Opinion

Opinion – Jorge Abrahão: What does peace mean in such a violent world?

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At the end of World War II, the need to create spaces for dialogue to prevent the outbreak of new wars was clear – and the UN was created in a world with 2.5 billion people. Today, 75 years later, in a world with 7.7 billion inhabitants, it is evident that the methods of that time no longer cope with the complexity of humanity’s current challenges and need to be redesigned.

The Paris Peace Forum recognizes and values ​​multilateralism, while at the same time proposing to discuss what needs to be improved in order to build consensus and debate its main challenges.

Without improving the dialogue and the way of deliberating globally, it will be difficult to move forward. The Peace Forum, by stimulating the meeting between Nations, draws attention to the weaknesses of the current process, and proposes to rethink ways of building consensus to face global challenges.

Increasing the participation of countries in decision-making and incorporating the participation of civil society are some of the elements that can increase the legitimacy of decisions, surpassing the current anachronistic security council and its five countries with the right to veto. That, failing to move forward on the important issues of the moment, they reduce their performance to a poor repertoire of individual or regional geopolitical interests, leaving issues of common interest in the background.

In the opening session of the 2021 Forum, Kamala Harris, US Vice President, focused his speech on the inequality evidenced in the pandemic, citing the existence of more than one billion people in the world who suffer from hunger and the more than 50% who do not have access to the internet, concluding that we can no longer accept these facts.

Emmanuel Macron, President of France, drew attention to the need for cooperation between States, companies, NGOs and social movements, in addition to the universal commitment to combat the pandemic, with the climate, biodiversity and defense of freedoms and democracy.

This was the opening tone, making clear the general satisfaction with the US return to the multilateralism arena, after the withdrawal during the Trump era.

In current times, the concept of peace goes far beyond avoiding wars, and the need to go deeper into issues that can lead to imbalances that give rise to violence in society is evident.

In this sense, reducing inequalities, which generate enormous suffering and social embarrassment, is advancing in peace. Confronting climate change, which affects everyone, but the vulnerable more strongly, is also advancing towards peace.

Improving democracy, improving digital governance, fighting fake news and threats to the press, is to promote a culture of peace. Achieving equality between men and women is peace. These were some of the topics discussed at the Forum.

If we do not work on these issues, we are in danger of repeating history and maintaining current imbalances at a critical time, when we are reaching the limits of the planet.

Our inability: to reduce inequalities between countries and within countries; to face the climate crisis that is having an ever-increasing impact on people’s lives; to diminish the influence of companies on democracy, which reduces trust in politics and institutions; and of reducing the impact of social networks on electoral processes with misinformation and fake news, it has generated risks of authoritarian governments, which benefit from democracy to reach power and, once there, attack it.

These are issues that we must pay attention to if we believe that overcoming this moment involves building a culture of peace that also incorporates solidarity, justice and coexistence with differences.

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