of World Peace


Book Description

In November 1998, eight recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize gathered for two days at the University of Virginia. Journalist and peace activist Cobban draws from both speeches and conversations to present a vision of global peace. Among the participants were the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Northern Ireland peace activist Betty Williams, East Timorese independence advocate Jose Ramos-Horta, and a representative of Burmese democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




The Promise of World Peace


Book Description

The 30th Anniversary Special Edition of The Promise of World Peace, prepared for publication by the Baha'i Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland, College Park, compiles the original 1985 message from the Universal House of Justice to the peoples of the world in ten languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swahili. The statement calls attention to the value of establishing agreement on principles from which people of goodwill can devise practical solutions to the barriers to peace."




Code of Peace


Book Description

Is it possible, in our world of differing beliefs and diverse cultures, to find an ethical framework that can guide actual international relations? In Code of Peace, Dorothy V. Jones sets forth her surprising answer to this perplexing question: Not only is a consensus on ethical principles possible, but it has already been achieved. Jones focuses on the progressive development of international law to disclose an underlying code of ethics that enjoys broad support in the world community. Unlike studies that concentrate on what others think that states ought to do, Code of Peace analyzes what states themselves consider proper behavior. Using history as both narrative and argument, Jones shows how the existing ethical code has evolved cumulatively since World War I from a complex interplay between theory and practice. More than an abstract treatise or a merely technical analysis, Jones's study is grounded in the circumstances of war and peace in this century. Treaties and agreements, she argues, are forging a consensus on such principles as human rights, self-determination, and cooperation between states. Jones shows how leaders and representatives of nations, drawing on a rich heritage of philosophical thoughts as well as on their own experiences in a violent world of self-interested conflict, have shaped their thought to the taming of that world in the cause of peace. That is the striking thing about this code: states whose relations are marked by so frequent a recourse to war that they can fairly be called "warlords" have created and pledged themselves to a code of peace. The implications of Code of Peace for establishing a normative foundation for peace are profound. Historically sound and timely, impeccably researched and elegantly written, the book will be of immediate and lasting value to anyone concerned with the stability of the modern world.




Prayer for World Peace


Book Description

A universal message of hope and serenity among all of Earth's inhabitants Jane Goodall is a world-renowned naturalist who brings her passion and her quest for understanding between all the Earth’s creatures to the fore in this beautiful and affecting prayer for world peace. She asks us all to rise above our dogmas, to bring a spirit of generosity to the living world around us, to pray for justice and for those who are suffering. Illustrated with rich and colorful artwork, this is prayer that’s both personal and universal and one that will speak to people of all ages from all backgrounds.




Pathways for Peace


Book Description

Violent conflicts today are complex and increasingly protracted, involving more nonstate groups and regional and international actors. It is estimated that by 2030—the horizon set by the international community for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals—more than half of the world’s poor will be living in countries affected by high levels of violence. Information and communication technology, population movements, and climate change are also creating shared risks that must be managed at both national and international levels. Pathways for Peace is a joint United Nations†“World Bank Group study that originates from the conviction that the international community’s attention must urgently be refocused on prevention. A scaled-up system for preventive action would save between US$5 billion and US$70 billion per year, which could be reinvested in reducing poverty and improving the well-being of populations. The study aims to improve the way in which domestic development processes interact with security, diplomacy, mediation, and other efforts to prevent conflicts from becoming violent. It stresses the importance of grievances related to exclusion—from access to power, natural resources, security and justice, for example—that are at the root of many violent conflicts today. Based on a review of cases in which prevention has been successful, the study makes recommendations for countries facing emerging risks of violent conflict as well as for the international community. Development policies and programs must be a core part of preventive efforts; when risks are high or building up, inclusive solutions through dialogue, adapted macroeconomic policies, institutional reform, and redistributive policies are required. Inclusion is key, and preventive action needs to adopt a more people-centered approach that includes mainstreaming citizen engagement. Enhancing the participation of women and youth in decision making is fundamental to sustaining peace, as well as long-term policies to address the aspirations of women and young people.




Zones of Peace in the Third World


Book Description

International relations scholars have traditionally focused on explaining war rather than peace, resulting in the concept of peace being understudied and underemphasized. This book in contrast explains the maintenance of extensive periods of international peace in two regions of the Third World: South America and West Africa. The term "zones of peace" has been used in reference to the Cold War (1945–1989) and to separate peace among the democracies developed progressively throughout the last two hundred years. In this book, however, Kacowicz moves beyond a European focus to consider the theoretical and historical significance of the term in the context of the Third World. He argues that there have been periods of "long peace," so that zones of peace, characterized by the absence of interstate war, have developed in South America since the late 1880s and among the West African countries since their independence in the early 1960s. Kacowicz explores how regional peace is maintained in South America and West Africa through the distilling of alternative explanations, including Realism, Liberalism, and satisfaction with the territorial status quo. He also examines how peace can be maintained among states that usually do not sustain Western democratic regimes by offering a critique (and improvement) upon the "democratic peace" theory. Peace can indeed be maintained, he asserts, among nondemocratic states, although there is a direct relationship between the quality of the regional peace and the type of political regimes sustained by the countries in any given region.




Sex and World Peace


Book Description

Sex and World Peace is a groundbreaking demonstration that the security of women is a vital factor in the occurrence of conflict and war, unsettling a wide range of assumptions in political and security discourse. Harnessing an immense amount of data, it relates microlevel violence against women and macrolevel state peacefulness across global settings. The authors find that the treatment of women informs human interaction at all levels of society. They call attention to the adverse effects on state security of sex-based inequities such as sex ratios favoring males, the practice of polygamy, and lax enforcement of national laws protecting women. Their research challenges conventional definitions of security and democracy and common understandings of the causes of world events. The book considers a range of ways to remedy these injustices, including top-down and bottom-up approaches to redressing violence against women and the lack of sex parity in decision-making. Advocating a state responsibility to protect women, the authors campaign against women’s systemic insecurity, which threatens the security of all. Sex and World Peace has been a go-to book for instructors, advocates, and policy makers since its publication in 2012. Since then, there have been major changes in world affairs, including the #MeToo movement, as well as advances in both theoretical and empirical literature surrounding the subject. This second edition, which adds coauthors Rose McDermott and Donna Lee Bowen alongside Valerie M. Hudson and Mary Caprioli, revises and updates the book for a new generation. The book retains its foundational overview of the relationship between women’s oppression and war, enhanced by fresh data and new material covering recent developments for global women’s rights and analysis of additional examples of gender and conflict throughout the world.