International Year 2000: peace is in our hands
International Year 2000: peace is in our hands
The United Nations General Assembly has decided to voice the universal aspiration for peace, an end to war and to all kinds of violence spawned by injustice and oppression. On UNESCO’s initiative it has proclaimed the year 2000 as the International Year for the Culture of Peace.
This decision also salutes the participation of “civil society”. Today a host of individuals and movements are breaking down traditional political frameworks through their contributions to community life, in different ways and on different scales, on their own doorstep or at the planetary level. As French political scientist Zaki Laïdi and Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells point out in this issue, they are either shortcircuiting or joining forces with governments which have hitherto called the tune.
Peace is in our hands. It is within reach of all of us, if we can show the spirit and perseverance of some of the people portrayed in this Focus section: a Chinese mother who opened her country’s first school for autistic children ; a man who makes videos to combat violence in Bogotá’s biggest shantytown; a scientist who has opened his laboratory to the slum-dwellers of Rio de Janeiro to help them build houses for themselves.
On a wider stage, a number of movements inspired by these same humanist values have devised original methods of achieving their goals. Among them are the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel Third World debt and the Sant’Egidio Christian Community in Rome, which has acted as a mediator in several wars.
Meanwhile, the struggle of Indian farmers against genetically modified organisms shows that a movement originating in civil society may be motivated by the best intentions without fully belonging to this culture of peace.