Managing Peace

A long-standing yearning is that peace will prevail in the world, in a region, a country or a locality; however, achieving it is complex and laborious. There are those, as the Royal Spanish Academy, that consider peace as an “harmonious relationship between people, without confrontations or conflicts,” while others, as we do, think that conflict is not the opposite of peace. Even more, social experience shows us that in every society, in any human group, all types of conflict are developed and it is not worth denying or repressing them, neither unilaterally imposing the will of the most powerful; rather the challenge is addressing them as constructively as possible.

Peace is not something magical and a few times is spontaneously generated. Most of the times peace is managed, starting from explicitly stating the interests, needs, or emotions the parts in conflict have for then addressing possible solutions. These solutions will not be sustainable if, by imposition, they crystallize injustices or seriously affect dignity or self-esteem of one or various parties. A paradigmatic case that today generates tremendous instability and antagonisms is the unbridled concentration of global wealth in the hands of 1% of the planet’s population. Here it is a systemic factor that inhibits peace and has global and local scope. Its removal and the consequent application of those resources to goals implying fair and sustainable developments will certainly help achieving social and geopolitical peace. Indeed, there is a variety of other peace inhibiting factors and it is each society’s task to try removing them. The work of Opinion Sur is adding a modest contribution to that goal.

Greetings

The Editors