essay on peace movement

December 2, 2021

Peace Is More Than War’s Absence, and New Research Explains How to Build It

A new project measures ways to promote positive social relations among groups

By Peter T. Coleman , Allegra Chen-Carrel & Vincent Hans Michael Stueber

PeopleImages/Getty Images

Today, the misery of war is all too striking in places such as Syria, Yemen, Tigray, Myanmar and Ukraine. It can come as a surprise to learn that there are scores of sustainably peaceful societies around the world, ranging from indigenous people in the Xingu River Basin in Brazil to countries in the European Union. Learning from these societies, and identifying key drivers of harmony, is a vital process that can help promote world peace.

Unfortunately, our current ability to find these peaceful mechanisms is woefully inadequate. The Global Peace Index (GPI) and its complement the Positive Peace Index (PPI) rank 163 nations annually and are currently the leading measures of peacefulness. The GPI, launched in 2007 by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), was designed to measure negative peace , or the absence of violence, destructive conflict, and war. But peace is more than not fighting. The PPI, launched in 2009, was supposed to recognize this and track positive peace , or the promotion of peacefulness through positive interactions like civility, cooperation and care.

Yet the PPI still has many serious drawbacks. To begin with, it continues to emphasize negative peace, despite its name. The components of the PPI were selected and are weighted based on existing national indicators that showed the “strongest correlation with the GPI,” suggesting they are in effect mostly an extension of the GPI. For example, the PPI currently includes measures of factors such as group grievances, dissemination of false information, hostility to foreigners, and bribes.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

The index also lacks an empirical understanding of positive peace. The PPI report claims that it focuses on “positive aspects that create the conditions for a society to flourish.” However, there is little indication of how these aspects were derived (other than their relationships with the GPI). For example, access to the internet is currently a heavily weighted indicator in the PPI. But peace existed long before the internet, so is the number of people who can go online really a valid measure of harmony?

The PPI has a strong probusiness bias, too. Its 2021 report posits that positive peace “is a cross-cutting facilitator of progress, making it easier for businesses to sell.” A prior analysis of the PPI found that almost half the indicators were directly related to the idea of a “Peace Industry,” with less of a focus on factors found to be central to positive peace such as gender inclusiveness, equity and harmony between identity groups.

A big problem is that the index is limited to a top-down, national-level approach. The PPI’s reliance on national-level metrics masks critical differences in community-level peacefulness within nations, and these provide a much more nuanced picture of societal peace . Aggregating peace data at the national level, such as focusing on overall levels of inequality rather than on disparities along specific group divides, can hide negative repercussions of the status quo for minority communities.

To fix these deficiencies, we and our colleagues have been developing an alternative approach under the umbrella of the Sustaining Peace Project . Our effort has various components , and these can provide a way to solve the problems in the current indices. Here are some of the elements:

Evidence-based factors that measure positive and negative peace. The peace project began with a comprehensive review of the empirical studies on peaceful societies, which resulted in identifying 72 variables associated with sustaining peace. Next, we conducted an analysis of ethnographic and case study data comparing “peace systems,” or clusters of societies that maintain peace with one another, with nonpeace systems. This allowed us to identify and measure a set of eight core drivers of peace. These include the prevalence of an overarching social identity among neighboring groups and societies; their interconnections such as through trade or intermarriage; the degree to which they are interdependent upon one another in terms of ecological, economic or security concerns; the extent to which their norms and core values support peace or war; the role that rituals, symbols and ceremonies play in either uniting or dividing societies; the degree to which superordinate institutions exist that span neighboring communities; whether intergroup mechanisms for conflict management and resolution exist; and the presence of political leadership for peace versus war.

A core theory of sustaining peace . We have also worked with a broad group of peace, conflict and sustainability scholars to conceptualize how these many variables operate as a complex system by mapping their relationships in a causal loop diagram and then mathematically modeling their core dynamics This has allowed us to gain a comprehensive understanding of how different constellations of factors can combine to affect the probabilities of sustaining peace.

Bottom-up and top-down assessments . Currently, the Sustaining Peace Project is applying techniques such as natural language processing and machine learning to study markers of peace and conflict speech in the news media. Our preliminary research suggests that linguistic features may be able to distinguish between more and less peaceful societies. These methods offer the potential for new metrics that can be used for more granular analyses than national surveys.

We have also been working with local researchers from peaceful societies to conduct interviews and focus groups to better understand the in situ dynamics they believe contribute to sustaining peace in their communities. For example in Mauritius , a highly multiethnic society that is today one of the most peaceful nations in Africa, we learned of the particular importance of factors like formally addressing legacies of slavery and indentured servitude, taboos against proselytizing outsiders about one’s religion, and conscious efforts by journalists to avoid divisive and inflammatory language in their reporting.

Today, global indices drive funding and program decisions that impact countless lives, making it critical to accurately measure what contributes to socially just, safe and thriving societies. These indices are widely reported in news outlets around the globe, and heads of state often reference them for their own purposes. For example, in 2017 , Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, though he and his country were mired in corruption allegations, referenced his country’s positive increase on the GPI by stating, “Receiving such high praise from an institute that once named this country the most violent in the world is extremely significant.” Although a 2019 report on funding for peace-related projects shows an encouraging shift towards supporting positive peace and building resilient societies, many of these projects are really more about preventing harm, such as grants for bolstering national security and enhancing the rule of law.

The Sustaining Peace Project, in contrast, includes metrics for both positive and negative peace, is enhanced by local community expertise, and is conceptually coherent and based on empirical findings. It encourages policy makers and researchers to refocus attention and resources on initiatives that actually promote harmony, social health and positive reciprocity between groups. It moves away from indices that rank entire countries and instead focuses on identifying factors that, through their interaction, bolster or reduce the likelihood of sustaining peace. It is a holistic perspective.  

Tracking peacefulness across the globe is a highly challenging endeavor. But there is great potential in cooperation between peaceful communities, researchers and policy makers to produce better methods and metrics. Measuring peace is simply too important to get only half-right. 

Essay on Peace

500 words essay peace.

Peace is the path we take for bringing growth and prosperity to society. If we do not have peace and harmony, achieving political strength, economic stability and cultural growth will be impossible. Moreover, before we transmit the notion of peace to others, it is vital for us to possess peace within. It is not a certain individual’s responsibility to maintain peace but everyone’s duty. Thus, an essay on peace will throw some light on the same topic.

Importance of Peace

History has been proof of the thousands of war which have taken place in all periods at different levels between nations. Thus, we learned that peace played an important role in ending these wars or even preventing some of them.

In fact, if you take a look at all religious scriptures and ceremonies, you will realize that all of them teach peace. They mostly advocate eliminating war and maintaining harmony. In other words, all of them hold out a sacred commitment to peace.

It is after the thousands of destructive wars that humans realized the importance of peace. Earth needs peace in order to survive. This applies to every angle including wars, pollution , natural disasters and more.

When peace and harmony are maintained, things will continue to run smoothly without any delay. Moreover, it can be a saviour for many who do not wish to engage in any disrupting activities or more.

In other words, while war destroys and disrupts, peace builds and strengthens as well as restores. Moreover, peace is personal which helps us achieve security and tranquillity and avoid anxiety and chaos to make our lives better.

How to Maintain Peace

There are many ways in which we can maintain peace at different levels. To begin with humankind, it is essential to maintain equality, security and justice to maintain the political order of any nation.

Further, we must promote the advancement of technology and science which will ultimately benefit all of humankind and maintain the welfare of people. In addition, introducing a global economic system will help eliminate divergence, mistrust and regional imbalance.

It is also essential to encourage ethics that promote ecological prosperity and incorporate solutions to resolve the environmental crisis. This will in turn share success and fulfil the responsibility of individuals to end historical prejudices.

Similarly, we must also adopt a mental and spiritual ideology that embodies a helpful attitude to spread harmony. We must also recognize diversity and integration for expressing emotion to enhance our friendship with everyone from different cultures.

Finally, it must be everyone’s noble mission to promote peace by expressing its contribution to the long-lasting well-being factor of everyone’s lives. Thus, we must all try our level best to maintain peace and harmony.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Peace

To sum it up, peace is essential to control the evils which damage our society. It is obvious that we will keep facing crises on many levels but we can manage them better with the help of peace. Moreover, peace is vital for humankind to survive and strive for a better future.

FAQ of Essay on Peace

Question 1: What is the importance of peace?

Answer 1: Peace is the way that helps us prevent inequity and violence. It is no less than a golden ticket to enter a new and bright future for mankind. Moreover, everyone plays an essential role in this so that everybody can get a more equal and peaceful world.

Question 2: What exactly is peace?

Answer 2: Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in which there is no hostility and violence. In social terms, we use it commonly to refer to a lack of conflict, such as war. Thus, it is freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Are peaceful protests more effective than violent ones?

• Search Search

As unrest erupts across the world after the killing of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer, even some peaceful protests have descended into chaos, calling into question the efficacy of violence when it comes to spurring social change. 

“There’s certainly more evidence that peaceful protests are more successful because they build a wider coalition,” says Gordana Rabrenovic , associate professor of sociology and director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict. 

Gordana Rabrenovic is an associate professor of sociology and director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Who’s responsible for inciting this violence—the protesters or the police—is another debate entirely. But, Rabrenovic says, one thing is clear: in order for a movement to gain support and inspire lasting change, peace and consensus are essential.

“Violence can scare away your potential allies. You need the people on the sidelines to say, ‘This is my issue, too,’” she says. “For the people who say, ‘All lives matter,’ that’s true, but not all lives are in danger. You need to convince them.”

Still, it’s not always easy, or even feasible, for groups of oppressed people to take this moral high road, Rabrenovic says. 

“The system doesn’t work for them,” she says. “They may think the only way to deal with the system is to destroy it.” 

Black people in the U.S. are not only three times more likely to be killed by police than white people, but they’re also less likely to be armed than white people during these interactions with police. 

For Black people who experience violence at the hands of the people and institutions that are supposed to protect them, the question becomes: “If they use violence, why shouldn’t we use violence?” Rabrenovic says. “They know that violence works, otherwise they wouldn’t use it.” 

Exactly how that violence manifests is another matter entirely, but, Rabrenovic says, one thing is almost always true: violence is the spark that ignites the movement.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s is one example. The overall ethos of Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement was peace. But the catalyst was violence—hundreds of years of lynchings, lawful inequality, and oppression. 

In fact, peace was strategically used during the civil rights movement to emphasize the violence Black people in the U.S. endured. Protesters were intentionally peaceful to prevent any question of who started the violence and whether it was justified. The results were inarguable visuals of peaceful Black protesters being attacked by dogs and beaten by police.

“Even peaceful civil rights movements are violent because it’s violence that motivates people to take action,” Rabrenovic says. Translating a violent history into a peaceful future is the hard part. 

“Violence might be the quickest way to achieve your goals, but in order to sustain your victory, you would need to use coercion and have some kind of apparatus in place that keeps people in constant fear of punishment,” she says. “And nobody wants to live like that.” 

While the George Floyd protests are a good starting point, the protests alone aren’t enough to sustain an entire movement, Rabrenovic says. “We need to give people other tools.”  

Voting is one example. “We need to vote,” she says. “The government is us.” 

One could argue that for Black and other disenfranchised people in the U.S., voting seems futile . But Rabrenovic counters, “If voting didn’t work, there wouldn’t be voter suppression.”

“You can’t suppress everyone,” she says. “That’s why it’s important to build a wide coalition, to bring in as many people as you can.”    

We can’t keep living with only ourselves in mind. We need each other, she says. And protests are only the beginning. 

For media inquiries , please contact [email protected] .

Editor's Picks

From bryan johnson to dave pascoe, has the longevity movement gone too far, .ngn-magazine__shapes {fill: var(--wp--custom--color--emphasize, #000) } .ngn-magazine__arrow {fill: var(--wp--custom--color--accent, #cf2b28) } ngn magazine dominique biron turned weaknesses into strengths on her way to the ncaa track and field championships, why is cracker barrel rebranding keeping nostalgia and becoming ‘relevant’ again is a challenge, marketing expert says, .ngn-magazine__shapes {fill: var(--wp--custom--color--emphasize, #000) } .ngn-magazine__arrow {fill: var(--wp--custom--color--accent, #cf2b28) } ngn magazine your podcast needs a theme song. good dog licensing can help, bicultural staff can better boost chances of success in international negotiations, northeastern researcher explains, featured stories, what’s the history of artificial intelligence new york times chief data scientist explains the evolution of ai during northeastern lecture, is gut health linked to mental health we know they’re connected but how remains a mystery, northeastern researcher says, .ngn-magazine__shapes {fill: var(--wp--custom--color--emphasize, #000) } .ngn-magazine__arrow {fill: var(--wp--custom--color--accent, #cf2b28) } ngn magazine why james corden is looking to use tax breaks to build on barbie’s success and woo more hollywood filming to britain,  what are ‘silent salons’ and why are these quiet appointments the latest trend in hair care.

Recent Stories

Black Lives Matter is a revolutionary peace movement

Professor and Chair of Pan-African Studies, California State University, Los Angeles

Disclosure statement

Melina Abdullah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

View all partners

This article is the first in the Black Lives Matter Everywhere series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the Sydney Democracy Network and the Sydney Peace Foundation . To mark the awarding of the 2017 Sydney Peace Prize to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the authors reflect on the roots of and responses to a movement that has reignited a global conversation about racism. The 2017 Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 2 ( tickets here ).

Black Lives Matter is working for a world where Black lives are no longer intentionally and systematically targeted for demise. – Black Lives Matter mission statement

On July 13, 2013, hundreds of thousands of people – mostly Black people – flooded the streets of US cities following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

For weeks, we had been glued to our televisions as police and “friends” of Zimmerman tried to disparage the high schooler – to make the victim some kind of predator. But we had seen his face. We saw his eyes dance, his brown skin glisten, and his smile warm hearts. He was a child, a lovely, beautiful boy-child who looked like our own children. And Zimmerman had no right to steal his life, regardless of what a court says.

So, the verdict came down, and we erupted. Our spirits filled with the righteous indignation of generations past. Transgenerational memories came rushing back of Emmett Till .

Trayvon was born to Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, but he was ours – all of ours.

Black bodies filled the streets, disrupting traffic, inhibiting White shoppers and making the normalcy of White American middle-class existence less certain.

As our ranks swelled and our presence became more intentionally targeted at White epicentres of escapism (including tourist attractions like Hollywood and Highland), we began to understand the power of disruption. In disrupting these spaces, we refused to allow our collective pain to be confined to Black communities. Others may not see their own children in the face of Trayvon, but they would not be permitted to dismiss us.

On the third day of protest, in the midst of our first freeway shutdown, a text message found its way to a few of us. It read like words from the Underground Railroad: “Meet at St. Elmo Village at 9pm” (a Black artist community in mid-city Los Angeles).

The message was from Patrisse Cullors , a young, powerful, emerging organiser in Black Los Angeles whose work had centred on ending sheriffs’ violence. Her text was passed onto other organisers by Thandisizwe Chimurenga , a Black independent journalist who had been most recently active in the struggle for justice for Oscar Grant .

As the summer night settled in and demonstrators scurried from highways, dodging the police who came in with sticks, beanbag guns and tear gas, the mamas collected our young children, walked home and prepared to go back out that same night.

A movement, not a moment

I was late to the meeting. By the time I arrived, a few dozen folks, including about ten of my spirit-children/students were closing out discussions of what it means to build “a movement, not a moment”.

Many of us had been involved in what Brenda Stevenson terms “episodic organising”, or demands for justice that are limited to a person or a moment in time. But what we came to embrace that night is that the murder of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant before him, Devin Brown before him, Tyisha Miller before him, Margaret Mitchell before her … and so many others, was not accidental.

Perhaps the names and specifics of each case unfolded independently, but the system of American policing was designed to produce these outcomes. The system is brutal, murderous and violent. Only by transforming the way that we vision justice can we realise peace.

So, we committed to building a new peace movement – one that was driven by the way that Trayvon had embedded his spirit in our collective souls and opened itself to the chorus of voices whose bodies had been stolen by the state before and after him.

All of this intuitive work had already happened prior to our gathering in the courtyard, and remains hugely important to the building of this movement. For a movement to grow, it must be organic, flowing from the hearts of the people.

Every transformative struggle for justice has been rooted in heart work. Attempts to insert causes into communities ring as false and ultimately fall flat.

The work of organisers, with the most effective organisers being part of the communities that they seek to organise, is to tap in to the souls of the community, hear the collective outcries and distil the issues and cast them in the context of a larger vision. They work to harness the energy as the movement builds and seize the time as communities make demands and arrive at solutions.

Civil rights, Black Power and Black Lives Matter organiser Greg Akili says that organising is “getting people to move on their own behalf and in their own interest”.

As the intuitive work was happening in the streets, Patrisse was assembling with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi to organise us, visioning beyond the moment and strategising how to build a new iteration of Black freedom struggle.

No justice, no peace

Our mission emerged organically. It was summed up in the words penned by Alicia: “Black lives matter”. We have a right to our lives. Our children have a right to live and walk freely, without being hunted by the state, agents of the state, or wannabe agents of the state.

This is not debatable. There are no two ways to see it. This is one of those very basic, fundamental truths.

Getting to freedom and getting to justice, however, is a much more challenging charge. We are heirs of struggles that are also black-and-white: calls to end chattel slavery and lynching, demands for basic civil rights and voting rights, and the constant call for the end to police brutality.

While a hawk’s-eye view of these demands offers very obvious conclusions, the complication becomes the entrenchment of systems that produce unjust outcomes.

In How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America , Manning Marable offers that “the system exists not to develop, but to underdevelop Black people”, with each advancement for White society coming at the expense of Black freedom.

So, while there are clearly just outcomes, like ending slavery and lynching, ushering in civil rights and voting rights, ending police brutality and now demanding an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people, such demands require a fundamental transformation of a system that preys on and benefits from Black suffering.

While Black freedom movements, including Black Lives Matter, are clearly working for what is just, the disruption that they pose to current systems is often cast by that system as problematic, even violent.

Because systems are designed to protect themselves, they utilise their vast powers to contort the messages of those who seek to challenge them. They use the laws that they created, the media that they control and the social structures that they erected to present those who challenge them as essentially “enemy combatants”.

Examples of this date back to the hefty bounty put on the head of Harriet Tubman , the bombing of the office of Ida B. Wells , the 40 times that Martin Luther King was imprisoned, the assassinations of King and Malcolm X and the targeting, imprisonment and exile of members of the Black Panther Party, including Huey P. Newton and Assata Shakur . Today, Black Lives Matter organisers and other Black freedom fighters are the new targets.

The call for Black lives to matter and for an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people (and by extension all people) is fundamentally a call for peace. And peace must not be confused with the momentary quiet of submission. The kind of peace sought by Black Lives Matter results from justice.

Peace cannot be compelled or forced. It is earned when the people benefit from and see themselves as a part of the societies in which they are housed. Peace is not a tactic of struggle, it is an outcome.

As we struggle for a world where Black lives are no longer intentionally and systematically targeted for demise, it means that the systems that prey on us must be not simply reformed but re-imagined and transformed.

Peace calls for an end to incarceration and criminalisation in favour of real public safety solutions. Peace calls for the meeting of basic human needs, including safe housing, clean water, healthy food, and medical care. Peace calls for quality education as a universal right and the ability to engage fully in the arts, culture and spirituality.

Peace requires revolutionary vision – and Black Lives Matter is a peace movement.

You can read the other articles in the series here .

• Sydney Peace Prize
• Trayvon Martin
• Black Lives Matter
• Democracy Futures
• Democracy Futures: Inequality and Democracy
• Democracy Futures: Indigenous Politics
• Black Lives Matter Everywhere
• Global perspectives

Data Manager

Research Support Officer

Director, Social Policy

Head, School of Psychology

Senior Research Fellow - Women's Health Services

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas

2009, Journal of Church and State

Related Papers

Fatima Sakhawat

Carlo Ruzza

Javier Alcalde

Rorate-Verlag

Historical peace research evaluates social, political, economic etc. constellations in a specific historical context with regard to their potential for conflict or peace. As a 'peace ethics', it does so with the help of general moral criteria, e. g. justice, in order to arrive at judgments that are as consistent as possible. This makes it clear that peace is far more than just a political idea; peace is rather a moral (teleological) concept, formulating a (timeless) demand, which in turn can become itself the subject of political-practical reflection.

Exploring Betty A. Reardon’s Perspective on Peace Education: Looking Back, Looking Forward

dale snauwaert

This introduction seeks to outline an interpretation of the overarching goal of Reardon’s body of work: the articulation and justification of a fundamental para- digm shift in worldview—a shift from a paradigm of war toward a paradigm of peace as the primary means of transforming society, including local, national, international, and global social structures (Reardon 1989, 1994b; Reardon/ Snauwaert 2015a, b). Her conception and practice of peace education can best be understood within the framework of this paradigm shift.

Oliver P Richmond

Abstract The notion of the post-liberal peace indicates the creation of something new and contextual out of social, political, economic, cultural, and historical experiences of peace in local, transnational, and international terms. It is an attempt to escape liberal enclosure and distant administration, to take a stake in a much broader discussion of peace where collective action and mobilisation occurs inclusively rather than as a dictat from a distant international community.

International Handbook of Peace and Reconciliation

Abram Trosky

Beginning with a discussion of ideological framing in peace and conflict studies and international relations, this chapter presents alternative frameworks for examining discourse in international ethics, compares results from its implementation in eight regions on peace-related items on the Personal and Institutional Rights to Aggression and Peace Survey (PAIRTAPS), and discusses their possible normative implications. The introductory section considers historical and contemporary obstacles to peace and prescriptive and critical reactions. We sketch the contours of a practical pacifism through which social psychological peace research can give both international law and global public opinion their due. Applying agentic and grounded theory approaches influenced by Johan Galtung’s conception of positive peace and sociocognitive psychologist Albert Bandura’s theory of moral engagement, we demonstrate how surveying international attitudes toward peace is one way of making the descriptive medium the prescriptive message.

Non violent

Diamond Johnny

This paper argues that nonviolent action has proven successful throughout history. According to a 2011 study by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, nonviolent resistance activities were more than twice as successful as their violent equivalents between 1900 and 2006. Chenoweth and Stephan concluded that nonviolence is a more successful strategy for social change than violence (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011). These initiatives have had extraordinary achievements, even in Iran, the Palestinian Territories, the Philippines, and Burma, attracting tremendous backing from citizens who renounce their support for regimes. The methodology used for this research will be sourced from Gene Sharpe's 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action and The Success of Nonviolent Civil Resistance by Erica Chenoweth and Stephan, among other sources.

The Global Review of …

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare

Daniel Liechty

This special issue had humble beginnings. As a matter of fact, odds were stacked against it, especially given that the original plan for this topic was for a panel discussion based on submitted work to the 2009 Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) Conference. However, not one abstract was received for this topic. I found this quite curious and alarming since at that time this country was engaged in two wars, there was continuous media coverage around “terrorist” activities, and we were experiencing frequent changes to our daily routines based on new security measures. Anti-war protestors were growing silent. It has been said that “sometimes no action is an action.” The lack of peace talk, or discussion of ending conflict and war was shocking—at least to me. I am old enough to remember Vietnam. I remember the protests and hearing plans from older “boys” to cross to Canada. I remember the activism on college campuses across the county from students organizing and shouting t...

RELATED PAPERS

First transfers in Cuba of imported frozen embryos (IVF-TETF) (Atena Editora)

Atena Editora

Yaser Alewe

Diego Gavini

Revista Latinoamericana de Derecho Social

juan manuel ortega maldonado

Journal of Clinical Microbiology

Jose Da Silveira

买约克大学毕业证 york毕业证本科学历续费收据原版一模一样

Marine pollution bulletin

Alejandro Rodriguez Gallego

Muhasebe ve Finansman Dergisi

serhat YANIK

Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics

Christoph Reuter

Dairy Science & Technology

Ulrich Kulozik

Dimitri Corpakis

International Journal of Medical Sciences And Clinical Research

Komiljon IMINOV

La Dawla Raziniyya. Súbditos y soberanos en la Taifa de Santa María de Oriente, siglo V.H/XI.dC.

JULIAN MIGUEL ORTEGA ORTEGA

American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine

Daniel Dilling

Brazilian Journal Of Pain

nicole almeida

原版复制英国斯旺西大学 swansea毕业证硕士学历托业成绩单原版一模一样

Canadian Journal of Education

David N Boote

Sports Medicine

Ukachukwu Abaraogu

Grenze International Journal of Engineering and Technology GIJET

Angela Libutti

Tissue Engineering

Industrial Marketing Management

Robert Cooper

Anais 11º Encontro Escravidão e Liberdade no Brasil Meridional

LUANA TEIXEIRA

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field: A Joint BI/CRQ Discussion BI and the Conflict Resolution Quarterly invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

Follow BI and the Hyper-Polarization Discussion on BI's New Substack Newsletter .

Hyper-Polarization, COVID, Racism, and the Constructive Conflict Initiative Read about (and contribute to) the  Constructive Conflict Initiative  and its associated Blog —our effort to assemble what we collectively know about how to move beyond our hyperpolarized politics and start solving society's problems. 

By Michelle Maiese

September 2003  

What it Means to Build a Lasting Peace

It should be noted at the outset that there are two distinct ways to understand peacebuilding. According the United Nations (UN) document An Agenda for Peace [1], peacebuilding consists of a wide range of activities associated with capacity building, reconciliation , and societal transformation . Peacebuilding is a long-term process that occurs after violent conflict has slowed down or come to a halt. Thus, it is the phase of the peace process that takes place after peacemaking and peacekeeping.

Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs), on the other hand, understand peacebuilding as an umbrella concept that encompasses not only long-term transformative efforts, but also peacemaking and peacekeeping . In this view, peacebuilding includes early warning and response efforts, violence prevention , advocacy work, civilian and military peacekeeping , military intervention , humanitarian assistance , ceasefire agreements , and the establishment of peace zones.

In the interests of keeping these essays a reasonable length, this essay primarily focuses on the narrower use of the term "peacebuilding."  For more information about other phases of the peace process, readers should refer to the knowledge base essays about violence prevention , peacemaking and peacekeeping , as well as the essay on peace processes  which is what we use as our "umbrella" term.

In this narrower sense, peacebuilding is a process that facilitates the establishment of durable peace and tries to prevent the recurrence of violence by addressing root causes and effects of conflict through reconciliation , institution building, and political as well as economic transformation.[1] This consists of a set of physical, social, and structural initiatives that are often an integral part of post-conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation.

It is generally agreed that the central task of peacebuilding is to create positive peace, a "stable social equilibrium in which the surfacing of new disputes does not escalate into violence and war."[2] Sustainable peace is characterized by the absence of physical and structural violence , the elimination of discrimination, and self-sustainability.[3] Moving towards this sort of environment goes beyond problem solving or conflict management. Peacebuilding initiatives try to fix the core problems that underlie the conflict and change the patterns of interaction of the involved parties.[4] They aim to move a given population from a condition of extreme vulnerability and dependency to one of self-sufficiency and well-being.[5]

To further understand the notion of peacebuilding, many contrast it with the more traditional strategies of peacemaking and peacekeeping. Peacemaking is the diplomatic effort to end the violence between the conflicting parties, move them towards nonviolent dialogue, and eventually reach a peace agreement. Peacekeeping , on the other hand, is a third-party intervention (often, but not always done by military forces) to assist parties in transitioning from violent conflict to peace by separating the fighting parties and keeping them apart. These peacekeeping operations not only provide security, but also facilitate other non-military initiatives.[6]

Some draw a distinction between post-conflict peacebuilding and long-term peacebuilding. Post-conflict peacebuilding is connected to peacekeeping, and often involves demobilization and reintegration programs, as well as immediate reconstruction needs.[7] Meeting immediate needs and handling crises is no doubt crucial. But while peacemaking and peacekeeping processes are an important part of peace transitions, they are not enough in and of themselves to meet longer-term needs and build a lasting peace.

Long-term peacebuilding techniques are designed to fill this gap, and to address the underlying substantive issues that brought about conflict. Various transformation techniques aim to move parties away from confrontation and violence, and towards political and economic participation, peaceful relationships, and social harmony.[8]

This longer-term perspective is crucial to future violence prevention and the promotion of a more peaceful future. Thinking about the future involves articulating desirable structural, systemic, and relationship goals. These might include sustainable economic development, self-sufficiency, equitable social structures that meet human needs, and building positive relationships.[9]

Peacebuilding measures also aim to prevent conflict from reemerging. Through the creation of mechanisms that enhance cooperation and dialogue among different identity groups , these measures can help parties manage their conflict of interests through peaceful means. This might include building institutions that provide procedures and mechanisms for effectively handling and resolving conflict.[10] For example, societies can build fair courts, capacities for labor negotiation, systems of civil society reconciliation, and a stable electoral process.[11] Such designing of new dispute resolution systems is an important part of creating a lasting peace.

In short, parties must replace the spiral of violence and destruction with a spiral of peace and development, and create an environment conducive to self-sustaining and durable peace.[12] The creation of such an environment has three central dimensions: addressing the underlying causes of conflict, repairing damaged relationships and dealing with psychological trauma at the individual level. Each of these dimensions relies on different strategies and techniques.

The Structural Dimension: Addressing Root Causes

The structural dimension of peacebuilding focuses on the social conditions that foster violent conflict. Many note that stable peace must be built on social, economic, and political foundations that serve the needs of the populace.[13] In many cases, crises arise out of systemic roots. These root causes are typically complex, but include skewed land distribution, environmental degradation, and unequal political representation.[14] If these social problems are not addressed, there can be no lasting peace.

Thus, in order to establish durable peace, parties must analyze the structural causes of the conflict and initiate social structural change. The promotion of substantive and procedural justice through structural means typically involves institution building and the strengthening of civil society .

Avenues of political and economic transformation include social structural change to remedy political or economic injustice, reconstruction programs designed to help communities ravaged by conflict revitalize their economies, and the institution of effective and legitimate restorative justice systems.[15] Peacebuilding initiatives aim to promote nonviolent mechanisms that eliminate violence, foster structures that meet basic human needs , and maximize public participation .[16]

To provide fundamental services to its citizens, a state needs strong executive, legislative, and judicial institutions.[17] Many point to democratization as a key way to create these sorts of peace-enhancing structures. Democratization seeks to establish legitimate and stable political institutions and civil liberties that allow for meaningful competition for political power and broad participation in the selection of leaders and policies.[18] It is important for governments to adhere to principles of transparency and predictability, and for laws to be adopted through an open and public process.[19] For the purpose of post-conflict peacebuilding, the democratization process should be part of a comprehensive project to rebuild society's institutions.

Political structural changes focus on political development, state building , and the establishment of effective government institutions. This often involves election reform, judicial reform, power-sharing initiatives, and constitutional reform. It also includes building political parties, creating institutions that provide procedures and mechanisms for effectively handling and resolving conflict, and establishing mechanisms to monitor and protect human rights . Such institution building and infrastructure development typically requires the dismantling, strengthening, or reformation of old institutions in order to make them more effective.

It is crucial to establish and maintain rule of law, and to implement rules and procedures that constrain the powers of all parties and hold them accountable for their actions.[20] This can help to ease tension, create stability, and lessen the likelihood of further conflict. For example, an independent judiciary can serve as a forum for the peaceful resolution of disputes and post-war grievances.[21]

In addition, societies need a system of criminal justice that deters and punishes banditry and acts of violence.[22] Fair police mechanisms must be established and government officials and members of the police force must be trained to observe basic rights in the execution of their duties.[23] In addition, legislation protecting minorities and laws securing gender equality should be advanced. Courts and police forces must be free of corruption and discrimination.

But structural change can also be economic. Many note that economic development is integral to preventing future conflict and avoiding a relapse into violence.[24] Economic factors that put societies at risk include lack of employment opportunities, food scarcity, and lack of access to natural resources or land. A variety of social structural changes aim to eliminate the structural violence that arises out of a society's economic system. These economic and social reforms include economic development programs, health care assistance, land reform, social safety nets, and programs to promote agricultural productivity.[25]

Economic peacebuilding targets both the micro- and macro-level and aims to create economic opportunities and ensure that the basic needs of the population are met. On the microeconomic level, societies should establish micro-credit institutions to increase economic activity and investment at the local level, promote inter-communal trade and an equitable distribution of land, and expand school enrollment and job training.[26] On the macroeconomic level, the post-conflict government should be assisted in its efforts to secure the economic foundations and infrastructure necessary for a transition to peace.[27]

The Relational Dimension

A second integral part of building peace is reducing the effects of war-related hostility through the repair and transformation of damaged relationships. The relational dimension of peacebuilding centers on reconciliation , forgiveness , trust building , and future imagining . It seeks to minimize poorly functioning communication and maximize mutual understanding.[28]

Many believe that reconciliation is one of the most effective and durable ways to transform relationships and prevent destructive conflicts.[29] The essence of reconciliation is the voluntary initiative of the conflicting parties to acknowledge their responsibility and guilt. Parties reflect upon their own role and behavior in the conflict, and acknowledge and accept responsibility for the part they have played. As parties share their experiences, they learn new perspectives and change their perception of their "enemies." There is recognition of the difficulties faced by the opposing side and of their legitimate grievances, and a sense of empathy begins to develop. Each side expresses sincere regret and remorse, and is prepared to apologize for what has transpired. The parties make a commitment to let go of anger , and to refrain from repeating the injury. Finally, there is a sincere effort to redress past grievances and compensate for the damage done. This process often relies on interactive negotiation and allows the parties to enter into a new mutually enriching relationship.[30]

One of the essential requirements for the transformation of conflicts is effective communication and negotiation at both the elite and grassroots levels . Through both high- and community-level dialogues , parties can increase their awareness of their own role in the conflict and develop a more accurate perception of both their own and the other group's identity .[31] As each group shares its unique history, traditions, and culture, the parties may come to understand each other better. International exchange programs and problem-solving workshops are two techniques that can help to change perceptions, build trust , open communication , and increase empathy .[32] For example, over the course of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the main antagonists have sometimes been able to build trust through meeting outside their areas , not for formal negotiations, but simply to better understand each other.[33]

If these sorts of bridge-building communication systems are in place, relations between the parties can improve and any peace agreements they reach will more likely be self-sustaining.[34] (The Israeli-Palestinian situation illustrates that there are no guarantees, however.) Various mass communication and education measures, such as peace radio and TV , peace-education projects , and conflict-resolution training , can help parties to reach such agreements.[35] And dialogue between people of various ethnicities or opposing groups can lead to deepened understanding and help to change the demonic image of the enemy group.[36] It can also help parties to overcome grief, fear, and mistrust and enhance their sense of security.

A crucial component of such dialogue is future imaging , whereby parties form a vision of the commonly shared future they are trying to build. Conflicting parties often have more in common in terms of their visions of the future than they do in terms of their shared and violent past.[37] The thought is that if they know where they are trying to go, it will be easier to get there.

Another way for the parties to build a future together is to pursue joint projects that are unrelated to the conflict's core issues and center on shared interests. This can benefit the parties' relationship. Leaders who project a clear and hopeful vision of the future and the ways and means to get there can play a crucial role here.

But in addition to looking towards the future, parties must deal with their painful past. Reconciliation not only envisions a common, connected future, but also recognizes the need to redress past wrongdoing.[38] If the parties are to renew their relationship and build an interdependent future, what has happened must be exposed and then forgiven .

Indeed, a crucial part of peacebuilding is addressing past wrongdoing while at the same time promoting healing and rule of law.[39] Part of repairing damaged relationships is responding to past human rights violations and genocide through the establishment of truth commissions , fact-finding missions, and war crimes tribunals .[40] These processes attempt to deal with the complex legal and emotional issues associated with human rights abuses and ensure that justice is served. It is commonly thought that past injustice must be recognized, and the perpetrators punished if parties wish to achieve reconciliation.

However, many note that the retributive justice advanced by Western legal systems often ignores the needs of victims and exacerbates wounds.[41] Many note that to advance healing between the conflicting parties, justice must be more reparative in focus. Central to restorative justice is its future-orientation and its emphasis on the relationship between victims and offenders. It seeks to engage both victims and offenders in dialogue and make things right by identifying their needs and obligations.[42] Having community-based restorative justice processes in place can help to build a sustainable peace.

The Personal Dimension

The personal dimension of peacebuilding centers on desired changes at the individual level. If individuals are not able to undergo a process of healing, there will be broader social, political, and economic repercussions.[43] The destructive effects of social conflict must be minimized, and its potential for personal growth must be maximized.[44] Reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts must prioritize treating mental health problems and integrate these efforts into peace plans and rehabilitation efforts.

In traumatic situations, a person is rendered powerless and faces the threat of death and injury. Traumatic events might include a serious threat or harm to one's family or friends, sudden destruction of one's home or community, and a threat to one's own physical being.[45] Such events overwhelm an individual's coping resources, making it difficult for the individual to function effectively in society.[46] Typical emotional effects include depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. After prolonged and extensive trauma, a person is often left with intense feelings that negatively influence his/her psychological well-being. After an experience of violence, an individual is likely to feel vulnerable, helpless, and out of control in a world that is unpredictable.[47]

Building peace requires attention to these psychological and emotional layers of the conflict. The social fabric that has been destroyed by war must be repaired, and trauma must be dealt with on the national, community, and individual levels.[48] At the national level, parties can accomplish widespread personal healing through truth and reconciliation commissions that seek to uncover the truth and deal with perpetrators. At the community level, parties can pay tribute to the suffering of the past through various rituals or ceremonies, or build memorials to commemorate the pain and suffering that has been endured.[49] Strong family units that can rebuild community structures and moral environments are also crucial.

At the individual level, one-on-one counseling has obvious limitations when large numbers of people have been traumatized and there are insufficient resources to address their needs. Peacebuilding initiatives must therefore provide support for mental health infrastructure and ensure that mental health professionals receive adequate training. Mental health programs should be adapted to suit the local context, and draw from traditional and communal practice and customs wherever possible.[50] Participating in counseling and dialogue can help individuals to develop coping mechanisms and to rebuild their trust in others.[51]

If it is taken that psychology drives individuals' attitudes and behaviors, then new emphasis must be placed on understanding the social psychology of conflict and its consequences. If ignored, certain victims of past violence are at risk for becoming perpetrators of future violence.[52] Victim empowerment and support can help to break this cycle.

Peacebuilding Agents

Peacebuilding measures should integrate civil society in all efforts and include all levels of society in the post-conflict strategy. All society members, from those in elite leadership positions, to religious leaders, to those at the grassroots level, have a role to play in building a lasting peace. Many apply John Paul Lederach's model of hierarchical intervention levels to make sense of the various levels at which peacebuilding efforts occur.[53]

Because peace-building measures involve all levels of society and target all aspects of the state structure, they require a wide variety of agents for their implementation. These agents advance peace-building efforts by addressing functional and emotional dimensions in specified target areas, including civil society and legal institutions.[54] While external agents can facilitate and support peacebuilding, ultimately it must be driven by internal forces. It cannot be imposed from the outside.

Various internal actors play an integral role in peacebuilding and reconstruction efforts. The government of the affected country is not only the object of peacebuilding, but also the subject. While peacebuilding aims to transform various government structures, the government typically oversees and engages in this reconstruction process. A variety of the community specialists, including lawyers, economists, scholars, educators, and teachers, contribute their expertise to help carry out peacebuilding projects. Finally, a society's religious networks can play an important role in establishing social and moral norms.[55]

Nevertheless, outside parties typically play a crucial role in advancing such peacebuilding efforts. Few peacebuilding plans work unless regional neighbors and other significant international actors support peace through economic development aid and humanitarian relief .[56] At the request of the affected country, international organizations can intervene at the government level to transform established structures.[57] They not only provide monetary support to post-conflict governments, but also assist in the restoration of financial and political institutions. Because their efforts carry the legitimacy of the international community, they can be quite effective.

Various institutions provide the necessary funding for peacebuilding projects. While international institutions are the largest donors, private foundations contribute a great deal through project-based financing.[58] In addition, regional organizations often help to both fund and implement peacebuilding strategies. Finally, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) often carry out small-scale projects to strengthen countries at the grassroots level. Not only traditional NGOs but also the business and academic community and various grassroots organizations work to further these peace-building efforts. All of the groups help to address "the limits imposed on governmental action by limited resources, lack of consensus, or insufficient political will."[59]

Some suggest that governments, NGOs, and intergovernmental agencies need to create categories of funding related to conflict transformation and peacebuilding.[60] Funds are often difficult to secure when they are intended to finance preventive action. And middle-range initiatives, infrastructure building, and grassroots projects do not typically attract significant funding, even though these sorts of projects may have the greatest potential to sustain long-term conflict transformation.[61] Those providing resources for peacebuilding initiatives must look to fill these gaps. In addition, external actors must think through the broader ramifications of their programs.[62] They must ensure that funds are used to advance genuine peacebuilding initiatives rather than be swallowed up by corrupt leaders or channeled into armed conflict.

But as already noted, higher-order peace, connected to improving local capacities, is not possible simply through third-party intervention.[63] And while top-down approaches are important, peace must also be built from the bottom up. Many top-down agreements collapse because the ground below has not been prepared. Top-down approaches must therefore be buttressed, and relationships built.

Thus, an important task in sustaining peace is to build a peace constituency within the conflict setting. Middle-range actors form the core of a peace constituency. They are more flexible than top-level leaders, and less vulnerable in terms of daily survival than those at the grassroots level.[64] Middle-range actors who strive to build bridges to their counterparts across the lines of conflict are the ones best positioned to sustain conflict transformation. This is because they have an understanding of the nuances of the conflict setting, as well as access to the elite leadership .

Many believe that the greatest resource for sustaining peace in the long term is always rooted in the local people and their culture.[65] Parties should strive to understand the cultural dimension of conflict, and identify the mechanisms for handling conflict that exist within that cultural setting. Building on cultural resources and utilizing local mechanisms for handling disputes can be quite effective in resolving conflicts and transforming relationships. Initiatives that incorporate citizen-based peacebuilding include community peace projects in schools and villages, local peace commissions and problem-solving workshops , and a variety of other grassroots initiatives .

Effective peacebuilding also requires public-private partnerships in addressing conflict and greater coordination among the various actors.[66] International governmental organizations, national governments, bilateral donors, and international and local NGOs need to coordinate to ensure that every dollar invested in peacebuilding is spent wisely.[67] To accomplish this, advanced planning and intervention coordination is needed.

There are various ways to attempt to coordinate peace-building efforts. One way is to develop a peace inventory to keep track of which agents are doing various peace-building activities. A second is to develop clearer channels of communication and more points of contact between the elite and middle ranges. In addition, a coordination committee should be instituted so that agreements reached at the top level are actually capable of being implemented.[68] A third way to better coordinate peace-building efforts is to create peace-donor conferences that bring together representatives from humanitarian organizations, NGOs, and the concerned governments. It is often noted that "peacebuilding would greatly benefit from cross-fertilization of ideas and expertise and the bringing together of people working in relief, development, conflict resolution, arms control, diplomacy, and peacekeeping."[69] Lastly, there should be efforts to link internal and external actors. Any external initiatives must also enhance the capacity of internal resources to build peace-enhancing structures that support reconciliation efforts throughout a society.[70] In other words, the international role must be designed to fit each case.

[1] Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. An Agenda for Peace. New York: United Nations 1995 .

[1a] SAIS, "The Conflict Management Toolkit: Approaches," The Conflict Management Program, Johns Hopkins University [available at: http://www.sais-jhu.edu/resources/middle-east-studies/conflict-management-toolkit

[2] Henning Haugerudbraaten, "Peacebuilding: Six Dimensions and Two Concepts," Institute For Security Studies. [available at: http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/ASR/7No6/Peacebuilding.html ]

[3] Luc Reychler, "From Conflict to Sustainable Peacebuilding: Concepts and Analytical Tools," in Peacebuilding: A Field Guide , Luc Reychler and Thania Paffenholz, eds. (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2001), 12.

[4] Reychler, 12.

[5] John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies . (Washington, D.C., United States Institute of Peace, 1997), 75.

[6] SAIS, [available at: http://www.sais-jhu.edu/resources/middle-east-studies/conflict-management-toolkit ]

[7] Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis. "Building Peace: Challenges and Strategies After Civil War," The World Bank Group. [available at: http://www.chs.ubc.ca/srilanka/PDFs/Building%20peace--challenges%20and%20strategies.pdf ] 3.

[8] Doyle and Sambanis, 2

[9] Lederach, 77.

[11] Doyle and Sambanis, 5.

[13] Haugerudbraaten

[14] Haugerudbraaten

[16] Lederach, 83.

[19] Neil J. Kritz, "The Rule of Law in the Post-Conflict Phase: Building a Stable Peace," in Managing Global Chaos: Sources or and Responses to International Conflict , eds. Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osler Hampson with Pamela Aall. (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996), 593.

[20] Kritz, 588.

[21] Kritz, 591.

[22] Kritz, 591.

[25] Michael Lund, "A Toolbox for Responding to Conflicts and Building Peace," In Peacebuilding: A Field Guide , Luc Reychler and Thania Paffenholz, eds. (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Reinner Publishers, Inc., 2001), 18.

[27] These issues are discussed in detail in the set of essays on development in this knowledge base.

[28] Lederach, 82.

[29] Hizkias Assefa, "Reconciliation," in Peacebuilding: A Field Guide , Luc Reychler and Thania Paffenholz, eds. (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Reinner Publishers, Inc., 2001), 342.

[30] Assefa, 340.

[33] Kathleen Stephens, "Building Peace in Deeply Rooted Conflicts: Exploring New Ideas to Shape the Future" INCORE, 1997.

[34] Reychler, 13.

[35] Lund, 18.

[37] Lederach, 77.

[38] Lederach, 31.

[39] Howard Zehr, "Restorative Justice," In Peacebuilding: A Field Guide , Luc Reychler and Thania Paffenholz, eds. (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Reinner Publishers, Inc., 2001), 330.

[41] Zehr, 330.

[42] Zehr, 331.

[44] Lederach, 82.

[45] Hugo van der Merwe and Tracy Vienings, "Coping with Trauma," in Peacebuilding: A Field Guide, Luc Reychler and Thania Paffenholz, eds. (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Reinner Publishers, Inc., 2001), 343.

[46] van der Merwe, 343.

[47] van der Merwe, 345.

[48] van der Merwe, 343.

[49] van der Merwe, 344.

[51] van der Merwe, 347.

[52] van der Merwe, 344.

[53] John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, Chapter 4.

[56] Doyle and Sambanis, 18.

[59] Stephens.

[60] Lederach, 89.

[61] Lederach, 92.

[62] Lederach, 91.

[63] Doyle and Sambanis, 25.

[64] Lederach, 94.

[65] Lederach, 94.

[66] Stephens.

[67] Doyle and Sambanis, 23.

[68] Lederach, 100.

[69] Lederach, 101.

[70] Lederach, 103.

Use the following to cite this article: Maiese, Michelle. "Peacebuilding." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: September 2003 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/peacebuilding >.

Additional Resources

The intractable conflict challenge.

Our inability to constructively handle intractable conflict is the most serious, and the most neglected, problem facing humanity. Solving today's tough problems depends upon finding better ways of dealing with these conflicts.   More...

Selected Recent BI Posts Including Hyper-Polarization Posts

• Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Roles - Part 4 -- The last in a four-part series of MPP roles looking at those who help balance power so that everyone in society is treated fairly, and those who try to defend democracy from those who would destroy it.
• Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of May 19, 2024 -- Another in our weekly set of links from readers, our colleagues, and others with important ideas for our field.
• Crisis, Contradiction, Certainty, and Contempt -- Columbia Professor Peter Coleman, an expert on intractable conflict, reflects on the intractable conflict occurring on his own campus, suggesting "ways out" that would be better for everyone.

Get the Newsletter Check Out Our Quick Start Guide

Educators Consider a low-cost BI-based custom text .

Constructive Conflict Initiative

Join Us in calling for a dramatic expansion of efforts to limit the destructiveness of intractable conflict.

Things You Can Do to Help Ideas

Practical things we can all do to limit the destructive conflicts threatening our future.

Conflict Frontiers

A free, open, online seminar exploring new approaches for addressing difficult and intractable conflicts. Major topic areas include:

Scale, Complexity, & Intractability

Massively Parallel Peacebuilding

Authoritarian Populism

Constructive Confrontation

Conflict Fundamentals

An look at to the fundamental building blocks of the peace and conflict field covering both “tractable” and intractable conflict.

Beyond Intractability / CRInfo Knowledge Base

Home / Browse | Essays | Search | About

BI in Context

Links to thought-provoking articles exploring the larger, societal dimension of intractability.

Colleague Activities

Information about interesting conflict and peacebuilding efforts.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Beyond Intractability or the Conflict Information Consortium.

Beyond Intractability 

Unless otherwise noted on individual pages, all content is... Copyright © 2003-2022 The Beyond Intractability Project c/o the Conflict Information Consortium All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced without prior written permission.

Guidelines for Using Beyond Intractability resources.

Citing Beyond Intractability resources.

Photo Credits for Homepage, Sidebars, and Landing Pages

Contact Beyond Intractability    Privacy Policy The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project  Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess , Co-Directors and Editors  c/o  Conflict Information Consortium Mailing Address: Beyond Intractability, #1188, 1601 29th St. Suite 1292, Boulder CO 80301, USA Contact Form

Powered by  Drupal

production_1

• Tools and Resources
• Customer Services
• Conflict Studies
• Development
• Environment
• Foreign Policy
• Human Rights
• International Law
• Organization
• International Relations Theory
• Political Communication
• Political Economy
• Political Geography
• Political Sociology
• Politics and Sexuality and Gender
• Qualitative Political Methodology
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Security Studies
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Feminist contributions and challenges to peace studies.

• Catia Cecilia Confortini Catia Cecilia Confortini Department of Peace & Justice Studies, Wellesley College
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.47
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 30 November 2017

Many women across the world have addressed issues of peace and war since antiquity, from Christine de Pizan and Jane Addams to Betty Reardon and Elise Boulding. Although a few feminist scholars in the social sciences consider themselves “peace studies” (PS) scholars, other feminists contribute to PS by tackling peace and violence issues. PS comprises peace research, peace education, and peace activism. Feminists improve on and challenge these fields by insisting on expanded definitions of peace that suggest continuity between different forms of violence; highlighting the diverse roles played by women and other marginalized groups in violent conflicts and in peace processes; complicating our understanding of peace and violence while foregrounding gender as a social and symbolic construct involving relations of power; and proposing transformative ways of conceptualizing peace, war, and postconflict transitions. By seeing all forms of violence along a continuum, feminists transform PS’ understandings of peace. Furthermore, feminism brings women to the center of PS by making them visible as actors in both peace and conflict. Finally, feminism envisions a peaceful future that take into consideration women, other marginalized people, and gender. A number of themes continue to emerge from feminist engagement with PS, such as forgiveness, reconciliation, and transitional justice—themes situated at the intersection of peace/violence and religion.

• peace studies
• peace education
• peace activism

Introduction

Feminism improves on and challenges peace studies (PS) by (1) proposing expanded definitions of peace that suggest continuity between different forms of violence; (2) highlighting the diverse roles women, and other marginalized groups, play in violent conflicts and in peace processes; (3) complicating our understanding of peace and violence while foregrounding gender as a social and symbolic construct involving relations of power; and (4) proposing transformative ways of conceptualizing peace, war, and postconflict transitions.

There exist disagreements about what can today be rightly defined as peace studies. Some argue for a strictly “scientific” approach to the study of conflict and peace, reflecting an epistemological commitment to what is now commonly referred to as positivism in the social sciences; for others, PS is an interdisciplinary and multiepistemological field dedicated to the study of the causes of conflict and the conditions for peace; for yet others, peace education and peace action are inseparable from peace research. For the purpose of this essay, PS will be used in the more inclusive definition to intend a field of knowledge devoted to researching and understanding the causes of violence and the conditions for interpersonal, societal, and international peace. It comprises:

Peace research (PR) as a scholarly endeavor, institutionalized in research centers and institutions of higher learning.

Peace education (PE) intended as education about peace and education for peace (Weigert 1990 :312) in schools, universities, and other learning settings.

Peace activism (PA); that is, collective, organized political action for peace (see also Jenkins and Reardon 2007 ).

PS deals with subjects as varied as economic development, human rights, the environment, security, ethics, conflict resolution, militarism, peacekeeping, and global governance, among others, all subjects covered by other authors in this compendium. This essay weaves a unifying thread through the multiple areas covered by PS by focusing on feminist theoretical and historical contributions to the field as a whole.

Feminism is intended as activism or scholarship that starts from the lives of women to make visible and subvert gendered relations of power in society (Ackerly 2000 :17). Gender is used to mean a socially and symbolically constructed dichotomy based on perceived or real biological sex differences and the basis for the creation and reproduction of social relations of power; gender as a power relation shapes and naturalizes other social relations of power by describing them in mutually exclusive categories in a relation of super/subordination to one another (Confortini 2006 :341).

Feminist contributions to PS span a wider range than is covered by self-defined feminist PS. Numerous women across the world have offered reflections about peace and war since antiquity from a variety of perspectives. For example, medieval writer Christine de Pizan outlined the major causes of war, argued against its evils, and advocated for peace education and for a peace based on justice, while claiming a right to speak “as a woman and be heard” (cited in Carroll 1998 :27). Women’s writings are collected in anthologies like My Country Is the Whole World ; Women’s Political and Social Thought; Women on War ; and the Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders . Women peace activists also have produced some influential theoretical work in PS ( Jane Addams , Betty Reardon , and Elise Boulding , to name a few). Many though not all of them could be considered feminists. Though a few feminist scholars in the social sciences would define themselves as “peace studies” scholars, many more feminists contribute to PS by working on peace and violence issues.

Feminist and peace studies cut across the rigid boundaries of academic disciplines and share an ideal of interdisciplinarity; feminism and a large part of the PS community are committed to normative agendas; and many PS and feminist scholars view with skepticism what they deem a largely artificial distinction between activism and scholarship. However, although feminists have historically given significant contributions to the theory and practice of peace, PS has ignored or marginalized issues that were central to feminist concerns. On the other hand, feminists have been divided over whether engaging with PS was useful or meaningful for feminism.

This essay highlights historical and contemporary contributions and challenges of feminist theory to the PS enterprise and points to future directions for research; while doing so, it discusses the variety of feminist perspectives on the relationship between gender, feminism, and peace. The focus is on feminist work in the social sciences written in or translated into English, with the recognition that much work has come from outside the social sciences and from non-English-speaking countries. While these are important limitations, the reference list provided will help readers find sources in other languages and/or outside the social sciences.

This essay is divided in four parts, each devoted to a distinct feminist contribution to PS: the first part claims that, by seeing all forms of violence along a continuum, feminists transform PS’ understandings of peace; the second highlights how feminism brings women to the center of PS by making them visible as actors in both peace and conflict; the third part shows how feminist insights about gender add complexity to central concepts used by PS; in the fourth section feminist visions for the achievement of a peaceful future that take into consideration women, other marginalized people, and gender are described. The essay concludes with an exploration of emerging areas of interest for feminist PS.

Peace and the Continuum of Violence

In PR, peace is commonly defined as the absence of violence. For some, this means mostly an absence of interstate wars (negative peace); others see societal and interstate violence as interrelated and view injustice and oppression as forms of structural violence. They work on a vision of positive peace understood as social justice at all levels of society. Though the phrases “structural violence,” “positive peace,” and “negative peace” are often attributed to Johan Galtung , broad understandings of peace and violence had permeated the work of feminist and women writers and activists for decades before Galtung’s formulation. Distinctly feminist is an attention to patriarchy as a form of structural violence that is enacted as personal violence directed at women: thus feminism brings attention to the continuity between all forms of personal and structural violence. For Cynthia Enloe ( 2005 :281), one of feminism’s tasks is to expose, through a “feminist curiosity,” how “patriarchy – in all its varied guises, camouflaged, khaki clad, and pin-striped – is a principal cause both of the outbreak of violent societal conflicts and of the international community’s frequent failures in providing long-term resolutions to those violent conflicts.” Moreover, feminists observe that the marginalization of women from the public realm results in an unjust social order that is antithetical to peace.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, feminist peace activists in the West (unlike their male counterparts) viewed their suffrage, temperance, and abolitionist activities as inseparable from their peace work; this implied an understanding of peace as inseparable from freedom and justice for all people (Alonso 1993 ). For women in the global South, women’s liberation could not be divorced from freedom from colonial and neocolonial subjugation (for example Johnson-Odim 2009 ; Yasutake 2009 ).

In 1906 , Jane Addams drew linkages between the militarization of society and oppression based on race, class, and gender in US domestic and international policy and in other social/cultural settings. Addams proposed that peace most fundamentally entailed justice in “industrial relations” and dedication to “the cause of righteousness” and the plight of the poor: “under an enlightened industrialism peace would no longer be an absence of war, but the unfolding of world-wide processes making for the nurture of human life” (Addams et al. 2007 :131). For this, society needed to tap into and learn from women’s historical and cultural life-nurturing values (Pois 1995 ). In the 1910s, Céline Renooz found war to be one of the manifestations of patriarchal culture and androcratic rule founded on conquest (Josephson 1985 :800–1). In Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas , the prevention of wars could not be separated from the cause of women’s equality and the dismantling of patriarchy, as a hierarchical social system based on dominance and oppression (Carroll 1978 ).

More recently, Riane Eisler ( 1997 :173) proposes a distinction between “the dominator model” and “the partnership model” of human relations: in the first model, institutionalized violence, male dominance in gender relations, and hierarchical forms of social organization feed and reinforce each other; in the second model, difference is not translated into hierarchy and the degree of societal violence is low. For Eisler too, domination and violence occurring in the private realm undergird public and political violence. Betty Reardon ( 1985 :40) argues that when violence against women is sanctioned by society, it leads to the acceptability of violence against a number of others, hence to the sanctioning and acceptability of war and the preparation for war. Patriarchy is related to the institution of war also in so far as masculine ideologies pervade political decision-making sites; in so far as military expenditures divert funds from social and economic infrastructures, thus contributing to structural violence; and in so far as women are excluded from power. Hence women’s equal access to political structures could also mean more peace (Reardon 1998 ). Drawing from the documents and experiences of UN Women’s Conferences and NGO forums, Reardon ( 1993 :6) defines peace positively as “a social environment that favors the full development of the human person.” Such an ideal setting is inevitably founded on equal rights but also equal responsibilities, full participation, and recognition for nations, ethnic groups, women, men, and sexualities (Jenkins and Reardon 2007 :221). In observing instances of violence against women, Birgit Brock-Utne distinguishes between organized and unorganized personal and structural violence as well as between structural violence shortening people’s life spans and structural violence reducing quality of life. She argues that violence against women is built into and serves to perpetuate a system of structural violence that is in antithesis to peace (Brock-Utne 1985 ; 1989 ). Feminist work on personal violence against or by women exposes how direct violence is constitutive of structural violence (Confortini 2006 :350).

The vast literature on the role of women in economic development and globalization calls attention to the fact that poverty and food insecurity constitute a form of violence; it shows how women contribute to economic processes in ways unsuspected by “mainstream” economists; and it points to the links between globalization and militarism (Enloe 2007 ; see also Angela McCracken ’s essay in this compendium). Ecofeminists connect the oppression of women and of all that is feminine with the domination of nature and the exploitation of the environment (Merchant 1980 ; Shiva 1988 ). They stress the interconnectedness of all forms of life on earth, which is negated by militarism, patriarchy, and all hierarchical social arrangements, including capitalism (Hallock Johnson 1999 ; Sturgeon 2005 ). They highlight the negative impact of war and militarization on both human lives and the environment on which they depend (Detraz 2009 ). For Vandana Shiva , the marginalization of women and destruction of the environment are also indissolubly linked to colonialism and have particularly negative consequences for women in the Third World.

For feminists, the continuum of violence and the relevance of gender relations of power to peace are exposed more clearly when women are made the starting point of research. For Judy El-Bushra ( 2007 :138) “women’s experiences expand the scope of peace making itself, since their activism addresses the psychosocial, relational and spiritual as well as the political and economic dimensions of conflict transformation.” By asking “Where are the women?”, feminism brings to light all marginalized spaces, whose silence is not heard in the centers of power, yet without whom peace cannot be built.

Making Women Visible

Feminism makes visible the different roles women play in peace and conflict by (1) highlighting women’s contributions to the history of peace as both activists and theorists; (2) giving visibility and voice to women as agents (victims, perpetrators, or both) in violent settings and postconflict transitions.

Women’s Peace History

Theorizing from women’s lives is a characteristic of feminist scholarship. Feminist theorizing of peace is no exception. The history of feminist peace scholarship is in fact inextricably linked to the history of feminist peace activism, as all the themes that the women’s peace movement has developed have emerged in and informed feminist scholarship. In this sense, feminist peace activists and feminist peace scholars together have contributed to the collective feminist theorization of peace (for example Cockburn 2007 ).

Since the 1960s, women’s peace history (WPH) has contributed to the understanding of women’s roles and ideologies in peace movements in the distant or near past, making women the center point of historical analysis (Alonso 1995 ; Carroll 2005 ). Led by Berenice Carroll , peace historians were among the first to recognize the significance of gender in war and peace (Cooper, in Carroll et al. 2009 :123). Biographies of women’s peace makers, insider accounts of peace activists, and histories of women’s peace organizing have recuperated the trajectories and ideologies of important figures and movements. While often ignored by “conventional” historians, these trajectories have been varied, and they have helped ground feminist thought on peace in the lives and writings of feminist foremothers. Further, they have provided the basis on which feminist discussions about peace and its relationship to feminism have taken place, while maintaining a critical awareness that historical accounts are always works of interpretation and that the personal, social, and political positioning of the writer cannot be divorced from the text. Finally, they have presented role models, examples, and theoretical grounding for contemporary feminist peace activism.

Women’s Peace Movements

Women have participated in peace movements since antiquity. Aristophanes’ arguably proto-feminist fifth century bce comedy Lysistrata tells of Athens’ women who withhold sex from their husbands and seize the Akropolis in order to end the Peloponnesian War. In the late 1500s, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) women are said to have assembled in Seneca County (New York) to demand an end to the war between Nations (Krasniewicz 1992 :38). Though historically dubious, both Aristophanes’ play and the story of the Haudenosaunee women have become part of feminist peace lore and provided the inspiration for many feminist peace actions.

More documented has been the participation of women in secular and religious peace groups that flourished in the post-Napoleonic West. However, they were rarely allowed leadership positions and traditional “women’s issues” (such as suffrage) were often marginalized (Adams 1990 :209–10; Alonso 1993 ). Marginalization, the belief that women had unique contributions to offer to the cause of peace, and the right and responsibility to partake in that cause were among the reasons women eventually created independent peace movements (Alonso 1995 :50). In Geneva, Marie Pouchoulin-Goegg founded the Association Internationale des Femmes in 1868 and women’s peace organizations flourished throughout the continent between the 1890s and 1914 (Cooper 1987 :54). In this period, multi-issue women’s organizations, such as the International Council of Women and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, also created peace and arbitration committees (D’Itri 1999 :58 and 128). In 1844 Eugénie Niboyet had launched continental Europe’s first avowedly pacifist newspaper, La Paix de Deux Mondes (Cooper 1984 :14). In the US, women had organized in peace committees in mixed gender organizations, churches, or women’s clubs since the 1820s, but only in 1915 was the first independent women’s peace movement (the Woman’s Peace Party) founded by Jane Addams and other feminist activists (Alonso 1993 :20, 56–8; Swerdlow 1993 :30).

Though not denying that women too participated in the creation of a violent and militaristic system, these early feminists emphasized the connection between all forms of violence. They pointed out that militarism and war increased the incidence of violence against women and children; many stressed that women, by socialization, by virtue of being mothers and care givers, or by biology were more peace loving than men; most thought there was a link between the emancipation of women and the achievement of a peaceful society; most claimed for women a political voice in matters of peace and war, disillusioned about another manmade deadly war as was raging in Europe (Alonso 1995 :50). Some were pacifists (opposed to all forms of war), particularly women from Quaker or Anabaptist religious traditions. Others were opposed to some wars, but not others; socialist activists in particular opposed nationalist wars and wars of colonization, but looked more favorably on anti-imperialist and anticapitalist wars (Cooper 1987 ; Strange 1990 ; Alonso 1993 ; Meyer 1999 ; Potter 2006 ). In the US, African American women peace activists and their allies also viewed racial and economic justice domestically and abroad as indissolubly linked to peace (Blackwell 2004 ).

At the outbreak of World War I, over 1100 women from many of the countries at war and from neutral countries gathered at the International Congress of Women in The Hague, in many cases challenging their government’s efforts to prevent them from meeting. The gathering resulted in the creation of the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace. The ensuing statement affirmed that war was particularly harmful to women, rejected the notion that women could be safe during war, and called on the warring parties to put an end to the war immediately and negotiate a “peace based on principles of justice” (among which was political equality for women and men). It further outlined a series of “principles for permanent peace” ( www.wilpf.int.ch/resolutions/1915.htm , accessed Oct. 2009), which are reputed as having influenced Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points (Potter 2006 :279). Subsequently, two delegations of women visited the leaders of neutral and belligerent nations to plead for a negotiated settlement. Needless to say, the women failed to bring about the end of the war, but their organization continued and, after the war, took the name of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which is now the oldest international women’s peace organization and one of the oldest peace organizations in the world. At the end of the war, the women protested the terms of the Versailles Treaty, anticipated that resentment over the terms of the treaty would eventually lead to another war, and supported the creation of the League of Nations (Schott 1997 :78–79).

The interwar years saw increased reflection on the importance of women’s political voice for the maintenance of peace and the multiplication of women’s peace organizations in the West, despite the red baiting in the US and the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe. Decolonization started to gain attention as a peace issue, but only in the Third World did women with great difficulty start to organize, primarily against colonialism, racism, violence against women, and economic security (Jayawardena 1986 ). The Aba Riots in Eastern Nigeria in 1929 , for example, saw thousands of women protesting against colonial taxation, until they were crushed by the colonial army (Egunjobi 1994 :115); in the Orange Free State, African women mobilized against the pass laws as early as 1898 and then again with acts of nonviolent resistance in 1913 (Talbot 1980 :9; Wells 1983 :56).

Another world war again rallied many women (including feminists) to participation in the military efforts of their countries, while others worked against dictatorships, some using nonviolent means, some joining the resistance. The WILPF survived World War II and worked alongside other peace organizations against nuclear proliferation, for total and universal disarmament, and participated in the civil rights struggle in the US. It supported the creation of the United Nations and advocated for women’s equal representation in the international body (Bussey 1980 :179–90). The socialist-inspired Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) was more explicitly antiracist and anticolonialist. Born in 1945 and made up of working and middle class women in several European countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain, it thought that peace could not be achieved without profound political, social, and economic changes that included the emancipation of women and the elimination of racism and colonialism (Alonso 1993 :186–7; Blackwell 2004 ; Johnson-Odim 2009 ). Though overshadowed by peace organizations’ primarily male leadership, feminist activists were crucial to the survival of the peace movement during the 1950s, a decade characterized by general hostility toward feminist, peace, and other critical movements, especially in the US (Lynn 1992 :94; Schneidhorst 2001 :37).

In the Third World, women organized for racial equality and to put an end to colonialism. In South Africa, for example, the Federation of South African women led by Lilian Ngoyi and the African National Congress Women’s League organized against apartheid (Talbot 1980 :10; Wells 1983 :59) and often worked in cooperation with Black Sash, a predominantly white women’s organization. Started in 1955 , Black Sash outlived the apartheid regime and now focuses on socioeconomic rights ( www.blacksash.org.za , accessed Oct. 2009 ); the postapartheid South African constitution owes much to the contribution of women’s activism.

The early 1960s saw increasing feminist peace mobilizations against the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. Later in the decade, feminists rallied against the war in Vietnam, the continuing plague of colonialism, and racial discrimination. The feminist movement of the 1960s increasingly returned to a maternal rhetoric in mobilizing for peace, similar to the one employed by feminists of the 1800s and early 1900s. Many organizations claimed that, because women were involved in life-preserving and nurturing tasks, they were more peaceful or peace loving than men. Women across boundaries could empathize with each other in the shared experience (or potentiality) of motherhood, which made them concerned with the protection of each other’s children and, ultimately, the prevention of war.

This was the case of the Canadian organization Voice of Women (VOW) and the US Women Strike for Peace (WSP), both founded in the early 1960s to protest arms proliferation, nuclear bomb tests, and their consequences for children (Early 2009 ). Women Strike for Peace became hugely successful for a time, as it presented an alternative to the WILPF, of which many feminists rejected the hierarchical structure and the anticommunist position (Cockburn 2007 :135). As a result, WSP never constituted itself into a formal organization, rather operating as a horizontal network. Horizontal decision making and loose nonhierarchical structure became traits of many feminist organizations in the years to come (Alonso 1993 :260–2). WSP presented a respectable image of white middle class housewives and mothers, concerned for the wellbeing of their children. However, behind the respectable façade, WSP was a variegated organization, composed of women with very diverse political and religious faiths, which “helped legitimize a radical critique of the cold war and U.S. militarism” and, with the WILPF and other feminist and nonfeminist peace organizations, contributed to the passage of the 1963 Test Ban Treaty in the US (Swerdlow 1989 :229, 1993 ).

In the 1960s and 1970s, WSP and women’s peace organizations initiated meetings between US and Japanese women, US and Soviet women, US and Vietnamese women, resulting in common statements pleading for nuclear disarmament, and an end to the arms race, the Vietnam War, and imperialism (Alonso 1993 :214; Swerdlow 1993 :187–232; Blackwell 2004 :73–174, 181–2; Cockburn 2007 :135). African American members of the WILPF exercised an influence on the historical organization that far surpassed their relatively small number. It was largely due to the work of African American members that the WILPF engaged strongly with issues of racial and economic justice in the US and abroad, reflecting their unique perspectives about peace, which they viewed as inseparable from freedom from oppression (Blackwell 2004 ). Pacific Islander women protested against nuclear testing in their region, highlighting its tragic consequences for their environment and the racism of great powers who constructed such regions as uninhabited (Kirk, cited in West and Blumberg 1990 :14).

In the 1980s, maternal peace politics merged with innovative and subversive nonviolent tactical actions, in the forms of women’s peace encampments (e.g., Seneca Falls, New York and Comiso, Italy), inspired by the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. This camp was born in 1981 to protest the deployment of Euromissiles at the Greenham Common Air Force base and was committed to the nonviolent disruption of the military camp’s activities and exercises. It employed methods and strategies derived from women’s experiences in an effort to highlight the insecurity of the base and challenge patriarchal military power (Roseneil 1995 :123; Laware 2004 ). The radical, maternalist-based critique of national spending priorities is exemplified by a very popular and longlived slogan created by the WILPF in the 1980s: “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” Though their legacy has been taken up by some of today’s feminist peace movements, such as the US-based CodePink ( www.codepinkalert.org , accessed Oct. 2009 ) or the North American Raging Grannies (Pedersen 2009 ), the camps were not without critics at the time.

Groups like the London Revolutionary Feminists thought that female pacifism did not challenge patriarchal social arrangements and observed that, as peace encampments flourished, support for the women’s liberation movement in North America and western Europe was declining. They rejected the notion of a connection between womanhood/motherhood and peace as disempowering for women because it relegated them to traditional passive and submissive roles (Strange 1990 :218–19). On the other hand, radical feminists in the peace movement argued that a reliance on maternalist imagery and ideology damaged the cause of peace, by “absolv[ing] men of their equal responsibility to value and protect life” (Strange 1990 :218). These debates were reflected in theoretical arguments between feminists who proposed a link between women and peace and those who rejected it (a more thorough discussion of these debates follows in the fourth section of this essay).

The 1980s also marked the beginnings of an international feminist peace politics that took Third World women’s concerns seriously and prioritized issues other than nuclear disarmament, such as violence against women, environmental degradation, economic inequalities, and the fight against oppressive regimes. In Israel, Women in Black started its peaceful vigils for peace in Israel/Palestine and against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and gradually transformed itself into an international peace movement. From the late 1970s, Argentina’s Madres de Plaza de Mayo silently protested against the military dictatorship and the “disappearance” of their loved ones, employing motherhood rhetoric in their demands for human rights and democracy while never quite self-identifying as feminists (Hernandez 2002 ). Women mobilized for peace in many conflict zones and against dictatorial regimes (Cockburn 1998 , 2007 ).

The UN Decade for Women ( 1975–85 ) was the result of women’s activism and infused new energy into the women’s peace movement, despite the West’s renewed anticommunist paranoia. A series of UN Women’s Conferences and the parallel NGO forums, from Mexico to Beijing from 1975 to 1995 and beyond, gathered women from all over the world to discuss issues of concern to women. Feminists like Betty Reardon , Elise Boulding , and Hilkka Pietil ä were instrumental in bringing about the UN Decade and the women’s conferences, and in promoting the increased participation of women in the work of the UN (Pietilä and Vickers 1996 ; refer to Annica Kronsell ’s essay in this compendium). The WILPF played a central part in convincing the women’s movement that a peace agenda was a concern for women and it necessarily included women’s rights, women’s participation in the planning of postconflict reconstruction, and women’s equality. Starting at the Nairobi forum in 1985 , peace tents were set up as spaces for feminist peace activism and theorizing about traditional and new topics at the intersection of feminism and peace.

The Nairobi final document, “Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women” (FLS), included a definition of peace as inseparable from “the broader question of relationships between women and men in all spheres of life and in the family” (cited in Pietilä and Vickers 1996 :65). Further, the FLS emphasized PE as fundamental to the achievement of a just and peaceful society (Pietilä and Vickers 1996 :66). Finally, the FLS advocated the full integration of women’s peace researchers in the PR enterprise (Pietilä and Vickers 1996 :68). However, Hilkka Pietilä and Jeanne Vickers criticize parts of the FLS for being excessively patronizing toward women, in implicitly denying that “in many countries women are the most active proponents of peace and peace education” (Pietilä and Vickers 1996 :68). This, they claim, was due to the influence of “so-called security policy experts – mostly men,” who lobbied for the incorporation of their governments’ official security stands into the final text (Pietilä and Vickers 1996 :64).

The flourishing of women’s peace organizations in the post–Cold War world was largely due to these conferences as they required several regional preparatory and follow-up meetings, which facilitated networking and communication between women across the globe (Snyder 2000 , 2003 ). These efforts culminated with the adoption by the UN Security Council of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, which for the first time recognized the multiple roles women have in conflicts and postconflict peace making, directing international actors to take into account the diversity of ways in which women are victimized during armed conflicts, but also their contributions to peace processes and the importance of women’s participation in all peace-building initiatives, including the negotiating table ( www.womenwarpeace.org/1325_toolbox , accessed Oct. 2009 ).

Some of the WILPF women were disappointed at UNSC 1325’s failure to ban the very institution of war and the lack of critique of the gender order that produces both war and the victimization of women in war (Cockburn 2007 :147–8). Many see it nevertheless as a valuable advocacy and policy tool for the implementation of gender-attentive postconflict agreements and programs, and for peacekeeping operations, despite the persistence of obstacles to its effective implementation (Cohn et al. 2004 ; also see Annica Kronsell and Julie Mertus ’ essays in this compendium). UNSC 1325 has been at the center of women’s peace organizing since 2000 , with the goal of securing its implementation while self-reflectively thinking about the relationship between women, feminism, and peace (Cohn et al. 2005 ; El-Bushra 2007 ).

Women’s Roles in Conflicts, Violence, and Peace

Feminists bring women to the forefront of peace research by pointing to the social, political, and economic import of violence against women in peace and war. In her novel about a Chinese woman who returns to her village after having suffered abuse and rape during a secret espionage mission to the Japanese army ( When I was in Xia Village ), Chinese writer Ding Ling explores the consequences of war for the lives of women and their intersections with society’s social arrangements, based on constraints to women’s freedoms. Ding Ling’s work resonates with later accounts of institutionalized violence perpetrated by the Japanese Imperial Army against Asian women from neighboring countries, who served as comfort women in forced military sexual slavery during World War II.

Kazuko Watanabe asserts that the relationship between militarization, sexism, racism, and capitalism is exemplified by the commodification of women’s bodies, evident in the case of “comfort women” as in military prostitution and sexual trafficking (Watanabe 1995 ). Jennifer Lobasz critiques accounts of human trafficking that disregard women’s agency and rest on gendered stereotypes about who constitutes a trafficked person. Rather, feminists “study the manner in which gender stereotypes are used to establish and reproduce categories of practices, perpetrators, and victims” (Lobasz 2009 :323). Lobasz points to the increased vulnerability of trafficked persons under current antitrafficking frameworks, sexual or otherwise. Christine Chin links the trafficking and employment of foreign female domestic workers to the economic policies of the Malaysian state in the context of neoliberal globalization. She argues that “transnational migrant female domestic labor has become an integral component in the state elite’s strategy of garnering consent for export-oriented development” (Chin 1998 :16).

Similarly, Kathy Moon demonstrates how US–South Korea relations are personified and defined by the relations between US soldiers and South Korean military prostitutes (Moon 1997 :12). In fact, Cynthia Enloe ( 1983 ) contends that the military as an institution is dependent on the subjugation of women, and women are used as an instrument for the control of soldiers. Further, militarized prostitution often provides fodder for nationalist movements, which however are no less silent on feminist issues in their own ranks (Enloe 2000 :51; also Enloe 1990 ).

Because she sees sexist violence as part of a continuum from private to public violence that feeds a militaristic culture, Betty Reardon ( 1985 ) sees military institutions in radical opposition to feminism and points to feminist debates on whether the radical transformation of the system will be achieved by increased women’s participation in the military. Sandra Whitworth ( 2004 ) brings forth the issue of violence against women by UN peacekeeping forces to articulate further links between gendered structures, violence, and militarism. She contends that there is a fundamental disconnection between the functions and images of peace keeping and the militarized masculinity that constitutes the group identity of soldiers.

By documenting the deliberate and strategic rape of women in war, feminists show how this act of “private” violence has political significance (Pettman 1996 :100–4). Perhaps overrelying on biological determinism and universalism to describe men as potential perpetrators and women as victims, Susan Brownmiller ( 1975 ) views rape not as a private crime but as a universal act, which produces particular social arrangements, in which women are forever kept in subjugation. Alexandra Stiglmayer ( 1994 ) documents the strategic use of rape in former Yugoslavia to show how it was part of military strategy: women are raped to destroy and assert power over the enemy’s national and cultural identity; rape serves to reinforce a type of hegemonic masculinity needed for warfare; this is in turn posited in opposition and superior to the subjugated femininity of women and emasculated enemy men (Stiglmayer 1994 ; also Slapsak 2001 ). Ultimately, rape in war is inscribed in the politics of nation building and is yet another way in which both violence and women’s (and other marginalized identities’) subjugation are reproduced. The wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda brought international attention to rape as a war crime and the work of women’s human rights activists and lawyers made its prosecution possible. However, Lene Hansen ( 2001 ) contends that wartime rape sometimes presents dilemmas for feminists theorizing on peace. Specifically, mass rapes provided the partial justification for military intervention in Kosovo, though the reliability of information about them was later called into question.

Feminists from the global South observe that public and scholarly attention to violence against women is at times selective. Singling out certain acts of violence against women in the Third World reflects a racist bias that falsely homogenizes the diverse experiences of women in the Third World and objectifies them (Mohanty 1991 :57–9; also Oldenburg 2002 ). This act of representation serves purposes of self-identification for Western women, who in positing themselves in contrast to Third World women can then equally falsely believe in their emancipation and pay marginal attention to the significance of acts of political/personal violence against themselves. In order to understand and eliminate violent practices against women in the Third World, feminist scholars of color argue, one needs to take into account the history of colonial relations, their interaction with domestic patriarchal structures, the contemporary manifestations of imperialism, and Third World’s women’s agency (Jayawardena 1986 ; Kandirikirira 2002 ; Oldenburg 2002 ; Vijayan 2002 ; Sinha 2006 ).

Further, Third World women/feminists have been critical of a Western language of rights articulated in an antidiscrimination framework at the expense of socioeconomic justice, in the context of their individual and collective search for human dignity (Ackerly 2000 :143). Brooke Ackerly argues that, despite this, feminist human rights activists have theorized women’s human rights as simultaneously universal, contested, and immanent (Ackerly 2008 ). Postcolonial feminists and feminists of color call Western women’s attention to the far more deadly issue of structural violence against women in the Third World, as economic globalization and neoimperialist policies impoverish societies and put additional burdens on women, while disregarding their contributions and knowledge (refer to Amrita Chhachhi and Thahn-Dam Truong ’s essay in this compendium).

Feminists bring visibility to women as actors by looking at the ways in which they participate or sustain war efforts through their work in defense industries (Rupp 1978 ; Woollacott 1998 ; Goodman 2002 ), as nurses on the battlefield (Enloe 2000 ), in combat as soldiers or revolutionaries (Jayawardena 1986 ; Elshtain 1995 ; Pettman 1996 ; Goodman 2002 ; Enloe 2004 ; MacKenzie 2009 ; McEvoy 2009 ), in their role as patriotic mothers giving their sons to the nation (Enloe 2000 ; Addams 2007 ) and as sex workers and entertainers for the soldiers (Moon 1997 ; Enloe 2000 ). As seen earlier, feminists claim that the military and political establishments rely on women for their war-making and war-preparing efforts, which could not be undertaken without the willing, unwilling, or reluctant contribution of women (Enloe 2004 :148–51). Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry argue that women’s violence destabilizes and highlights popular gender myths, but that it is the inevitable byproduct of the increased involvement of women in international politics. As women seem to be moving closer to the centers of political power they, like men, pursue their political ends by all means they deem necessary (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007 :4). However, the persistence of gender stereotypes that mark violent women as the exception to the rule indicates that neither women’s equality nor institutional change are closer to being achieved (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007 :8–10).

Postconflict situations have garnered increasing attention by feminist scholars and activists, trying to secure the implementation and assess the effectiveness of UNSC 1325 (Mazurana et al. 2005 ; Anderlini 2007 ; Pankhurst and UNRISD 2007 ). This literature asks whether and how women suffer additional insecurities in postconflict situations and whether they are sighted (or not sighted) at the negotiating table or in informal and more hidden peace-making roles (Snyder 2000 ; Vincent 2001 ; Hudson 2005 ; Mazurana et al. 2005 ; Chinkin and Charlesworth 2006 ; Anderlini 2007 ; El-Bushra 2007 ; Skidmore et al. 2007 ; also refer to Simona Sharoni , Annica Kronsell , and Megan MacKenzie ’s essays in this compendium). It points to the grossly disregarded but essential fact that peace can only be achieved from the bottom up, in the ignored locations where women rebuild society (Nordstrom 2000 ; Afshar 2003 ; Pankhurst 2003 ). Thus feminism presents a growing body of evidence that what happens to/with women has important consequences for the kind of peace that is achieved and for how long (Cohn et al. 2005 ; Mazurana et al. 2005 ; Enloe 2007 ; Pankhurst and UNRISD 2007 ; Skidmore et al. 2007 ).

Complicating Theoretical Constructs

Starting research from the lives of women is but the beginning of feminist theorizing. By putting gender relations at the forefront of analysis, feminism complicates the understanding of issues and concepts that are central to PS. In this section, three of these concepts will be discussed: power, violence, and peace.

Feminists are skeptical of theories of power that do not take into account the experiences of women or other marginalized groups. For instance, Berenice Carroll criticizes PR for uncritically accepting prevailing conceptions of power that imply various degrees of coercion, persuasion, and social control or status hierarchy. Carroll notes that this “cult of power” limits research to a narrow focus on nation states, and prevents us from envisioning radically different futures, thus ultimately violating PR’s normative commitments (Carroll 1972 ). Similarly, from a historical materialist feminist standpoint, Nancy Hartsock argues that the notion of power as control and domination underlies market theories and the capitalist economy (Hartsock 1983 ).

Since the 1980s feminists have employed the concept of gender, intended as “a constitutive element of social relations” and “a primary way to signify relationships of power” (Scott 1988 :42). Gender, as a way of organizing the world into dichotomous, mutually exclusive categories in relations of super/subordination to one another (Confortini 2006 :345), is a relation of power implicated in the construction of violence. Heidi Hudson ( 2008 :14) distinguishes between a structural level and a micro-local level. At the structural level feminists expose how “the gendered nature of power (used as the lens) within a larger system of subordination (patriarchy) relegates women to the private domain of politics and privileges men in the public domain.” At the micro-local level, “attention is paid to the differential gendered effects of this concept of power as they manifest between men and women (and also within the collective identities of women and men) during and after conflict” (Hudson 2008 :14). Ultimately, only a feminist grounding in principles of holism, care, and cooperation can bring about the transformation of power relations into just relations.

For feminists, gender relations of power are implicated in the construction of violence in various ways. According to Robert Connell ( 2000 ), manifestations of masculinity and femininity as ideal types that call for conformity are historically and culturally contingent (and intersecting with other manifestations of identity), but there exists a type of dominant masculinity that exerts hegemony (in the Gramscian sense) on other, subordinated, masculinities and all femininities. Violence is implicated in the shaping of hegemonic masculinity and, at the same time, it is a tool for the subjugation of others. Much of sports and soldiers’ training offers examples of violence used to shape and regulate male bodies and their tolerance for violence against others and themselves (Connell 2000 ; Messner 2002 ).

Charlotte Hooper contends that “[t]he threat of feminization is a tool with which male conformity to a hegemonic ideal is policed,” and that strategies of feminization are used in the formation of “hierarchies of masculinities,” a precondition to men–men relations of subordination (Hooper 2001 :70). Feminization and masculinization propel global militarization (Enloe 2007 :51–2) and have well served colonial and imperial policies (Sinha 1995 ; Hooper 2001 ).

Starting from women’s lives, feminists have offered alternative views of power. Berenice Carroll proposes that viewing power as competence and paying attention to those sites and situations far from the power/dominance centers might help PR shift its focus away from nation states, which are ultimately responsible for the war system (Carroll 1972 ). Nancy Hartsock draws from women’s experiences in subsistence and reproductive labor a notion of power as empowerment that makes the creation of a caring, noncoercive community and economy possible. Others talk about power as “mutual enablement,” the “human ability to act in concert” (Tickner 1992 :65), as power “in relationship” not in hierarchy (Boulding 2000 , 2001 ), or as “the capacity of women to increase their own self-reliance and internal strength” (Moser 1991 :107), thus forming the basis for the radical and egalitarian transformation of society.

Feminists are not the only peace researchers aiming at a reconceptualization of power. However, only feminism uses both the experiences of women and gender analysis to understand and transform what is meant by power. For example, Kate McGuinness ( 1993 ) puts Gene Sharp ’s theory of consensual power through the experiences of women and their relations to the oppressive system that is patriarchy to conclude that his reliance on consent to understand power is inadequate to understand power in gender relations. Moreover, Sharp’s “actor” model of social relations does not account for structural considerations. Thus his theory of power has little value in characterizing power in gender relations or offering alternatives to patriarchy.

Violence and Peace

Gender analysis also complicates PS’ understanding of violence and peace. Feminists are wary of social and symbolic systems based on dichotomous categories, which reproduce and reify the man/woman pair and the relationship of subordination and power mapped into it. Beverly Woodward ( 1976 :5–6) thus critiques the private/public split as perpetuating an unjust system, which undervalues women’s activities inside and outside the home and in the intellectual sphere. Such a system is in opposition to the drastic transformation of society that PS advocates. The works on violence against women cited in previous sections are also inscribed in a feminist tradition that challenges PS to view private violence against women in a continuum of violence that starts in the private sphere and extends to the public violence of war and militarism. Rejecting the separation between “public” and “private” spheres, feminists contend that PS, like international relations, disregards the many wars conducted in feminized “private” spaces (Tickner 1992 :57–8). They claim that all acts of “private” violence (from domestic abuse, to trafficking, to sexual harassment in the workplace) have political and international relevance (Joachim 1999 :152). They emphasize that, in failing to see the relevance of gendered violence, international institutions devoted to fostering peace end up “enabling and legitimizing a social system and a war system based on gender hierarchy” (Sjoberg 2006 :892). Feminist human rights lawyers and activists argue that the public/private split built into the state-centric framework of international law has historically precluded the prosecution of violence against women. They demonstrate that such violence violates women’s human rights and that, while imperfect, international law can be used to hold states responsible for such “private” violations (Joachim 1999 ; Meyer 1999 ; Miller 1999 ; also refer to Laura Parisi ’s essay in this compendium).

Feminists critique the dichotomy between “protector” and “protected.” Beverly Woodward ( 1976 :8–9) speaks of “protection rackets,” which extend the paternal role of protector of the family to the larger “in-group” of the nation state, against the perceived menace of “out-groups.” In reality, since the majority of war victims are civilians (hence not protected), the false distinction serves to perpetuate both female subordination and the war system. Likewise, Jean Elshtain contends that depicting women as victims, or “beautiful souls” to be protected, and men as “just warriors” in charge of protection is a myth that serves war making and allows the militarization of everyday life for both men and women (Elshtain 1995 :3–13). Judith Stiehm argues that the protector/protected dichotomy is one of three myths that sustain the war system, together with the myths that war is manly (it is fought by men and it makes men) and that soldiers are substitutable. Women’s presence in military ranks exposes these myths, and opens the way to a fundamental questioning of the system they sustain (Stiehm 1989 :223–234).

Feminists view the dichotomy of violence/peace as itself gendered. Reversing its hierarchy would do little to transform power relations and to enable the enactment of more just and egalitarian social arrangements. Thus Christine Sylvester encourages the discovery of locations or situations where empowerment opportunities are carved out of potentially or actually exploitative or violent systems (Sylvester 1987 , 2002 ; Cockburn 1998 ). Efforts at tampering with such spaces and opportunities are, in turn, seen as another form of violence against women (Confortini 2006 ). Jean Elshtain (Elshtain and Tobias 1990 ) rejects the idea that a universalizing peace project that separates positive (peace-creating) values and attributes from negative (peace-obstructing) ones would be necessarily good for women. Ann Tickner ( 2001 :58–61) argues that overcoming androcentric thinking means first doing away with the binary thinking that “contribute[s] to the devaluation of both women and peace.”

For feminists, myths of masculinity and femininity are also inseparably intertwined with militarism at the symbolic level and they reflect on the role of language as a symbolic system in reproducing violence and gender relations of power. Brian Easlea ( 1983 ), Helen Caldicott ( 1984 ), and Evelyn Fox Keller ( 1992 ) parade the masculinist sexual imagery of nuclear arms projects, and their use of metaphors about male birth, fatherhood, and even incest (Caputi 1996 ). Carol Cohn ’s (1987:690) dissection of the masculinist, elaborately abstract, and euphemistic “technostrategic” language of defense intellectuals leads her to conclude that it “never force[s] the speaker or enable[s] the listener to touch the realities of nuclear holocaust that lay behind the words.” This language doesn’t have words capable of expressing the suffering and utter destruction that would likely follow a nuclear explosion; it allows the listener and the user to see nuclear weapons from the point of view of the user, not the victim; it precludes the possibilities of thinking differently about nuclear arms; finally, learning to speak and understand it initiates a process through which one’s mind becomes militarized, even when the intent is to beat strategists at their own game (Cohn 1993 ). For Milliken and Sylvan ( 1996 ) the gender order, intended as the “historically constructed pattern of power relations between men and women” (Connell 1987 :98–9), was recreated in the conduct of the Vietnam War, as US policy makers determined policy and military options based on their gender imaginary about North and South Vietnamese adversaries. A relationship of coconstitution between gender and violence is then established through language and other symbolic systems.

Visions of Peace, Paths to Peace

As seen in earlier sections, nineteenth and early twentieth century feminists often asserted that women in general dislike war and violence more than men, therefore had a special responsibility in the creation of peace. In Three Guineas , Virginia Woolf claimed that killing is a man’s, not a woman’s, “habit”; she linked character traits such as competitiveness and jealousy and the personal and political desire to manifest superiority over other people to war and advocated for women to renounce such traits. She believed that the unjust patriarchal system could not be overthrown by imitation (Carroll 1978 :118). Céline Renooz proposed that peace needed to be founded on matriarchal principles of reason, truth, and political decentralization and by restoring women’s dignity and authority (Josephson 1985 :800–1). Peace for Jane Addams ( 2007 :5–15) was not a static or sentimental ideal, but a dynamic process of societal re-creation based on humanistic values, the examples of which could be seen in cosmopolitan immigrant communities of the urban US and in women’s historical nurturing and life-preserving practices.

Intersecting developments in feminist peace activism, between the 1970s and the 1990s feminist debates on peace focused again on questions of difference. Woolf’s and Addams’ legacies are taken up by feminists like Elise Boulding ( 1976 , 1984 ), Helen Caldicott ( 1984 ), Betty Reardon ( 1985 ), Birgit Brock-Utne ( 1985 , 1989 ), and Diana Russell ( 1989 ), who point at innate or nurtured characteristics of women (caring, connectedness, love, empathy) that are disregarded by peace researchers and politicians alike, but that constitute an important resource for peace.

Sara Ruddick ( 1989 , 1992 , 1993 ) argues that “maternal thinking” (a heuristic concept) stems from a practice grounded in preservative love and sustaining a care-giving ethics that runs counter to militaristic enterprises. Elise Boulding ( 2000 ) observes that a human longing for peace manifests itself in every society and that in every society women’s cultures have carried on the caring, nurturing, and conflict-resolving work necessary for the preservation of the community. Hence a world that values those skills that are traditionally, even stereotypically, associated with women’s everyday lives would be more peaceful and just.

As in activism, radical/standpoint peace feminism was critiqued on the ground that it could be “compatible with conservative discourse as to the proper roles for women and men” (Forcey 1996 :79). Christine Sylvester ( 2002 :213) claims that the merger between peace and feminist projects “rests on a stereotypical self-sacrificing act by feminists” that would require the death of the feminist project itself and with it the possibilities of a just (if not peaceful) world. Ynestra King ( 1989 :285) admits that supposedly feminine or masculine stereotypes have served the war system well, but she maintains that “[b]y trying to set out of the trap of being identified with nature in a culture defined against nature, [women] ha[ve] dug ourselves into another trap – implicit acceptance of the ideology of antinaturalism, which has been used to denigrate, exploit, and abuse anything or anyone perceived as ‘more natural’ than the dominant white Western bourgeois male” (also Brock-Utne 1994 ). Following King’s lead, Karen Warren reclaims an association of women–nature–peace, on the grounds that when women are added to conventional accounts of peace, they “challenge the very conceptual framework” on which notions of peace and war were built (Warren and Cady 1994 :5). Berenice Carroll argues that discussions of difference sidestep the more fundamental logical connection between feminism and pacifism as political ideologies (Carroll 1987 :18).

More recently, quantitative feminist studies have tested the association between women and peace. They draw on Elise Boulding ( 1984 ), who pointed at opinion polls regarding men’s and women’s attitudes toward peace, which seemed to validate the existence of a gender gap in regards to attitudes toward military spending, and military intervention. Quantitative feminist research indicates that there is a negative correlation between the degree of sexual equality or sexual empowerment (differently operationalized) and the severity of international crises, more aggressive behaviors of states, or their willingness to pursue nonmilitaristic foreign policies (Caprioli 2000 , 2005 ; Caprioli and Boyer 2001 . It is worth noting that, although Caprioli self-identifies as feminist, other researchers who conduct similar studies do not). Joyce Marie Mushaben ( 2006 ) argues that gender mainstreaming by the EU between 1998 and 2002 produced a critical mass of women politicians in her German case study that redefined “sustainable peace” policies in internal and external politics. Yet Christine Sylvester ( 2002 :214) is critical of quantitative and empiricist projects that aim at finding causal correlations between sex or equality between the sexes and attitudes toward war, which they see as historically coconstituted.

Today feminism continues to be a plural, complex enterprise, critical of facile universal claims, which risk homogenizing women and masking the hegemony of one group over the rest. Contemporary feminists celebrate complexity and the intersectionality of different forms of oppression. The challenge for feminism has been to articulate a vision for peace that is both global and particular, universal yet culturally specific. Christine Sylvester ( 2002 :217) advocates an “aware cacophony” of multiple standpoints, calling for solidarity across differences, for “empathetic cooperation,” even if at the expense of peace. Charlotte Bunch ( 1992 :185) supports an “ethics of respect for diversity” that would allow for mutual learning. Heidi Hudson ( 2008 :3) argues for a “holistic theory pluralism” that is open ended in its recognition of differences. Carol Cohn and Sara Ruddick ( 2004 ) draw on women’s antiwar activism to formulate a feminist antiwar ethics that “opposes war making as a practice and seeks to replace it with practices of nonviolent contest and reconciliation,” in both pragmatic and moral terms. Starting from women’s lives, they propose an ethics of care to guide political decisions in matters of war and peace. Finally, Laura Sjoberg puts the just war tradition through feminist lenses to conclude that it suffers from gender biases that undermine its ethical vision and ultimately human security. She suggests a feminist revision of just war theory “inspired by empathy” (Sjoberg 2006 :166). Using Elshtain’s early work and her own feminist reformulation of just war theory, Laura Sjoberg rebukes Elshtain’s later work ( Just War Against Terror ), which justifies the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003 .

In common, feminists value greater inclusivity in theory and practice, as a source of less biased knowledge and as a precondition for greater justice.

Peace Education

Feminism contributes to envisioning peace through PE. It was part of the agenda of peace societies since their inception in the early 1800s (Flink 1980 :66). Susan Zeiger ( 2000 :53–5) notes that “the earliest identifiable peace education curriculum designed for use in grade schools” was created in 1914 by the American School Peace League, headed by feminist peace activist Fannie Mae Andrews and composed primarily of women. Italian physicist and educator Maria Montessori (Education and Peace) argued for a radical reform of the educational process to foster children’s full potential and saw education and peace as intertwined. For Swedish feminist Ellen Key , mothers had a special responsibility toward peace and in the education of children for cooperation and nonviolence (Key 1972 ).

Elise Boulding argues for reclaiming women’s “traditional” skills and using them to transform society through PE. For Boulding ( 1988 ) and Birgit Brock-Utne ( 1985 , 1989 ), peace learning, in the classroom or outside, is characterized as participatory, emancipatory, and geared toward establishing a “global civic culture.” Kathleen Maas Weigert encourages experiential learning “where knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb, cited in Weigert 1990 :313). Not only does experiential learning cultivate students’ skills, it also teaches partipatory citizenry and “provides opportunities for students’ increasing knowledge and understanding of themselves with the accompanying experience of empowerment” (Weigert 1990 :314). Thus a class visit to Greenham Common educated students about both nuclear politics and the politics of resistance to nuclear politics.

Peace education supports and fosters “women’s ways of knowing,” emphasizing cooperation, interconnectedness, the empowerment of girls, and the sensitization of boys (Forcey 1995 :215–20). Reardon ( 1988 ) and Boulding’s ( 2000 ) views on peace education also stress the importance of training to develop the imaginative capacity needed to envision a just and peaceful world.

Though almost 20 years ago Mary Burguieres ( 1990 :15) suggested that PS regard feminist research as a “new frontier” for the discipline, the PS community has mostly paid only marginal attention to these contributions. PS texts sometimes include a feminist article by Betty Reardon , Brigit Brock-Utne , or Mary Caprioli , but feminist postmodernist or postcolonial scholars are mostly disregarded. Peace and Change , the journal of the Peace History Society and the Peace and Justice Studies Association, is an exception among major PS journals as it publishes feminist articles with some regularity, but rarely if ever do nonfeminist PS scholars engage in conversations with feminism or take into serious consideration feminist assertions that gender relations of power are implicated in conflict and peace processes.

Feminism presents pressing challenges and important contributions to PS. In drawing linkages between hierarchical social arrangements and violence, in the private as in the public spheres, it points out that there is no peace where there is oppression. In paying attention to women as an essential first step of empirical research, feminism locates the margins of society, the intersections of all social hierarchies, those places that are invisible to “high politics” yet are so essential to it. Then it proceeds to show the “amount and varieties of power it takes to form and sustain” hierarchical and unjust relationships (Enloe 2004 :19). By forcing us to question all dichotomies, it forces us to find spaces where empowerment and the dismantling of oppressive structures are possible. It presents visions of that possible world and ways to achieve it, through education, scholarship, and activism.

Emerging areas of feminist engagement with PS are themes situated at the intersection of peace/violence and religion, including forgiveness, reconciliation, and transitional justice. The relevance of queer theory for the study of masculinities/femininities and violence/peace would merit further exploration. Because American and European histories of women’s peace activism form the bulk of WPH, more attention to women’s movements in the rest of the world, particularly prior to World War II, should be welcome. Finally, feminist literature on postconflict transitions also yearns for complementation with further, more theoretically oriented and comparative work. Theoretical engagement between PS and feminism would contribute to a richer, more complete understanding of “gendered peace.”

• Ackerly, B.A. (2000) Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ackerly, B.A. (2008) Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Adams, J.P. (1990) Peacework: Oral Histories of Women Peace Activists . Boston: Twayne Publishers.
• Addams, J. , Carroll, B.A. , and Fink, C.F . (2007) Newer Ideals of Peace . Urbana: University of Illinois Press. First published 1907.
• Afshar, H. (2003) Women and Wars: Some Trajectories Towards a Feminist Peace. Development in Practice 13 (2/3), 178–88.
• Alonso, H.H. (1993) Peace as a Women’s Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women’s Rights . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
• Alonso, H.H. (1995) Why Women’s Peace History? Peace and Change 20 (1), 48–52.
• Anderlini, S.N. (2007) Women Building Peace: What They Do, Why It Matters . Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
• Blackwell, J. (2004) No Peace Without Freedom: Race and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–1975 . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
• Boulding, E. (1976) The Underside of History: A View of Women through Time . Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
• Boulding, E. (1984) Focus On: The Gender Gap. Journal of Peace Research 21 (1), 1–3.
• Boulding, E. (1988) Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent World . New York: Teachers College Press.
• Boulding, E. (2000) Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
• Boulding, E. (2001) Building a Culture of Peace: Some Priorities. NWSA Journal 13 (2), 55–9.
• Brock-Utne, B. (1985) Educating for Peace: A Feminist Perspective . New York: Pergamon Press.
• Brock-Utne, B. (1989) Feminist Perspectives on Peace and Peace Education . New York: Pergamon Press.
• Brock-Utne, B. (1994) Listen to Women, for a Change. In R. Elias and J. Turpin (eds.) Rethinking Peace . Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, pp. 205–10.
• Brownmiller, S. (1975) Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape . New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Bunch, C. (1992) A Global Perspective on Feminist Ethics and Diversity. In E. Browning and S.M. Coultrap-McQuin (eds.) Explorations in Feminist Ethics: Theory and Practice . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 176–85.
• Burguieres, M.K. (1990) Feminist Approaches to Peace: Another Step for Peace Studies. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 19 (1), 1–18.
• Bussey, G. , and WILPF British Section (1980) Pioneers for Peace: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 1915–1965 . London: WILPF British Section.
• Caldicott, H. (1984) Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War . New York: Morrow.
• Caprioli, M. (2000) Gendered Conflict. Journal of Peace Research 37 (1), 51–68.
• Caprioli, M. (2005) Primed for Violence: The Role of Gender Inequality in Predicting Internal Conflict. International Studies Quarterly 49 (2), 161–78.
• Caprioli, M. , and Boyer, M.A. (2001) Gender, Violence, and International Crisis. Journal of Conflict Resolution 45 (4), 503–18.
• Caputi, J. (1996) Unthinkable Fathering: Connecting Incest and Nuclearism. In K.J. Warren and D.L. Cady (eds.) Bringing Peace Home: Feminism, Violence, and Nature . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 133–51.
• Carroll, B. (1978) To Crush Him in Our Own Country: The Political Thought of Virginia Woolf. Feminist Studies 4 (1), 99–132.
• Carroll, B. (1998) Christine de Pizan and the Origins of Peace Theory. In H.L. Smith (ed.) Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 22–39.
• Carroll, B. (2005) “The Historian in a Time of Crisis”: A Memoir of Peace History. Peace and Change 30 (1), 21–9.
• Carroll, B. , Chatfield, C. , Cook, B.W. , Cooper, S. , Waskow, A. , and Wittner, L. (2009) The Peace History Society: A History and Reflection by Some of Its Early Leaders. Peace and Change 34 (2), 119–32.
• Carroll, B.A. (1972) Peace Research: The Cult of Power. Journal of Conflict Resolution 16 (4), 585–616.
• Carroll, B.A. (1987) Feminism and Pacifism: Historical and Theoretical Connections. In R.R. Pierson (ed.) Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical, and Practical Perspectives . London: Croom Helm, pp. 2–28.
• Chin, C.B.N. (1998) In Service and Servitude: Foreign Female Domestic Workers and the Malaysian “Modernity” Project. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Chinkin, C. , and Charlesworth, H. (2006) Building Women into Peace: The International Legal Framework. Third World Quarterly 27 (5), 937–57.
• Cockburn, C. (1998) The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict . London: Zed Books.
• Cockburn, C. (2007) From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis . London: Zed Books.
• Cohn, C. (1987) Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals. Signs 12 (4), 687–718.
• Cohn, C. (1993) Wars, Wimps, and Women: Talking Gender and Thinking War. In M. Cooke and A. Woollacott (eds.) Gendering War Talk . Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 227–46.
• Cohn, C. , and Ruddick, S. (2004) A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction. In S.H. Hashmi and S. Lee (eds.) Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 405–35.
• Cohn, C. , Kinsella, H. , and Gibbings, S. (2004) Women, Peace and Security. International Feminist Journal of Politics 6 (1), 130–40.
• Cohn, C. , Hill, F. , and Ruddick, S. (2005) The Relevance of Gender for Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction . Stockholm: Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission.
• Confortini, C.C. (2006) Galtung, Violence, and Gender: The Case for a Peace Studies/Feminism Alliance. Peace and Change 31 (3), 333–67.
• Connell, R.W. (1987) Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics . Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Connell, R.W. (2000) Arms and the Man: Using the New Research on Masculinity to Understand Violence and Promote Peace in the Contemporary World. In I. Breines , R.W. Connell , I. Eide , and UNESCO (eds.) Male Roles, Masculinities and Violence: A Culture of Peace Perspective . Paris: UNESCO Publishing, pp. 21–34.
• Cooper, S. (1984) The Work of Women in Nineteenth Century Continental European Peace Movements. Peace and Change 9 (4), 11–28.
• Cooper, S.E. (1987) Women’s Participation in European Peace Movements: The Struggle to Prevent World War I. In R.R. Pierson (ed.) Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical, and Practical Perspectives . London: Croom Helm, pp. 51–75.
• Detraz, N. (2009) Environmental Security and Gender: Necessary Shifts in an Evolving Debate. Security Studies 18 (2), 345–69.
• D’Itri, P.W. (1999) Cross Currents in the International Women’s Movement, 1848–1948 . Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
• Early, F. (2009) Re-Imaging Peace: The Voice of Women, the Canadian Aid for Vietnam Civilians, and the Knitting Project for Vietnamese Children, 1966–1976. Peace and Change 34 (2), 148–63.
• Easlea, B. (1983) Fathering the Unthinkable: Masculinity, Scientists, and the Nuclear Arms Race . London: Pluto Press.
• Egunjobi, L. (1994) On the Status of Southern Women. In R. Elias and J.E. Turpin (eds.) Rethinking Peace . Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, pp. 111–16.
• Eisler, R. (1997) Human Rights and Violence: Integrating the Private and Public Spheres. In J.E. Turpin and L.R. Kurtz (eds.) The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 161–86.
• El-Bushra, J. (2007) Feminism, Gender, and Women’s Peace Activism. Development and Change 38 (1), 131–47.
• Elshtain, J.B. (1995) Women and War . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Elshtain, J.B. , and Tobias, S. (1990) Women, Militarism, and War: Essays in History, Politics, and Social Theory . Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Enloe, C.H. (1983) Does Khaki Become You? Militarisation in Women’s Lives . Boston: South End Press.
• Enloe, C.H. (1990) Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics . Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Enloe, C.H. (2000) Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives . Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Enloe, C.H. (2004) The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire . Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Enloe, C.H. (2005) What if Patriarchy Is the Big Picture”? An Afterword. In D.E. Mazurana , A. Raven-Roberts , and J.L. Parpart (eds.) Gender, Conflict, and Peacekeeping . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 280–3.
• Enloe, C.H. (2007) Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Flink, C. (1980) Peace Education and the Peace Movement Since 1815. Peace and Change 6 (1/2), 66–73.
• Forcey, L.R. (1995) Integrating Women’s Studies with Peace Studies: Challenges for Feminist Theory. Indian Journal of Gender Studies 2 (2), 211–26.
• Forcey, L.R. (1996) Review: The Future of Feminist Discourse. Peace and Change 21 (1), 78–83.
• Goodman, P. (2002) Women, Sexuality and War . New York: Palgrave.
• Hallock Johnson, S. (1999) An Ecofeminist Critique of the International Economic Structure. In M.K. Meyer and E. Prügl (eds.) Gender Politics in Global Governance . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 221–9.
• Hansen, L. (2001) Gender, Nation, Rape: Bosnia and the Construction of Security. International Feminist Journal of Politics 3 (1), 55–75.
• Hartsock, N.C.M. (1983) Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism . New York: Longman.
• Hernandez, V.M.A. (2002) The Mothers of La Plaza de Mayo: A Peace Movement. Peace and Change 27 (3), 385–411.
• Hooper, C. (2001) Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics . New York: Columbia University Press.
• Hudson, H. (2005) “Doing” Security as Though Humans Matter: A Feminist Perspective on Gender and the Politics of Human Security. Security Dialogue 36 (2), 155–74.
• Hudson, H. (2008) Feminist Analysis at the Intersection of Critical Security Studies and Peace Studies. Paper presented at the 49th ISA Convention, San Francisco.
• Jayawardena, K. (1986) Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World . London: Zed Books.
• Jenkins, T. , and Reardon, B.A. (2007) Gender and Peace: Towards a Gender-Inclusive, Holistic Perspective. In C. Webel and J. Galtung (eds.) Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies . London: Routledge, pp. 209–31.
• Joachim, J. (1999) Shaping the Human Rights Agenda: The Case of Violence against Women. In M.K. Meyer , and E. Prügl (eds.) Gender Politics in Global Governance . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 142–60.
• Johnson-Odim, C. (2009) “For Their Freedoms”: The Anti-Imperialist and International Feminist Activity of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria. Women’s Studies International Forum 32 (4), 51–9.
• Josephson, H. (1985) Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders . Westport, CN: Greenwood Press.
• Kandirikirira, N. (2002) Deconstructing Domination: Gender Disempowerment and the Legacy of Colonialism and Apartheid in Omaheke, Namibia. In F. Cleaver (ed.) Masculinities Matter! Men, Gender, and Development . London: Zed Books, pp. 112–37.
• Keller, E.F. (1992) Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death: Essays on Language, Gender, and Science . New York: Routledge.
• Key, E . (1972) War, Peace, and the Future: A Consideration of Nationalism and Internationalism, and of the Relation of Women to War . New York: Garland. First published 1916.
• King, Y. (1989) Afterword: If I Can’t Dance in Your Revolution, I’m Not Coming. In A. Harris and Y. King (eds.) Rocking the Ship of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics . Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 281–98.
• Krasniewicz, L. (1992) Nuclear Summer: The Clash of Communities at the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Laware, M.L. (2004) Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common. NWSA Journal 16 (3), 18.
• Lobasz, J.K. (2009) Beyond Border Security: Feminist Approaches to Human Trafficking. Security Studies 18 (2), 319–44.
• Lynn, S. (1992) Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• MacKenzie, M. (2009) Securitization and Desecuritization: Female Soldiers and the Reconstruction of Women in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone. Security Studies 18 (2), 241–61.
• Mazurana, D.E. , Raven-Roberts, A. , and Parpart, J.L. (2005) Gender, Conflict, and Peacekeeping . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• McEvoy, S. (2009) Loyalist Women Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland: Beginning a Feminist Conversation about Conflict Resolution. Security Studies 18 (2), 262–86.
• McGuinness, K. (1993) Gene Sharp’s Theory of Power: A Feminist Critique of Consent. Journal of Peace Research 30 (1), 101–15.
• Merchant, C. (1980) The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution . San Francisco: Harper & Row.
• Messner, M.A. (2002) Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Meyer, M.K. (1999) The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom: Organizing Women for Peace in the War System. In M.K. Meyer and E. Prügl (eds.) Gender Politics in Global Governance . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 107–21.
• Miller, A.M. (1999) Realizing Women’s Human Rights: Nongovernmental Organizations and the United Nations Treaty Bodies. In M.K. Meyer and E. Prügl (eds.) Gender Politics in Global Governance . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 161–76.
• Milliken, J. , and Sylvan, D. (1996) Soft Bodies, Hard Targets, and Chic Theories: US Bombing Policy in Indochina. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 25 (40), 321–60.
• Mohanty, C.T. (1991) Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse. In C.T. Mohanty , A. Russo , and L. Torres (eds.) Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 51–80.
• Moon, K.H.S. (1997) Sex among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.–Korea Relations . New York: Columbia University Press.
• Moser, C.O.N. (1991) Gender Planning in the Third World: Meeting Practical and Strategic Needs. In R. Grant and K. Newland (eds.) Gender and International Relations . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 83–121.
• Mushaben, J.M. (2006) Girl Power and Gender Mainstreaming: Looking for Peace in New Places Through a European Union Lens. Peace and Change 31 (3), 368–89.
• Nordstrom, C. (2000) Towards a (Gendered) Theory of War. In K.H. Karamé , T.L. Tryggestad , and G. Bertinussen (eds.) Gender Perspectives on Peace and Conflict Studies . Oslo: International Peace Research Institute, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, pp. 17–40.
• Oldenburg, V.T. (2002) Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Pankhurst, D. (2003) The “Sex War” and Other Wars: Towards a Feminist Approach to Peacebuilding. Development in Practice 13 (2/3), 154–77.
• Pankhurst, D. , and United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (2007) Gendered Peace: Women’s Struggles for Post-War Justice and Reconciliation . New York: Routledge.
• Pedersen, J. (2009) Raging Against the (War) Machine: The Raging Grannies in post-9/11 North America. Paper presented at the International Studies Association Convention, New York.
• Pettman, J. (1996) Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics . St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
• Pietilä, H. , and Vickers, J. (1996) Making Women Matter: The Role of the United Nations , 3rd edn. London: Zed Books.
• Pois, A.M. (1995) Foreshadowings: Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, and the Ecofeminism/Pacifist Feminism of the 1980s. Peace and Change 20 (4), 439–65.
• Potter, J. (2006) Valiant Heroines or Pacific Ladies? Women in War and Peace. In D. Simonton (ed.) The Routledge History of Women in Europe since 1700 . London: Routledge, pp. 259–98.
• Reardon, B. (1985) Sexism and the War System . New York: Teachers College Press.
• Reardon, B. (1988) Comprehensive Peace Education: Educating for Global Responsibility . New York: Teachers College Press.
• Reardon, B. (1993) Women and Peace: Feminist Visions of Global Security . Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Reardon, B. (1998) Women or Weapons? In L.A. Lorentzen and J.E. Turpin (eds.) The Women and War Reader . New York: New York University Press, pp. 289–95.
• Roseneil, S. (1995) Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham . Buckingham: Open University Press.
• Ruddick, S. (1989) Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace . Boston: Beacon Press.
• Ruddick, S. (1992) From Maternal Thinking to Peace Politics. In E. Browning and S.M. Coultrap-McQuin (eds.) Explorations in Feminist Ethics: Theory and Practice . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 109–27.
• Ruddick, S. (1993) Notes toward a Feminist Peace Politics. In M. Cooke and A. Woollacott (eds.) Gendering War Talk . Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 109–27.
• Rupp, L.J. (1978) Mobilizing Women for War: German and American propaganda, 1939–1945 . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Russell, D.E.H. (1989) Exposing Nuclear Phallacies . New York: Pergamon Press.
• Schneidhorst, A. (2001) “Little Old Ladies and Dangerous Women”: Women’s Peace and Social Justice Activism in Chicago, 1960–1975. Peace and Change 26 (3), 374–91.
• Schott, L.K. (1997) Reconstructing Women’s Thoughts: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom before World War II . Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Scott, J.W. (1988) Gender and the Politics of History . New York: Columbia University Press.
• Shiva, V. (1988) Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development . London: Zed Books.
• Sinha, M. (1995) Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century . Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Sinha, M. (2006) Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Sjoberg, L. (2006) Gendered Realities of the Immunity Principle: Why Gender Analysis Needs Feminism. International Studies Quarterly 50 (4), 889–910.
• Sjoberg, L. , and Gentry, C.E. (2007) Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics . New York: Zed Books.
• Skidmore, M. , Lawrence, P. , Program in Conflict, Religion, and Peacebuilding, and Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (2007) Women and the Contested State: Religion, Violence, and Agency in South and Southeast Asia . Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Slapsak, S. (2001) The Use of Women and the Role of Women in the Yugoslav War. In I. Skjelsbæk , D. Smith , and International Peace Research Institute (eds.) Gender, Peace, and Conflict . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 161–83.
• Snyder, A. (2000) Peace Profile: Federation of African Women’s Peace Networks. Peace Review 12 (1), 147–53.
• Snyder, A.C. (2003) Setting the Agenda for Global Peace: Conflict and Consensus Building . Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Stiehm, J. (1989) Arms and the Enlisted Woman . Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Stiglmayer, A. (1994) Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
• Strange, C. (1990) Mothers on the March: Maternalism in Women’s Protest for Peace in North America and Western Europe, 1900–1985. In G. West and R.L. Blumberg (eds.) Women and Social Protest . New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 209–24.
• Sturgeon, N. (2005) Achieving Peace and Security: A Transnational Feminist Environmentalist Perspective. In Y. Murakami , N. Kawamura , and S. Chiba (eds.) Toward a Peaceable Future: Redefining Peace, Security, and Kyosei from a Multidisciplinary Perspective . Washington, DC: Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, pp. 205–16.
• Swerdlow, A. (1989) Pure Milk, Not Poison: Women Strike for Peace and the Test Ban Treaty of 1963. In A. Harris , and Y. King (eds.) Rocking the Ship of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics . Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 225–37.
• Swerdlow, A. (1993) Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Sylvester, C. (1987) Some Dangers in Merging Feminist and Peace Projects. Alternatives 12 (4), 493–509.
• Sylvester, C. (2002) Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Talbot, S.M. (1980) South African Women and the Pass Laws . Copenhagen: UNESCO.
• Tickner, J.A. (1992) Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security . New York: Columbia University Press.
• Tickner, J.A. (2001) Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era . New York: Columbia University Press.
• Vijayan, P. (2002) Nationalism, Masculinity and the Developmental State: Exploring Hindutva Masculinities. In F. Cleaver (ed.) Masculinities Matter! Men, Gender, and Development . London: Zed Books, pp. 28–56.
• Vincent, L. (2001) Engendering Peace in Africa: A Critical Inquiry into Some Current Thinking on the Role of African Women in Peace-Building. African Journal of Conflict Resolution 2 (1), 13–30.
• Warren, K.J. , and Cady, D.L. (1994) Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections. Hypatia 9 (2), 4–20.
• Watanabe, K. (1995) Trafficking in Women’s Bodies, Then and Now: The Issue of Military “Comfort Women.” Peace and Change 20 (4), 501–14.
• Weigert, K.M. (1990) Experiential Learning and Peace Education: On Visiting Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. Peace and Change 15 (3), 312–30.
• Wells, J.C. (1983) Why Women Rebel: A Comparative Study of South African Women’s Resistance in Bloemfontein (1913) and Johannesburg (1958). Journal of Southern African Studies 10 (1), 55–70.
• West, G. , and Blumberg, R.L. (1990) Reconstructing Social Protest from a Feminist Perspective. In G. West and R.L. Blumberg (eds.) Women and Social Protest . New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–36.
• Whitworth, S. (2004) Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis . Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
• Woodward, B. (1976) Peace Studies and the Feminist Challenge. Peace and Change 3 (4), 3–12.
• Woollacott, A. (1998) Women Munition Makers, War, and Citizenship. In L.A. Lorentzen and J.E. Turpin (eds.) The Women and War Reader . New York: New York University Press, pp. 126–31.
• Yasutake, R. (2009) The First Wave of International Women’s Movements from a Japanese Perspective: Western Outreach and Japanese Women Activists During the Interwar Years. Women’s Studies International Forum 32 (1), 13–20.
• Zeiger, S. (2000) Teaching Peace: Lessons from a Peace Studies Curriculum of the Progressive Era. Peace and Change 25 (1), 53–70.

Links to Digital Materials

Initiative for Inclusive Security. At www.huntalternatives.org/pages/7_the_initiative_for_inclusive_security.cfm , accessed July 26, 2009. Created as part of the Hunt Alternatives Fund, it focuses on research and documentation on women’s role in peace processes and provides partnership, training, and networking for women peacemakers.

International Peace Research Association. At http:/soc.kuleuven.be/iieb/ipraweb/index.php?action=home&cat=home , accessed July 26, 2009. The IPRA website publishes a directory of peace research, job and conference announcements, as well as links to peace education online communities and to regional IPRA affiliates. It offers contact information for its Gender and Peace Commission.

Peacewomen project. At www.peacewomen.org , accessed July 26, 2009. Monitors the implementation of UNSC 1325, providing links to resources, initiatives, and organizations working toward the same goal. It was created and is maintained by the WILPF.

Reaching Critical Will. At www.reachingcriticalwill.org/ , accessed July 26, 2009. Another WILPF project, it provides information on intergovernmental and UN efforts toward nuclear disarmament, with the purpose of facilitating NGO interaction with governments and UN and NGO involvement in nuclear disarmament activities.

Teachers College Peace Education Center (TCPEC) at Columbia University, New York. At www.tc.columbia.edu/peaceed/index.html , accessed July 26, 2009. The TCPEC is dedicated to furthering and providing outreach, resources, and training for peace education. The website offers a PE learning portal for courses and educational program development. It also provides a list of links to other PE-related organizations.

WomanStats Project. At www.womanstats.org/ , accessed July 26, 2009. A compilation of qualitative and quantitative information on the status of women around the world, WomanStats has the purpose of facilitating the understanding of the relation between women’s status and state security.

Women, War, Peace. At www.womenwarpeace.org , accessed July 26, 2009. This is a portal created by UNIFEM to increase accessibility of information on women, peace, and security, with links to UN, NGO, media, and academic sources.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Brooke Ackerly , Anne Sisson Runyan , and two anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback on earlier versions of this essay.

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, International Studies. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 31 May 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [66.249.64.20|185.39.149.46]
• 185.39.149.46

Character limit 500 /500

United States Institute of Peace

Winning essays, 2013 national winning essays.

First Place: Molly Nemer of Henry Sibley High School in Mendota Heights, MN

• Grounded in Peace: Why Gender Matters

Second Place: Anna Mitchell of Plymouth, MI (Homeschool)

• Up and Out: Women’s Peacebuilding from the Ground Up in Liberia and Afghanistan

Third Place: Bo Yeon Jang of the International School Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

• Womanhood in Peacemaking: Taking Advantage of Unity through Cultural Roles for a Successful Gendered Approach in Conflict Resolution

2012 national winning essay, “ Awakening Witness and Empowering Engagement: Leveraging New Media for Human Connections ,” by Emily Fox-Penner of the Maret School in Washington, D.C., addressed the essay topic of new media and peacebuilding by examining its role in Egypt in 2011 and Kenya in 2007  (link is the same as it is now from last year)

2011 national winning essay, "Mimes for Good Governance: The Importance of Culture and Morality in the Fight Against Corruption," by Kathryn Botto from the Liberal Arts and Science Academy in Austin, Texas discusses the role of society and culture in dealing with curruption, using Colombia and Kyrgyzstan as case studies.

2010 national winning essay, " Fighting for Local publications in a Globalized World: Unity, Strategy, and Government Support " , by Margaret E. Hardy from Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, California, discusses necessary conditions for nonviolent movement to successfully control local publications.

2009 national winning essay, "Responding to Crimes against Humanity: Prevention, Deployment, and Localization" , by Sophia Sanchez from Ladue Horton Watkins High School in Saint Louis, Missouri, discusses the role of international actors in protecting civilians from crimes against humanity.

2008 national winning essay , "Resolving Water Conflicts Through the Establishment of Water Authorities, " by Callie Smith from Girls Preparatory School in Chatanooga, Tennessee, discusses how natural publications can be managed to build peace, using case studies from Central Asia and Yemen.

2007 national winning essay , " Reintegrating Children, Building Peace: Interaction, Education, and Youth Participation ," by Wendy Cai from Corona Del Sol High School in Tempe, Arizona, discusses the reintegration of child soldiers into society, using Sierra Leone and Uganda as case studies.

2006 national winning essay , " Defusing Nuclear Tensions Through Internationally Supported Bilateral Collaborations ," by Kona Shen from The Northwest School in Seattle, Washington, compares the decision of Argentina and Brazil to forego nuclear arms development with the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan.

2005 national winning essay , " Finding Peace: Japan and Cambodia ," by Jessica Perrigan from the Duchesne Academy in Omaha, Nebraska, explores how education is the key to democracy.

2004 national winning essay , " Establishing Peaceful and Stable Postwar Societies Through Effective Rebuilding Strategy ," by Vivek Viswanathan from Herricks High School in New Hyde Park, New York explores the lessons of the Marshall Plan and international efforts in Somalia in an examination of the challenges of post-conflict reconstruction.

2003 national winning essay , " Kuwait and Kosovo: The Harm Principle and Humanitarian War ," by Kevin Kiley from Granite Bay High School in Granite Bay, California, examines the 1990 Gulf War and NATO's intervention in Kosovo to see how they measure up against the criteria of just war.

2002 national winning essay , " Safeguarding Human Rights and Preventing Conflict through U.S. Peacekeeping ," by David Epstein from Pikesville High School in Baltimore, Maryland, cites several examples of appropriate use of American power aimed at putting a stop to crimes against humanity and ending conflict.

2001 national winning essay , " Somalia and Sudan: Sovereignty and Humanitarianism ," by Stefanie Nelson from Bountiful High School in Bountiful, Utah, examines the dynamics of the competing philosophies of sovereignty and humanitarianism in third-party intervention found in civil conflicts in the Sudan and Somalia.

2000 national winning essay , " Promoting Global and Regional Security in the Post-Cold War World ," by Elspeth Simpson from Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas, looks at the U.S. policies that led to intervention in Colombia and North Korea and considers the effectiveness of actions based on humanitarian assistance and national and global security.

1999 national winning essay , " Preventive Diplomacy in the Iraq-Kuwait Dispute and in the Venezuela Border Dispute ," by Jean Marie Hicks of St. Thomas More High School in Rapid City, South Dakota, explores the cases of preventive diplomacy seen in disputes between Iraq and Kuwait and in border disputes involving Venezuela.

1998 national winning essay , " How Should Nations be Reconciled ," by Tim Shenk from Eastern Mennonite High School in Harrisonburg, Virginia, uses South Africa and Bosnia as examples to examine the manner in which war crimes should be accounted for to ensure stable and lasting peace.

1997 national winning essay , " A Just and Lasting Peace ," by Joseph Bernabucci from St. Alban's School in Washington, D.C., examines the steps that can be taken to support successful implementation of a peace agreements and addresses causes of the conflicts by exploring what can be done to discourage renewed violence.

1996 national winning essay , " America and the New World Order ," by Richard Lee from Irmo High School in Columbia, South Carolina, defines U.S. national security interests and gives his criteria for U.S. intervention by examining past cases of intervention.

World Peace Essay: Prompts, How-to Guide, & 200+ Topics

Throughout history, people have dreamed of a world without violence, where harmony and justice reign. This dream of world peace has inspired poets, philosophers, and politicians for centuries. But is it possible to achieve peace globally? Writing a world peace essay will help you find the answer to this question and learn more about the topic.

In this article, our custom writing team will discuss how to write an essay on world peace quickly and effectively. To inspire you even more, we have prepared writing prompts and topics that can come in handy.

• ✍️ Writing Guide
• 🦄 Essay Prompts
• ✔️ World Peace Topics
• 🌎 Pacifism Topics
• ✌️ Catchy Essay Titles
• 🕊️ Research Topics on Peace
• 💡 War and Peace Topics
• ☮️ Peace Title Ideas
• 🌐 Peace Language Topics

🔗 References

✍️ how to achieve world peace essay writing guide.

Stuck with your essay about peace? Here is a step-by-step writing guide with many valuable tips to make your paper well-structured and compelling.

1. Research the Topic

The first step in writing your essay on peace is conducting research. You can look for relevant sources in your university library, encyclopedias, dictionaries, book catalogs, periodical databases, and Internet search engines. Besides, you can use your lecture notes and textbooks for additional information.

Among the variety of sources that could be helpful for a world peace essay, we would especially recommend checking the Global Peace Index report . It presents the most comprehensive data-driven analysis of current trends in world peace. It’s a credible report by the Institute for Economics and Peace, so you can cite it as a source in your aper.

Here are some other helpful resources where you can find information for your world peace essay:

• United Nations Peacekeeping
• International Peace Institute
• United States Institute of Peace
• European Union Institute for Security Studies
• Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

2. Create an Outline

Outlining is an essential aspect of the essay writing process. It helps you plan how you will connect all the facts to support your thesis statement.

To write an outline for your essay about peace, follow these steps:

• Determine your topic and develop a thesis statement .
• Choose the main points that will support your thesis and will be covered in your paper.
• Organize your ideas in a logical order.
• Think about transitions between paragraphs.

Here is an outline example for a “How to Achieve World Peace” essay. Check it out to get a better idea of how to structure your paper.

• Definition of world peace.
• The importance of global peace.
• Thesis statement: World peace is attainable through combined efforts on individual, societal, and global levels.
• Practive of non-violent communication.
• Development of healthy relationships.
• Promotion of conflict resolution skills.
• Promotion of democracy and human rights.
• Support of peacebuilding initiatives.
• Protection of cultural diversity.
• Encouragement of arms control and non-proliferation.
• Promotion of international law and treaties.
• Support of intercultural dialogue and understanding.
• Restated thesis.
• Call to action.

You can also use our free essay outline generator to structure your world peace essay.

3. Write Your World Peace Essay

Now, it’s time to use your outline to write an A+ paper. Here’s how to do it:

• Start with the introductory paragraph , which states the topic, presents a thesis, and provides a roadmap for your essay. If you need some assistance with this part, try our free introduction generator .
• Your essay’s main body should contain at least 3 paragraphs. Each of them should provide explanations and evidence to develop your argument.
• Finally, in your conclusion , you need to restate your thesis and summarize the points you’ve covered in the paper. It’s also a good idea to add a closing sentence reflecting on your topic’s significance or encouraging your audience to take action. Feel free to use our essay conclusion generator to develop a strong ending for your paper.

4. Revise and Proofread

Proofreading is a way to ensure your essay has no typos and grammar mistakes. Here are practical tips for revising your work:

• Take some time. Leaving your essay for a day or two before revision will give you a chance to look at it from another angle.
• Read out loud. To catch run-on sentences or unclear ideas in your writing, read it slowly and out loud. You can also use our Read My Essay to Me tool.
• Make a checklist . Create a list for proofreading to ensure you do not miss any important details, including structure, punctuation, capitalization, and formatting.
• Ask someone for feedback. It is always a good idea to ask your professor, classmate, or friend to read your essay and give you constructive criticism on the work.
• Note down the mistakes you usually make. By identifying your weaknesses, you can work on them to become a more confident writer.

🦄 World Peace Essay Writing Prompts

Looking for an interesting idea for your world peace essay? Look no further! Use our writing prompts to get a dose of inspiration.

How to Promote Peace in the Community Essay Prompt

Promoting peace in the world always starts in small communities. If people fight toxic narratives, negative stereotypes, and hate crimes, they will build a strong and united community and set a positive example for others.

In your essay on how to promote peace in the community, you can dwell on the following ideas:

• Explain the importance of accepting different opinions in establishing peace in your area.
• Analyze how fighting extremism in all its forms can unite the community and create a peaceful environment.
• Clarify what peace means in the context of your community and what factors contribute to or hinder it.
• Investigate the role of dialogue in resolving conflicts and building mutual understanding in the community.

How to Promote Peace as a Student Essay Prompt

Students, as an active part of society, can play a crucial role in promoting peace at various levels. From educational entities to worldwide conferences, they have an opportunity to introduce the idea of peace for different groups of people.

Check out the following fresh ideas for your essay on how to promote peace as a student:

• Analyze how information campaigns organized by students can raise awareness of peace-related issues.
• Discuss the impact of education in fostering a culture of peace.
• Explore how students can use social media to advocate for a peaceful world.
• Describe your own experience of taking part in peace-promoting campaigns or programs.

How Can We Maintain Peace in Our Society Essay Prompt

Maintaining peace in society is a difficult but achievable task that requires constant attention and effort from all members of society.

We have prepared ideas that can come in handy when writing an essay about how we can maintain peace in our society:

• Investigate the role of tolerance, understanding of different cultures, and respect for religions in promoting peace in society.
• Analyze the importance of peacekeeping organizations.
• Provide real-life examples of how people promote peace.
• Offer practical suggestions for how individuals and communities can work together to maintain peace.

Youth Creating a Peaceful Future Essay Prompt

Young people are the future of any country, as well as the driving force to create a more peaceful world. Their energy and motivation can aid in finding new methods of coping with global hate and violence.

In your essay, you can use the following ideas to show the role of youth in creating a peaceful world:

• Analyze the key benefits of youth involvement in peacekeeping.
• Explain why young people are leading tomorrow’s change today.
• Identify the main ingredients for building a peaceful generation with the help of young people’s initiatives.
• Investigate how adolescent girls can be significant agents of positive change in their communities.

Is World Peace Possible Essay Prompt

Whether or not the world can be a peaceful place is one of the most controversial topics. While most people who hear the question “Is a world without war possible?” will probably answer “no,” others still believe in the goodness of humanity.

To discuss in your essay if world peace is possible, use the following ideas:

• Explain how trade, communication, and technology can promote cooperation and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
• Analyze the role of international organizations like the United Nations and the European Union in maintaining peace in the world.
• Investigate how economic inequality poses a severe threat to peace and safety.
• Dwell on the key individual and national interests that can lead to conflict and competition between countries.

✔️ World Peace Topics for Essays

To help get you started with writing, here’s a list of 200 topics you can use for your future essTo help get you started with writing a world peace essay, we’ve prepared a list of topics you can use:

• Defining peace
• Why peace is better: benefits of living in harmony
• Is world peace attainable? Theory and historical examples
• Sustainable peace: is peace an intermission of war?
• Peaceful coexistence: how a society can do without wars
• Peaceful harmony or war of all against all: what came first?
• The relationship between economic development and peace
• Peace and Human Nature: Can Humans Live without Conflicts ?
• Prerequisites for peace : what nations need to refrain from war?
• Peace as an unnatural phenomenon: why people tend to start a war?
• Peace as a natural phenomenon: why people avoid starting a war?
• Is peace the end of the war or its beginning?
• Hybrid war and hybrid peace
• What constitutes peace in the modern world
• Does two countries’ not attacking each other constitute peace?
• “Cold peace” in the international relations today
• What world religions say about world peace
• Defining peacemaking
• Internationally recognized symbols of peace
• World peace: a dream or a goal?

🌎 Peace Essay Topics on Pacifism

• History of pacifism: how the movement started and developed
• Role of the pacifist movement in the twentieth-century history
• Basic philosophical principles of pacifism
• Pacifism as philosophy and as a movement
• The peace sign: what it means
• How the pacifist movement began: actual causes
• The anti-war movements: what did the activists want?
• The relationship between pacifism and the sexual revolution
• Early pacifism: examples from ancient times
• Is pacifism a religion?
• Should pacifists refrain from any kinds of violence?
• Is the pacifist movement a threat to the national security?
• Can a pacifist work in law enforcement authorities?
• Pacifism and non-violence: comparing and contrasting
• The pacifist perspective on the concept of self-defense
• Pacifism in art: examples of pacifistic works of art
• Should everyone be a pacifist?
• Pacifism and diet: should every pacifist be a vegetarian ?
• How pacifists respond to oppression
• The benefits of an active pacifist movement for a country

✌️ Interesting Essay Titles about Peace

• Can the country that won a war occupy the one that lost?
• The essential peace treaties in history
• Should a country that lost a war pay reparations?
• Peace treaties that caused new, more violent wars
• Can an aggressor country be deprived of the right to have an army after losing a war?
• Non-aggression pacts do not prevent wars
• All the countries should sign non-aggression pacts with one another
• Peace and truces: differences and similarities
• Do countries pursue world peace when signing peace treaties?
• The treaty of Versailles: positive and negative outcomes
• Ceasefires and surrenders: the world peace perspective
• When can a country break a peace treaty?
• Dealing with refugees and prisoners of war under peace treaties
• Who should resolve international conflicts?
• The role of the United Nations in enforcing peace treaties
• Truce envoys’ immunities
• What does a country do after surrendering unconditionally?
• A separate peace: the ethical perspective
• Can a peace treaty be signed in modern-day hybrid wars?
• Conditions that are unacceptable in a peace treaty

🕊️ Research Topics on Peace and Conflict Resolution

• Can people be forced to stop fighting?
• Successful examples of peace restoration through the use of force
• Failed attempts to restore peace with legitimate violence
• Conflict resolution vs conflict transformation
• What powers peacemakers should not have
• Preemptive peacemaking: can violence be used to prevent more abuse?
• The status of peacemakers in the international law
• Peacemaking techniques: Gandhi’s strategies
• How third parties can reconcile belligerents
• The role of the pacifist movement in peacemaking
• The war on wars: appropriate and inappropriate approaches to peacemaking
• Mistakes that peacemakers often stumble upon
• The extent of peacemaking : when the peacemakers’ job is done
• Making peace and sustaining it: how peacemakers prevent future conflicts
• The origins of peacemaking
• What to do if peacemaking does not work
• Staying out: can peacemaking make things worse?
• A personal reflection on the effectiveness of peacemaking
• Prospects of peacemaking
• Personal experience of peacemaking

💡 War and Peace Essay Topics

• Counties should stop producing new types of firearms
• Countries should not stop producing new types of weapons
• Mutual assured destruction as a means of sustaining peace
• The role of nuclear disarmament in world peace
• The nuclear war scenario: what will happen to the world?
• Does military intelligence contribute to sustaining peace?
• Collateral damage: analyzing the term
• Can the defenders of peace take up arms?
• For an armed person, is killing another armed person radically different from killing an unarmed one? Ethical and legal perspectives
• Should a healthy country have a strong army?
• Firearms should be banned
• Every citizen has the right to carry firearms
• The correlation between gun control and violence rates
• The second amendment: modern analysis
• Guns do not kill: people do
• What weapons a civilian should never be able to buy
• Biological and chemical weapons
• Words as a weapon: rhetoric wars
• Can a pacifist ever use a weapon?
• Can dropping weapons stop the war?

☮️ Peace Title Ideas for Essays

• How the nuclear disarmament emblem became the peace sign
• The symbolism of a dove with an olive branch
• Native Americans’ traditions of peace declaration
• The mushroom cloud as a cultural symbol
• What the world peace awareness ribbon should look like
• What I would like to be the international peace sign
• The history of the International Day of Peace
• The peace sign as an accessory
• The most famous peace demonstrations
• Hippies’ contributions to the peace symbolism
• Anti-war and anti-military symbols
• How to express pacifism as a political position
• The rainbow as a symbol of peace
• Can a white flag be considered a symbol of peace?
• Examples of the inappropriate use of the peace sign
• The historical connection between the peace sign and the cannabis leaf sign
• Peace symbols in different cultures
• Gods of war and gods of peace: examples from the ancient mythology
• Peace sign tattoo: pros and cons
• Should the peace sign be placed on a national flag?

🌐 Essay Topics about Peace Language

• The origin and historical context of the word “peace”
• What words foreign languages use to denote “peace”
• What words, if any, should a pacifist avoid?
• The pacifist discourse: key themes
• Disintegration language: “us” vs “them”
• How to combat war propaganda
• Does political correctness promote world peace?
• Can an advocate of peace be harsh in his or her speeches?
• Effective persuasive techniques in peace communications and negotiations
• Analyzing the term “world peace”
• If the word “war” is forbidden, will wars stop?
• Is “peacemaking” a right term?
• Talk to the hand: effective and ineffective interpersonal communication techniques that prevent conflicts
• The many meanings of the word “peace”
• The pacifists’ language: when pacifists swear, yell, or insult
• Stressing similarities instead of differences as a tool of peace language
• The portrayal of pacifists in movies
• The portrayals of pacifists in fiction
• Pacifist lyrics: examples from the s’ music
• Poems that supported peace The power of the written word
• Peaceful coexistence: theory and practice
• Under what conditions can humans coexist peacefully?
• “A man is a wolf to another man”: the modern perspective
• What factors prevent people from committing a crime?
• Right for peace vs need for peace
• Does the toughening of punishment reduce crime?
• The Stanford prison experiment: implications
• Is killing natural?
• The possibility of universal love: does disliking always lead to conflicts?
• Basic income and the dynamics of thefts
• Hobbesian Leviathan as the guarantee of peace
• Is state-concentrated legitimate violence an instrument for reducing violence overall?
• Factors that undermine peaceful coexistence
• Living in peace vs living for peace
• The relationship between otherness and peacefulness
• World peace and human nature: the issue of attainability
• The most successful examples of peaceful coexistence
• Lack of peace as lack of communication
• Point made: counterculture and pacifism
• What Woodstock proved to world peace nonbelievers and opponents?
• Woodstock and peaceful coexistence: challenges and successes
• Peace, economics, and quality of life
• Are counties living in peace wealthier? Statistics and reasons
• Profits of peace and profits of war: comparison of benefits and losses
• Can a war improve the economy? Discussing examples
• What is more important for people: having appropriate living conditions or winning a war?
• How wars can improve national economies: the perspective of aggressors and defenders
• Peace obstructers: examples of interest groups that sustained wars and prevented peace
• Can democracies be at war with one another?
• Does the democratic rule in a country provide it with an advantage at war?
• Why wars destroy economies: examples, discussion, and counterarguments
• How world peace would improve everyone’s quality of life
• Peace and war today
• Are we getting closer to world peace? Violence rates, values change, and historical comparison
• The peaceful tomorrow: how conflicts will be resolved in the future if there are no wars
• Redefining war: what specific characteristics today’s wars have that make them different from previous centuries’ wars
• Why wars start today: comparing and contrasting the reasons for wars in the modern world to historical examples
• Subtle wars: how two countries can be at war with each other without having their armies collide in the battlefield
• Cyber peace: how cyberwars can be stopped
• Information as a weapon: how information today lands harder blows than bombs and missiles
• Information wars: how the abundance of information and public access to it have not, nonetheless, eliminated propaganda
• Peace through defeating: how ISIS is different from other states, and how can its violence be stopped
• Is world peace a popular idea? Do modern people mostly want peace or mainly wish to fight against other people and win?
• Personal contributions to world peace
• What can I do for attaining world peace? Personal reflection
• Respect as a means of attaining peace: why respecting people is essential not only on the level of interpersonal communications but also on the level of social good
• Peacefulness as an attitude: how one’s worldview can prevent conflicts
• Why a person engages in insulting and offending: analysis of psychological causes and a personal perspective
• A smile as an agent of peace: how simple smiling to people around you contributes to peacefulness
• Appreciating otherness: how one can learn to value diversity and avoid xenophobia
• Peace and love: how the two are inherently interconnected in everyone’s life
• A micro-level peacemaker: my experiences of resolving conflicts and bringing peace
• Forgiveness for the sake of peace: does forgiving other people contribute to peaceful coexistence or promote further conflicts?
• Noble lies: is it acceptable for a person to lie to avoid conflicts and preserve peace?
• What should a victim do? Violent and non-violent responses to violence
• Standing up for the weak : is it always right to take the side of the weakest?
• Self-defense, overwhelming emotions, and witnessing horrible violence: could I ever shoot another person?
• Are there “fair” wars, and should every war be opposed?
• Protecting peace: could I take up arms to prevent a devastating war?
• Reporting violence: would I participate in sending a criminal to prison?
• The acceptability of violence against perpetrators: personal opinion
• Nonviolent individual resistance to injustice
• Peace is worth it: why I think wars are never justified
• How I sustain peace in my everyday life

Learn more on this topic:

• If I Could Change the World Essay: Examples and Writing Guide
• Ending the Essay: Conclusions
• Choosing and Narrowing a Topic to Write About
• Introduction to Research
• How the U.S. Can Help Humanity Achieve World Peace
• Ten Steps to World Peace
• How World Peace is Possible
• World Peace Books and Articles
• World Peace and Nonviolence
• The Leader of World Peace Essay
• UNO and World Peace Essay
• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to LinkedIn
• Share to email

So, there are a few days left before Halloween, one of the favorite American holidays both for kids and adults. Most probably, your teacher will ask to prepare a Halloween essay. And most probably, it is not the first Halloween essay that you need to prepare. We are sure that...

An investigative essay is a piece of writing based on the information you gather by investigating the topic. Unlike regular research or term paper, this assignment requires you to conduct interviews, study archival records, or visit relevant locations—in a word, inspect things personally. If you’re a fan of detective stories,...

A nationalism essay is focused on the idea of devotion and loyalty to one’s country and its sovereignty. In your paper, you can elaborate on its various aspects. For example, you might want to describe the phenomenon’s meaning or compare the types of nationalism. You might also be interested in...

“People for sale” is a phrase that describes exactly what human trafficking is. It also makes for an attention-grabbing title for an essay on this subject. You are going to talk about a severe problem, so it’s crucial to hook the reader from the get-go. A human trafficking essay is...

Is globalization a beneficial process? What are the pros and cons of a religious upbringing? Do the drawbacks of immigration outweigh the benefits? These questions can become a foundation for your advantages and disadvantages essay. And we have even more ideas to offer! There is nothing complicated about writing this...

This time you have to write a World War II essay, paper, or thesis. It means that you have a perfect chance to refresh those memories about the war that some of us might forget. So many words can be said about the war in that it seems you will...

Would you always go for Bill Nye the Science Guy instead of Power Rangers as a child? Were you ready to spend sleepless nights perfecting your science fair project? Or maybe you dream of a career in science? Then this guide by Custom-Writing.org is perfect for you. Here, you’ll find...

A satire essay is a creative writing assignment where you use irony and humor to criticize people’s vices or follies. It’s especially prevalent in the context of current political and social events. A satirical essay contains facts on a particular topic but presents it in a comical way. This task...

Your mood leaves a lot to be desired. Everything around you is getting on your nerves. But still, there’s one thing that may save you: music. Just think of all the times you turned on your favorite song, and it lifted your spirits! So, why not write about it in a music essay? In this article, you’ll find all the information necessary for this type of assignment: And...

Not everyone knows it, but globalization is not a brand-new process that started with the advent of the Internet. In fact, it’s been around throughout all of human history. This makes the choice of topics related to globalization practically endless.  If you need help choosing a writing idea, this Custom-Writing.org...

In today’s world, fashion has become one of the most significant aspects of our lives. It influences everything from clothing and furniture to language and etiquette. It propels the economy, shapes people’s personal tastes, defines individuals and communities, and satisfies all possible desires and needs. In this article, Custom-Writing.org experts...

Early motherhood is a very complicated social problem. Even though the number of teenage mothers globally has decreased since 1991, about 12 million teen girls in developing countries give birth every year. If you need to write a paper on the issue of adolescent pregnancy and can’t find a good...

A very, very good paragraph. thanks

Peace and conflict studies actually is good field because is dealing on how to manage the conflict among the two state or country.

Keep it up. Our world earnestly needs peace

A very, very good paragraph.

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access Options
• About Global Studies Quarterly
• About the International Studies Association
• Editorial Board
• Advertising & Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

Introduction, the perennial problem of speaking about peace, the obligation to write about war, traditions of international thinking, funder information.

• < Previous

What Do We Learn about War and Peace from Women International Thinkers?

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Glenda Sluga, What Do We Learn about War and Peace from Women International Thinkers?, Global Studies Quarterly , Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2023, ksad018, https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksad018

• Permissions Icon Permissions

The aim of this essay is to ask what can we learn about war and peace from women international thinkers? As I will show, new and old historical evidence of women thinkers points us in directions that suggest, first, the privations women regularly faced in order to make their arguments against the background of actual war, addressing both the more conventional “women's” topic of peace and the often masculinized controversies of the nature of violence. This same history sounds out the range and changing (gendered) registers of international thought, including the diminished tones of peace as a defining objective. Then there are the diverse locations of specifically women's international thought, from manifestos to pamphlets and newspaper articles to published tomes. These lead us to the intersecting political and intellectual networks of activism and influence that colored the intertextual referentiality that thinking generated. Finally, I will argue that the evidence at hand, and the related examples it connects to, underscores the broad transnational European settings of the texts that specifically address war and peace. It even suggests, as I suggest, that the borders of that transnationalism extended not only across the Atlantic, but also through the entangled continental political histories of Western Europe and Russia. In the twenty-first century, these contours of the history of women's international thought remain relevant, not least because they pose the question for us, what difference have women thinkers made?

Cet article traite de la question suivante: que peut-on apprendre sur la guerre et la paix grâce aux penseuses internationales ? Je montrerai que les nouvelles données issues des penseuses, mais aussi les plus anciennes et historiques, révèlent d'abord les privations auxquelles ont été régulièrement confrontées les femmes quand il s'agissait de présenter leurs idées en temps de guerre. Elles rejoignent le sujet « féminin » plus habituel de paix et les polémiques souvent masculinisées autour de la nature de la violence. Cette même histoire nous donne une idée de l'ampleur et de l’évolution des registres (genrés) de la pensée internationale, notamment la perte de vitesse de la présentation de la paix comme objectif ultime. Ensuite, la pensée internationale spécifiquement féminine s'exprime sur différents supports, des manifestes aux volumes publiés en passant par les pamphlets et articles de journal. Nous constatons ainsi l'intersection des réseaux politiques et intellectuels de militantisme et d'influence qui ont faussé l'intertextualité et la référentialité générées par cette pensée. Enfin, je soutiendrai que les données à disposition, et les exemples connexes, soulignent le large cadre européen transnational des textes qui traitent précisément de la guerre et de la paix. Elles indiquent aussi, comme je le montrerai, que les frontières de ce transnationalisme non seulement s’étendaient par-delà l'Atlantique, mais traversaient aussi l'enchevêtrement des théories politiques continentales de l'Europe occidentale et de la Russie. Au 21e siècle, ces contours de l'histoire de la pensée internationale des femmes conservent toute leur pertinence, notamment parce qu'ils s'interrogent sur l'importance du rôle des penseuses.

El objetivo de este artículo es hacernos la siguiente pregunta, ¿qué podemos aprender de las mujeres pensadoras internacionales acerca de la guerra y de la paz? Como demostraremos, tanto la nueva como la antigua evidencia histórica de las mujeres pensadoras nos indican direcciones que sugieren, en primer lugar, las privaciones a las que las mujeres se enfrentaron regularmente para poder presentar sus alegatos contra el contexto de la guerra real, abordando, o bien el tema más convencional de la paz «de las mujeres», o bien las controversias, a menudo masculinizadas, de la naturaleza de la violencia. Esta misma historia tantea tanto el rango como los registros cambiantes (de género) del pensamiento internacional, incluyendo los reducidos matices de la paz como objetivo definitorio. También podemos encontrar los diversos lugares del pensamiento internacional específicamente femenino, desde manifiestos a panfletos y desde artículos periodísticos hasta tomos publicados. Estos nos dirigen a las redes políticas e intelectuales entrecruzadas de activismo e influencia y que dieron color a la referencialidad intertextual que generaba el pensamiento. Por último, argumentaremos que la evidencia disponible, así como los ejemplos relacionados con los que se conecta esta evidencia, recalcan la amplia configuración europea transnacional de los textos que abordan específicamente la guerra y la paz. Esto incluso nos indica, tal como sugerimos, que las fronteras de ese transnacionalismo se extendieron no solo a través del Atlántico, sino a través de las enredadas historias políticas continentales de Europa Occidental y de Rusia. En el siglo XXI, estos perfiles de la historia del pensamiento internacional de las mujeres siguen siendo relevantes, entre otras razones porque nos plantean la siguiente pregunta, ¿cuál es el diferencial que han aportado las mujeres pensadoras?

Through the twentieth century, women have been “at the forefront of geopolitical thinking”; they have written “powerful analyses of war, the organized, reciprocal killing and maiming of people and destruction of things.” And yet, women have been “completely absent from the academic canon of international thought” ( Owens et al. 2022 , 2; Owens and Rietzler 2021 ). 1 This is the paradoxical intellectual setting of Patricia Owens, Katharina Rietzler, Kimberley Hutchings, and Sarah C. Dunstan's Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon , an anthology that assembles texts by women on the canonical themes of international politics since 1899: imperialism, anticolonialism, world economy, diplomacy, and foreign policy. Many of the women whose voices come through might be well known to feminist historians, even if they have not been read conventionally through the lens of “international thought”—as intellectual historians acknowledge, the field of international thought is (surprisingly) relatively new ( Armitage 2015 , 116–30; Sluga 2015 , 103–15; Huber, Pietsch, and Rietzler 2021 , 121–45). Even as Women's International Thought revolves around (mostly) Western European and trans-Atlantic examples, its enterprise is indicative of the historical breadth and diversity of the fabric of women's international thinking, textured by the warp and weft of its multivocality and inevitably dissonant tendencies. My aim in this essay is to make use of the anthology and these representative strengths to pose a specific historical question: what do we learn about war and peace from women international thinkers ?

In broaching this question by drawing on this anthology, I have preferred to frame women's international texts as manifestations of thinking , a potentially more generous concept than thought in its canonical accommodations. By emphasizing thinking , my intention is not unlike that of the anthology's editors, namely to draw attention to the same “multiple power relations” that have determined the canon of international thought so far and to expand, and possibly even challenge that canon, by incorporating an even wider spectrum of views on war and peace. In practical terms, the preference for thinking over thought allows me to capitalize on the anthology's own approach to its textual landscape, to incorporate a range of genres: manifestos, pamphlets, and newspaper articles as well as published tomes. I also take the opportunity to historically connect complementary thinkers from inside and outside the anthology, not only Bertha von Suttner, F.M. Stawell, Merze Tate, and Hannah Arendt, for example, but also European and Russian thinkers who, in this same period, were connected across the continent through their methods, and across the boundaries of nonfiction and fiction through their concerns. Among those concerns are the tensions between idealism and realism, the diminishing status of peace as a defining political objective, and the distinctive gendering of war. Then there is the history of the challenges women regularly faced in order to make their arguments, often against the backdrop of actual wars. Here, these themes are organized under the headings: “The perennial problem of speaking about peace”; “The obligation to write about war”; “The politics of war”; and “Traditions of international thought.” In positing the prospect of “traditions,” I also take up the question interrogated by Women's International Thought: Whether, given “the multiple intersecting relations of power that shape intellectual production,” there can be “such thing as a women's tradition [my emphasis] of international thought”? The evidence of the anthology itself, I propose, shows that, through the twentieth century, women international thinkers have regularly confronted the significance of their difference, even as they have attempted to reorient their gendered positionality. In particular, tinctured with the darkest events of the past hundred years, the examples collected here suggest that some women themselves fostered a sense of intellectual tradition around the longevity (and persistence) of their gender-inflected political aims. In this essay, their stories and their insights are connected by my overarching claim: in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the long history of women's international thinking speaks to the difference that women's international thinking continues to make ( Sluga 2014 , 65–72).

To the extent that it has existed as a field, “international thought” has often evoked the history of pacifism, and pacifism has been associated with femininity, and even, occasionally, feminism ( Owens and Rietzler 2021 , 17; Sluga 2021 , 226). Historically, women have been well aware of the impact of these associations on any attempt to speak to peace as a legitimate international imperative. At the turn of the twentieth century, Bertha von Suttner—a baroness who founded the Austrian peace movement and eventually impressed the dynamite king Alfred Nobel to fund a peace prize—struggled against the stigma of being both a woman and a pacifist.

Since then, she has remained perhaps the best known of the women associated with turn-of-the-twentieth-century international thinking about war. She has hardly lacked biographers, and she was herself an early publicist of her ideas ( Moyn 2021 , 32). 2 Her autobiography—published in German in 1889 as Die Waffen nieder! , in English in 1892 as Lay down your arms! , and, later, in many other languages—reached at least a million readers in her own lifetime. In 1905, Suttner (like many of the women under discussion in this intellectual history) was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in part for her role at the 1899 Hague peace congress famously organized by the Russian Tsar Nicholas II to somehow manage the escalating militarization of Europe's imperial powers. This was the tense setting in which Suttner took up as one of her main themes the realism of pacifists.

Suttner's address to the 1899 congress—now reproduced in the Women's International Thought anthology—directly attacks what she saw as a prevailing and disabling misconception: that “members of peace societies imagine under the name of universal peace a condition of general harmony, a world without fighting or divisions, with undisputed frontiers settled for all time, and inhabited by angelic beings, overflowing with gentleness and love.” She attributes this misrepresentation to the enemies of the peace movement, who accuse it of “absurdities … which it has never asserted.” In contrast, Suttner describes pacifism's realism: “[t]he friends of peace do not desire to found their kingdom on impossibilities, nor on conditions that might perhaps prevail thousands of years hence, but on the living present and living humanity” ( von Suttner 1899 , 50–69). The peace movement she leads does not demand the “avoidance of disputes,” as she clarifies, “for that is impossible” ( von Suttner 1899 , 56). Rather, she stresses, it is realistic; what pacifists want is for disputes between states to be settled “by arbitration instead of by force” ( von Suttner 1899 , 56).

In the early twentieth century, despite such protestations of realism, the authority of the peace movement's faith in arbitration remained vulnerable to the derision of its “enemies” and to the impact of the unprecedented scale of the arms race that provoked the 1899 congress in the first place. After war broke out in late 1914, the American economist and pacifist Emily Greene Balch acknowledged an inevitability to the “widespread feeling” “that this is not the moment to talk of a European peace” (Balch would eventually win the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1946). In October 1915, she equally insisted that “the psychological moment” for talking about peace was near. It could even be coaxed forth by beginning preparations for peace, through discussion of the terms and principles of a future peace:

In each country there are those that want to continue the fight until military supremacy is achieved, in each there are powerful forces that seek a settlement of the opposite type, one which instead of containing within itself the threats to international stability that are involved in annexation, humiliation of the enemy, and competition between armaments, shall secure national independence all round, protect the rights of minorities and foster international co-operation. ( Balch 1915 , 24)

Earlier that year, as battles raged through the nerve centers of Europe's security alliances, Balch was among the women—three British, some American, and one thousand mostly Dutch delegates—who gathered from April 28 to May 1 in The Hague, not uncoincidentally the site of the 1899 congress. Their aim was precisely to pursue the discussions required for a just and early peace. The Women's International Thought anthology includes texts from many of the women involved in The Hague congress, although not the famous manifesto on which the women agreed ( National Peace Federation 1915 ; Costin 1982 , 301–15; Vellacott 1993 , 23–56).

Hardly a conventional intellectual text, the intellectual authority of the 1915 Hague manifesto rests on its capture of the thinking of well-known American and British feminists such as Balch, Jane Addams, and Helena Swanwick, as well as the Hungarian Rosika Schwimmer ( National Peace Federation 1915 ). On the one hand, the manifesto plainly states the principles that Balch predicted would dominate peacemaking: national independence, minority rights, and international cooperation. Indeed, their international thinking possibly influenced, and certainly anticipated, the eventual terms of peacemaking in 1919, from the creation of international institutions, and the principle of nationality, to the democratic control of foreign policy. On the other hand, as importantly, the manifesto espouses topics that were not acceptable in the delineation of a new international politics: the importance of education and women's suffrage as means by which peace might be permanently maintained. Indeed, the Council of Ten who eventually decided the terms of the postwar peace explicitly and unanimously refused to accommodate the status of women in the peace settlement on the grounds that authority over that question defined national sovereignty and thus could not be put on an international agenda ( Sluga 2005a , 166–83; 2005b , 300–19; 2006 ). For our purposes, the manifesto and the history surrounding it is a vital example of how women's rights and women's political roles were consistently the point of distinction between women's international thinking and international thought more narrowly defined.

Over the course of the twentieth century, the women's Hague congress and its decisions were co-opted into general historical inventories of pacifism and internationalism, particularly as part of the story of the creation of the enduring organization “Women's International League for Peace and Freedom” (WILPF), although its specific peacemaking agenda was as often neglected. Less attention has been paid too to the ways in which these women were targeted by governments for their convictions. We know that some European governments attempted to deter attendance on the grounds that so-called peace propaganda might have undermined strategic wartime patriotic programs. In this same context, social historians have shown the extent of censoring of peace publications as well as unprecedented levels of harassment through raids and surveillance that took place in England. The German government, which overall tried to avoid arrest and prosecution, resorted instead to blocking the circulation of peace activists’ publications and views ( Ewing and Gearty 2001 ). In the United States, there is the example of Balch's activism leading to the loss of her academic position at Wellesley. In Russia, in 1915, Anna Shabanova was forced by police order to dismantle the Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) women's peace society she had established on the Austrian model of Bertha von Suttner ( Cohen 2012 , 184).

The connections between the Russian and other European experiences, events, and ideas ran deep. Before the Hague meeting, in March 1915, Shabanova and other socialist women organized their own anti-war meeting in the (wartime) neutral Swiss capital of Berne. Clara Zetkin, the German Secretary of the International Bureau of Socialist Women and one of the key organizers of this Berne congress, faced the opprobrium of her male peers in the German Socialist Party (SPD), which forbade its members’ attendance. The French women's delegation too suffered the criticism of the (male-dominated) French socialist party. When, regardless, the Berne peace congress went ahead, its participants—twenty-two women from Russia, France, Britain, Italy, Poland, and Sweden—agreed a manifesto that was the work mainly of Zetkin, drawn up in their company. The Berne women shared with the Hague attendees a certain obstinacy and pariah status—and the Hague and Berne women even supported each other's efforts to some extent. However, there were also important differences. The Hague manifesto was intrinsically a liberal document asserting the importance of peace, the intrinsically pacifist nature of women's influence, and the pacific influence of free seas, commerce, and trade routes. The Berne manifesto, in contrast, was oriented toward a socialist rather than liberal critique. It targeted not just arms, but also capitalism, making space for violence in the interests of politics: “Down with capitalism, which sacrifices untold millions to the wealth and power of the propertied! Down with the war! Forward to socialism!,” it proclaimed ( Manifesto of the International Conference of Socialist Women at Berne 1915 ).

The themes of the Berne congress are represented by the Russian socialist Alexandra Kollontai, who contributed her thinking to the congress from a distance. Kollontai had a history of participating in anti-war protests in Sweden, Switzerland, and Belgium; she had been arrested for organizing an anti-war demonstration in Belgium the previous year and was absent from Berne because she could not get permission from the French government to cross its territory. In the circumstances, she wrote her breathless pamphlet, Who Needs the War ?. Echoing the message of the Berne gathering, Kollontai describes the war as “a madness, an abomination, a crime,” and, more specifically, as benefitting only capitalism and a capitalist class ( Kollontai 1916 ; Kollontai [1926] 1994 , 123). On these same grounds, she argues in favor of a different imperative: a workers’ revolution. As we will see, political ideology was a critical theoretical dividing point for some women international thinkers on the question of when war might be justified.

Just as the First World War drew women to reflect on war and peace in a range of political contexts, so too did the end of the war, and the novel postwar international institutional setting ( Stöckmann 2018 , 215–35). The unprecedented intergovernmental body, the League of Nations, was the product of wartime activism. New research by Helen McCarthy, for example, has shown the extent of popular support among women as well as men during the war for a League of Nations that might be equipped to ensure peace in the future ( McCarthy 2011 ). Among those supporters was the Cambridge-based classicist Florence Melian Stawell, whose activism took the form of writing pamphlets and addressing the compatibility of national patriotism and internationalism ( Sluga 2021 , 223–43). After the war, Stawell contributed to the English “Home Library” series a long history of the internationalist basis of peace thinking. Her book, The Growth of International Thought (1927), was meant to educate a broader public in the enduring and universal internationalist values of the newly established League of Nations, as an instrument of world peace ( Stawell 1929 , 7, 18–26). From the viewpoint of intellectual history, The Growth of International Thought is the product of Stawell's classicist expertise, which she shared with so many of the male scholars who led the wartime English League of Nations movement ( Sylvest 2004 , 409–32; Sluga 2006 , chapter 2; Stapleton 2007 , 261–91; McCarthy 2011 ). Like other classicists, she turned to Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian wars, “in which oligarchs fought against democrats, where there was ‘every form of murder and every extreme of cruelty’,” as “one of the strongest indictments against war ever written.” The Peloponnesian wars taught that the causes of belligerence are “the lust for power and gain.” War not only has its origins in the motivations of men, it changes them; once war begins “men are tempted by dire necessity,” and many “grow like the lives they lead” ( Owens and Rietzler 2021 , 41).

Stawell's interest in classical texts also underlines what women's international thinking often added to discussions of war and peace, namely an explicit engagement with the difference women made, such as their gendered investment in peace. Sometimes, the rationale for this difference was biological motherhood. Some of the authors of the 1915 Hague manifesto argued that since women's maternal roles instinctively inclined them to peace, granting women rights would inevitably encourage peace. Mostly, however, arguments for making women's rights a basis for peace were proposed on the grounds of social not biological reasoning: the social forms of masculinity that supported gender inequality also contributed to war. On this same view, conventional forms of femininity were more likely to be associated with pacifist ambitions. Emily Greene Balch understood that women could have the same emotions as men, and be likewise “inflamed by nationalism, intoxicated by the glories of war, embittered by old rancors” ( Balch 1922 , 334–36). However, she ventured that psychologically, women “have a less powerful instinctive pugnacity than men,” and she underlined the sociological fact that women had “in the mass… taken little part in the political life of their peoples.” In war, women “always stood to lose even more than men, as Europe knew” ( Balch 2022 , 493). Stawell turned as well to Euripides’ Trojan Women and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata for lessons about the different roles men and women could take in international thinking ( Owens et al. 2022 , 21; Sluga 2021 , 28; Stawell, 2022, 42). 3 In both plays, women reject men's violence. Most famously, Lysistrata , the eponymous figure (“whose name means ‘the Peacemaker’”) determines to band women from all sides together “in a vow that they will have nothing to do with men until the senseless war between them is ended” (cited in Owens et al. 2022 , 42).

Through the twentieth century, in the face of prevalent episodes of imperial and nation-state-based violence, women have felt an obligation to think and write about the fundamental causes of war. Emily Greene Balch explained that “the great war” revealed human nature to be “a thin crust barely concealing a substratum of explosive passions and interests which may break out in a disastrous eruption at any time.” This same truth made it all the more imperative to ask what could be done “to prevent the calamity?” Virginia Woolf, among the most famous of English writers, arrived at this sense of obligation too, but only belatedly, more than a decade after the First World War or Great War as it was known.

Initially, in the face of the overwhelming tragedy of the First World War, its decimation of a generation of men, Woolf felt that the war could not be spoken about; its suffering was so great that it could not be given words and had to be passed over in silence. In A Room of One's Own (1929), she reflected that feelings that were possible before the First World War—including “the abandonment and rapture” excited by love poetry—“could not be written about after it” ( Caine 2015 , 20; Winter 2019 , 223–35; Beganovic 2020 ). By the 1930s, however, as Woolf contemplated the second year of the conflict of the Spanish Civil War, the ominous onward march of colonial wars and militarism, and accruing refugee crisis, all compounding the threat of another cataclysmic war in Europe, she saw it as her duty to write about war, and to ask how war might be prevented. Her answers took up the themes of A Room of One's Own —the social and political constrictions of gender roles and relations, women's inequality in the professions and in education, the (incomplete promise of) the postwar expansion of the franchise, and the broader social and psychological damage inflicted on individuals by “patriarchy”—and brought them to bear on her understanding of war ( Beganovic 2020 ).

In Three Guineas (1938), published on the eve of the Second World War, Virginia Woolf set out to understand the ways in which middle-class women's exclusion from the corridors of power and influence was tied to predominant forms of masculinity, and masculinity to the causes of war. Observing the powerlessness of middle-class women such as herself, she noted that women could not be members of the stock exchange so they could not use the pressure of force nor the pressure of money to prevent or stop wars. Women could not be diplomats so they could not negotiate treaties to end wars. In England, women could participate in civil service and legal institutions, but they had precarious positions and little authority ( Woolf 1966 , 45). Women could write to the press to voice their views; however, the decision what to print or not was in hands of men. In sum, Woolf declaimed, identifying with her middle-class female subject, “we have no weapon with which to enforce our will”: “all the weapons with which an educated man can enforce his opinion are either beyond our grasp or so nearly beyond it that even if we used them we could scarcely inflict one scratch … educated women [are] even weaker than working class women who can use their labour in the munitions factories to protest” ( Woolf 1966 , 12). Woolf connected the precarity of the public situation of women such as herself to their private circumstances, to “the fear which forbids freedom in the private house. That fear, small, insignificant and private as it is, is connected with the other fear, the public fear, which is neither small nor insignificant, the fear which has led you to ask us to help you to prevent war” ( Woolf 1966 , 129–30). This connection between the private and the public becomes her method of dissecting the origins and prevention of war and illustrating its tragedy.

While Stawell returned to classical texts to understand how men's psychological and material motivations could lead to war, and how war changed men, Woolf dwelt on the contemporary situation, drawing on the evidence of everyday life. In particular, she discusses the photographs sent by the Spanish Government to media outlets “with patient pertinacity about twice a week” as witness to the civil war there, and intended to arouse sympathy: “They are not pleasant photographs to look upon. They are photographs of dead bodies for the most part” ( Woolf 1966 , 10).

This morning's collection contains the photograph of what might be a man's body, or a woman's; it is so mutilated that it might, on the other hand, be the body of a pig. But those certainly are dead children, and that undoubtedly is the section of a house. A bomb has torn upon the side; there is still a birdcage hanging in what was presumably the sitting room, but the rest of the house looks like nothing so much as a bunch of spillikins suspended in mid-air. ( Woolf 1966 , 10–11)

The gaze in Woolf's text belongs to women, in this case. She suggests that women's specific social and historical situatedness connects them: “A common interest unites us; it is one world, one life. How essential it is that we should realize that unity the dead bodies, the ruined houses prove. For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions forget the private figure, or if we in the intensity of our private emotions forget the public world. Both houses will be ruined, the public and the private, the material and the spiritual for they are inseparably connected.”

Woolf also uses photographs to dissect the social origins of the gendered dimensions of war as a profession, war sold as a source of happiness and excitement for men, and war as an outlet for manly qualities. In particular, she analyses circulating representations of the masculinity embodied by the orchestrators of the violence erupting across Europe, their portraiture declaiming “[t]he quintessence of virility, the perfect type of which all the others are imperfect adumbrations”:

He is a man certainly, His eyes are glazed; his eyes glare. His body, which is braced in an unnatural position, is tightly cased in a uniform. Upon the breast of that uniform are sewn several medals and other mystic symbols. His hand is upon a sword. He is called in German and Italian Fuhrer or Duce ; in our own language Tyrant or Dictator. And behind him lie ruined houses and dead bodies – men, women and children.

Woolf was not focused on this image, she explained, “in order to excite once more the sterile emotion of hate”. Instead, she wanted to use the photo “to release other emotions such as the human figure, even thus crudely, in a coloured photograph arouses in us who are human beings.” She was interested in the “connection” it suggested, between the public and private worlds: “the tyrannies and servilities of the one, are the tyrannies and servilities of the other.” ( Woolf 1966 , 142).

In using the medium of the photograph to gender and to connect the private figure and the public world, Woolf anticipates later treatments of atrocity photography and humanitarianism, and discussions of the representations of fascism, whether by Susan Sontag or feminist international relations scholars. She shares an interest in patriarchy as an elemental cause of war, and, like other women international thinkers before her, renders women's socially and historically determined difference, “their membership of the ‘society of outsiders,’” “in the historical, social circumstances” they face, “their only weapon in the prevention of war.” For Woolf in particular, women's “outsider” position becomes their means of challenging “whether the new militarization of the society was really inevitable and necessary” ( Woolf 1966 , 115). “Different as we are,” Woolf contends, “as facts have proved, both in sex and education … it is from that difference, as we have already said, that our help can come, if help we can, to protect liberty, to prevent war” ( Owens et al. 2022 , 499).

Significantly, Woolf does not claim that any dimensions of masculinity or women's difference are natural, even if they are normative. They are, instead, she argues, symptomatic of “patriarchy.” They are the product of patriarchal institutions and practices. This same explanation means, she argues, that patriarchal gender norms can be tackled through education: “What kind of society, what kind of human being … should [education] seek to produce?”; What is “the kind of society the kind of people that will help to prevent war”? ( Woolf 1966 , 3). In reply, she posits that instead of the arts of dominating other people, the arts of ruling, of killing, and of acquiring land and capital, education should focus on “medicine, mathematics, music, painting and literature,” and “the arts of human intercourse” ( Woolf 1966 , 34). 4

The gender emphasis of Woolf's argument for how to prevent war, and the writer's obligation to take up that topic, has resonated in the themes of women international thinkers, before and after. Her educational thematic has woven its way in and out of twentieth-century rationales for inventing international institutions, not least the League of Nations Intellectual Cooperation initiative, and the United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization. It also underlines the extent to which women's international thinking—with its interest in the intersecting spheres of the private and public, the emotional, intimate relationship between masculinity in the private sphere and militarism in the public sphere, moving across textual/visual sources, and across the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction—has evaded the generic limitations of the existing canon of international thought. Here I want to take up the potential for this same international thinking to link Virginia Woolf to the Nobel literary prizewinner Svetlana Alexievich, writing at the other end of the twentieth century, in the midst of the authoritarian violence of the Russian and Belorussian states in the post–Cold War ( Beganovic 2020 , 28, 33). 5

Born in 1948 in West Ukraine to a Belorussian father and Ukrainian mother, Svetlana Alexievich has been a prominent anti-war voice since the end of the Cold War, convinced that writing about war is an obligation ( Alexievich and Gimson 2018 , 71–72). 6 She is a fiction writer whose novels have been characterized as “attempts to explore human nature through the accounts of war witnesses and to explain more complex social structures in order to understand the causes of wars and prevent them”; “Alexievich says that she wants to show how disgusting wars are, so that even thinking about war would be impossible, even for generals, and so, she does not write a history of war, but the history of feelings or emotional knowledge about wars” ( Novikau 2017 , 320).

In Boys in Zinc (1989), Alexievich’s witness account of the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989), she poses the question, “How can we recover a normal vision of life?”: “After the great wars of the twentieth century and the mass deaths, writing about the modern (small) wars, like the war in Afghanistan, requires different ethical and metaphysical stances” ( Alexievich 2017 , 18–19). Against the background of ongoing Russian imperial wars, her interest lies in reclaiming the specificity of the single human being ( Moorehead 2019 ); “The only human being for someone. Not as the state regards him, but who he is for his mother, for his wife, for his child” ( Alexievich 2017 , 19). Like Stawell and others before her, Alexievich understood that war changed people; she also believed that analyzing postwar time is often more important than analyzing the war itself: “People do not change during war. People change after the war when they look at reality through the lens of their war experience” ( Novikau 2017 , 322).

As we have seen, in these repertoires the diagnosis of war, as often fundamentally associated with masculinity, has made the discussion of war a difficult, if not illegitimate, intellectual terrain for women, while also providing the provocation for women's contributions as different. Is Alexievich an international thinker? She is certainly connected to a tradition of women's international thinking, of women writing about war and peace across its disciplinary confines. Alexievich, like Woolf, works with a “biographical historical method” that aims to dismantle the structures that provoke “the strong emotions which push people, particularly men, to fight” ( Beganovic 2020 ). As writers, Alexievich and Woolf are exemplary of a particular strand of international thinking—characterized by the interplay of fiction, biography, and historical narrative—that can be traced through the twentieth century. As we have seen, in the early twentieth century, the challenge of writing about peace manifested in the ways in which women thought about war, and the way they experienced the costs of that writing, whether social opprobrium, threats, physical attacks, and criminal penalties. While the sociohistorical connections between a middle-class English writer of the interwar years and a female Soviet/post-Soviet intellectual are thinner than those that might connect Alexievich to Anna Shabanova and Alexandra Kollontai, for example, even Woolf bore the brunt of visceral attacks for her “peace propaganda” ( Lee 1997 , 698). In the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Alexievich—like Russian and European women before her engaging the imperative of writing about peace and war— has been accused of “defamation” and “desecration of the soldiers’ honor” ( Sud nad tsinkovimi malchikami 1994 , 130). She has endured vicious political persecution at the hand of Belorussian courts. These have charged her with distorting and falsifying the testimony of Afghan veterans and of offending mothers with portraits of their boys “as soulless killer-robots, pillagers, drug addicts and rapists” ( Sud nad tsinkovimi malchikami 1994 , 130). Facing threats to her personal safety, Alexievich has continued her criticism of Belorussia in the current Ukraine war through her fiction and nonfictional writing, pursued as a kind of obligation ( Belarusian Nobel Laureate Alexievich 2022 ). Just why states object to women's international thinking is clarified by the thinkers themselves, who have detailed the entangled private and public, state and individual interests at stake.

The Politics of War

If we follow the tracks laid by the anthology Women and International Thought , the Second World War leads to other unexpected albeit prominent women thinkers, working across literary and political genres. Some of these women were more enmeshed in the disciplinary landscape of international politics, and yet their status as thinkers was equally neglected. Merze Tate's (1942 ) The Disarmament Illusion —originally a Harvard doctoral thesis—was written as “a transnational intellectual history of debates about war as a mechanism for dispute resolution, about the conflict between state sovereignty and the need for international cooperation, and about the perpetuation of historical power imbalances” ( Savage 2021 , 271). Writing in the context of the Second World War, from the double marginality of her gender and race difference, as an African-American woman, Tate thought about disarmament in the context of the long history of the imperial wars of the previous century: “conflicts fought in the Far East and South Africa”; whether Russia in Manchuria, or “a combined European and American army” avenging “the outrage of the Boxers by sacking Peking”; or England fighting in the Transval, “5000 miles from her base of supplies”; and even the United States, “conquering and holding under military rule conquered possessions an even greater distance from home waters” ( Tate 1942 , 294).

Traversing “economic imperialism” and the state-building military precepts of the late-nineteenth century, Tate does not presume that the prospect of disarmament is an illusion. Rather, she argues that disarmament policies have been ineffective ( Tate 1942 , xi). Disarmament is an issue that stands “for a general simultaneous reduction or non-augmentation of armies and navies or military budgets” ( Tate 1942 , ix). It is not “a matter of mathematics nor of morals but of politics” ( Tate 1942 , 346). By politics, she means the ideological investments of states “seek[ing] to give effect to their national policies through armaments as well as through monetary and immigration policies, tariffs and embargoes”: “armament competition is inextricably interwoven with political tension, and international agreement on armaments is possible only when the national policies of states are not in conflict”; in this same context, an international disarmament process standardizes “the relative diplomatic power of the countries involved and prevents the use of armament competition to upset the political equilibrium” ( Tate 1942 , 27, 246).

The historian Barbara Savage tells us that given the failure of disarmament and the cascade of early twentieth-century wars, Tate had much less confidence than her male mentors, or her female predecessors, that “an educated public might bring pressure to bear on these issues, or that more open diplomacy might yield different results.” In canvassing explanations that acknowledged economic or gender determinism, Tate “resisted the idea that women were early or especially effective advocates of disarmament” and she was skeptical of any “materialistic anti-war impulse.” “Peace would only come from ‘a juster conception of international relations’ and some ‘rational international political system’” ( Savage 2021 , 273). Nevertheless, we also find that when Tate studied past peace congresses, churches, international jurists, interparliamentary groups, and “public opinion,” she reasserted a realist pacifist tradition stretching back to the 1899 Hague peace congress and to Bertha von Suttner.

As we have already seen, the question of realism is a persistent thematic in women's international thinking, defining the reach and limits of reflection on the prevention of wars and the maintenance of peace. When we move (as the anthology does) to Hannah Arendt, among the best-known most often cited women thinkers of the latter half of the twentieth century, we return to the predominant concern with the relationship of war to peace, how war changes men and women, and how this fact impacts politics. Writing in the full knowledge of the consequences of the Second World War, and the Holocaust, Arendt's “The Question of War” (1958–1959) takes a lesson from the classical past. Because “military action invalidated the basic equality of citizens … war belongs, as the Greeks saw it, in a non-political sphere” ( Owens 2022 , 114):

What was uniquely wrong about wars of annihilation … was not just the numbers of the dead or the destruction of entire cities, but the destruction of an ‘historical and political reality … that cannot be rebuilt because it is itself not a product … [the] action and speech created by human relationships’ ” (Owens 2002, 83).

Given this understanding of how war undermines politics, as Owens explains, there is only one situation in which Arendt “would have supported the principle of military action,” namely “for the immediate and short-term goal of stopping genocide since it ‘destroys the very possibility of a political world’” ( Owens 2007 , 115). We learn from Arendt that violence is “only rational to achieve immediate and short-term ends, such as ending ethnic cleansing or genocide, not abstract goals of any kind.” Indeed, “all other war should be ruled out if in practice it resulted in a challenge to any ‘actually existing solidarity of mankind’” (Owens 2009, 147). 7

In this same vein, Arendt anticipates that “a future war will not be about a gain or loss of power, about borders, export markets, or Lebensraum, that is, about things that can also be achieved by means of political discussion and without the use of force” ( Owens 2021 , 110). War cannot be understood as “the ultima ratio of negotiations, whereby the goals of war were determined at the point where negotiations broke off”; rather, it is “a continuation of politics by other means,” “the means of cunning and deception” ( Owens 2007 , 91–110; Arendt 2009 , 165).’

Arendt's prognosis resonates with the thinking of women in the past, such as F.M. Stawell, who argues that war not only has its origins in the motivations of men, it changes them; once war begins, “men are tempted by dire necessity,” and many “grow like the lives they lead” ( Committee on the Bureau of International Research in Harvard University and Radcliffe College [n.d. c. 1923] , 41). 8 It also resonates with our present, in which the idea of “new wars”—Mary Kaldor's term—and “forever war” suggests that violence has become its own raison d'etre ( Kaldor 2005 , 491–98). Like women international thinkers before her, Kaldor represents in this “tradition” a woman whose scholarly or theoretical work overlaps with their activist engagement with war and peace. For these same reasons—her gendered relationship to a tradition built on women's difference, and her activism—her thinking can be central to international thought, while she herself has been forced to constantly negotiate a place in a male-dominated canon and discipline.

As women have addressed the realities of war, at times their international thinking has insisted on the links between peace and women's rights as a dimension of the realism of peace itself. It has also referenced an accruing realist/pacifist tradition. In the mid-twentieth century, Merze Tate insisted that her book Disarmament Illusion was “not peace propaganda,” and distinguished her proposals and ideas “for a general, simultaneous reduction or non-augmentation of armies and navies or military budgets” from “the complete abolition of armaments as implied in [Bertha von Suttner's] phrase ‘lay down your arms’” ( Tate 1942 , ix; Savage 2021 , 271). 9 Of course, this was not how Suttner argued the realism of the pacifist cause. Suttner saw herself navigating “that narrow path between fruitless utopianism on the one side and reckless realism on the other, leading to a higher form of international relations” ( Stöcker 2022 , 405). But even as Tate's relatively critical invocation of Suttner's motif anticipated criticisms of the impossibility of disarmament, it inadvertently echoed Suttner's insistence that realism grew out of the ideal; ideals once considered utopian had in fact become real. Suttner noted at the turn of the twentieth century that there was nothing more utopian than the prospect of an “international parliament” and plans for an “International Permanent Tribunal of Arbitration.” “One forgets to contemplate,” she observed in regard to the 1899 Hague peace congress, “the overwhelming fact that such a Conference has been called together by an autocrat in our ultra-military times, and in which every State takes part. Apart from all that will be achieved by speeches, propositions and resolutions ( Suttner 2022 , 375).” She insisted that “the significance and the effect of the event itself must be of the greatest influence, and the first official Peace Conference appears like a miracle in the history of the world.” The conference, in her view, cut through the distinction between ideal and real, because it had created a reality. Half a century later, Merze Tate too presented “the fact of the [1899] Conference itself” (“this wildest dream of the Utopians”) as evidence that governments had taken up debates that are otherwise the concern of philosophers, jurists, and even utopians ( Suttner 2022 , 377).

We can pick up these same threads in 1985, as the Swedish international thinker Alva Myrdal gives her 1985 Nobel Peace Prize lecture. In the fractious landscape of the Cold War's hot conflicts and a nuclear arms race, Myrdal explicitly orients her intellectual journey to disarmament thinking by referencing Suttner's (1899) motif—not uncoincidentally, since Suttner had all but invented the prize ( Sluga 2014 ). Myrdal comments that despite Hiroshima, in the first decade of the post–Second World War, she herself did not really pay much attention to “the problem of ‘atomic weapons’ as they were known.” She was more concerned with reconstruction and “the great historic drama of decolonization”; “I was not from the outset alert to the great risks of an incipient militarization of the word; I was not ready to cry out: Down with weapons”. “My opposition,” she declares, “was directed more against the repression of human rights and the cruelties of war, particularly the bombing of civilians; I personally experienced some of it in London. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons shocked me as it did the rest of the world, but I shared the hope of many that the end of the war also meant the end of nuclear weapons” ( Myrdal 1977 , xxi.).

Which tradition of women's international thinking should we remember? The imperative to write about war, the consequences of writing about peace? The relationship between the private and the public? The role of education and other social institutions? The determinism of patriarchy and/or gender? To be sure, discerning a tradition of women's international thinking offers no simple answers to the question “how to prevent war,” or the challenge of peace, or the difference women's international thinking has made. Instead, that thinking has navigated usefully the difficult path between ideal and real choices by capitalizing on the sociohistorical bases of difference and the possibilities for change. Woolf acknowledges that it is hard to maintain “the recurring dream that has haunted the human mind since the beginning of time, the dream of peace, the dream of freedom” when one has “the sound of the guns in your ears.” In these same circumstances, she ventures that even when the imperative is “how to prevent war,” rather than to consider the nature of peace, women's difference can be put to use:

since we are different, our help must be different … The answer to your question must be that we can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods. We can best help you to prevent war not by joining your society but by remaining outside your society but in cooperation with its aim. That aim is the same for us both. It is to assert “the rights of all-all men and women – to the respect in their persons of the great principles of Justice and Equality and Liberty.” ( Woolf 1966 , 673)

In this tradition of women's international thinking, the tension between realism and idealism has also been converted into a tension between the past—which has to be broken with—and a reimagined future initiated in the present. Here is Arendt on this same theme: “The lifespan of man running towards death would inevitably carry everything human to ruin and destruction if it were not for the faculty of interrupting it and beginning something new, a faculty which is inherent in action like an every-present reminder that men, though they may day, are not born in order to die but in order to begin” ( Arendt [1958] 2019 , 246; Cooper 1991 ; Beckman and D'Amico 1994 ; Sluga 2005b , 2017 , 2021 ).

Whether we consider the status of the international order, our era of artificial intelligence, the changing nature of wars, or the changing position of women themselves, women's difference still matters to international thinking. On the one hand, in many European and trans-Atlantic countries, women now have profiles in the public sphere to the extent that searching for the particularism of gender in analyses of war and peace and women's international thinking seems irrelevant. On the other hand, the gendered nature of women's difference remains relevant, whether in commentary that remarks on the presence of women or, indeed, on the difference that feminist foreign policy itself could make to the prevention of war. In the early twenty-first century, women lead countries and regions, and intergovernmental institutions. They can use the pressure of force and the pressure of money; they can even negotiate treaties. Women, the German press suggests, have been prominent in the commentary field on the war in Ukraine. The Moscow Times talks of the “feminine” face of Russian war protests. Female prime ministers of Finland, Sweden, and Estonia have overseen decisions about membership of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 2022, the European Union (EU) stateswomen Ursula Van der Leyen and Roberta Metsola were prominent early visitors of the embattled president in Kyiv and supporters of the war against Russia as a just war. Even where women do not lead, “feminist foreign policy” ostensibly guides the thinking and strategy of some of the countries looking on, not least the EU itself. In a prime example of the confluence of these shifts, the green German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock has had to reconcile a new era of German militarization and her commitment to “feminist foreign policy” ( Speech by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock 2022 ).

We also know, thanks to the anthology, that women's international thinking does not always diverge from the existing canon of international thought dominated by men. Certainly, the Vietnam war and its purpose found its supporters among women international thinkers such as Roberta Wohlstetter, whose 1960 Bancroft winning book Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision argued that “US national security required an assiduously aggressive posture, a willingness to fight and win a nuclear war” ( Speech by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock 2022 ). In 2022, this is a position that echoes through Anne Applebaum's insistence that democracies should not only have weapons, but also wield them or risk the annihilation of democracy ( Applebaum 2022 ). However, it is also true that individual women have regularly taken up the problems of war and peace by thinking against the grain of ideological gender constraints. If we want to understand the lack of enthusiasm of African and Asian states for the United States and Europe's rallying call against the Russian invasion in Ukraine, we need only look at Women's International Thought’ s examples of writing about the dangers of imperial exceptionalism, not least Mary McCarthy's Cold War “The other war,” which lambasted the moral standing of Washington, DC (the “Athens” of the twentieth century) and its war of “pacification” in Vietnam ( Bessner 2022 ; McCarthy 2022 , 121–26).

Women have always drawn on uncommon examples, arrived at uncommon conclusions, and forged alternative intellectual traditions in the process, even when they themselves did not remember them accurately. The difference that women thinking about war and peace have made should inspire us to further collections and considerations, picking up the remnants we still have, diverse in their historical contexts and languages, incorporating voices imagined as subaltern, or outside Europe, and back in time, picking up echoes we may have forgotten along the way. These remind us too of the importance of international thinking itself. This is the difference that the history of women as international thinkers makes.

I want to thank the editors of that volume, and Ekaterina Abramova for their advice and help with this essay. This essay was originally presented as a keynote at the Women's International Thought conference, LSE, May 2022.

In his recent critique of “forever wars,” and the maintenance of the oxymoronic legal concept “humane war,” Sam Moyn singles out the importance in the history of peace thinking of Suttner's Lay Down Your Arms , or Down with Weapons? Die Waffen nieder!

As the anthology editors note, even Stawell's middle name recognized the conquered inhabitants of Melos, her feminist reading of the “Greeks” prefigures more recent calls for “a Melian security studies.” “Introduction”, Owens et al. 2022 , 28.

I have drawn here from a broader selection of Three Guineas than that included in the anthology Women's International Thought .

This connection is inspired by the work of Velid Beganovic, a Bosnian scholar of Woolf who links her method to that of Alexievich.

All Russian texts here are translated by Ekaterina Abramova.

On these same grounds, in the postwar Arendt supports an international criminal court “to try and punish those responsible.”

“So it goes on till there is nothing but suspicion everywhere. There was no treaty binding enough to reconcile opponents: everyone knew that nothing was secure and therefore he thought only of his own safety; he could not afford to trust another.”

The quote continues “but in the wider significance given to it in popular language as meaning ‘limitation and reduction of armaments.’”

Research for this article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no 885285).

Alexievich Svetlana . 2017 . Boys in Zinc . London : Penguin .

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Alexievich Svetlana , Gimson Sally . 2018 . “ Truth or Dare: An Interview with Nobel Prize-Winning Author Svetlana Alexievich about Her Work and How She Copes with Threats against Her .” Index on Censorship 47 ( 4 ): 71 – 72 .

Applebaum Anne . 2022 . “ There Is No Liberal World Order: Unless Democracies Defend Themselves, the Forces of Autocracy Will Destroy Them .” The Atlantic, May, 2022. Accessed February 24, 2022. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/autocracy-could-destroy-democracy-russia-ukraine/629363/ .

Arendt Hannah . [1958] 2019 . The Human Condition . Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press .

Arendt Hannah . [1993] 2009 . The Promise of Politics . New York : Schocken Books .

Armitage David . 2015 . “ Modern International Thought: Problems and Prospects .” History of European Ideas 41 ( 1 ): 116 – 30 .

Balch Emily Greene . 1915 . “ The Time to Make Peace .” The Survey 35 : 24 – 25 . Also published in Jane Addams, Emily G. Balch, and Alice Hamilton. 1915. Women at the Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results , 111–23. New York: Macmillan .

Balch Emily Greene . 1922 . “ Women's Work for Peace .” The World Tomorrow 4–5 : 334 – 36 .

Balch Emily Greene . 2022 . “ From ‘Womens’ Work for Peace’ .” In Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon , edited by Owens Patricia , Rietzler Katharina , Hutchings Kimberly , Dunstan Sarah C. . 493–496. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Beckman Peter , D'Amico Francine . 1994 . Women, Gender, and World Politics: Perspectives, Policies, and Prospects . Westport, CT : Bergin & Garvey .

Beganovic Velid . 2020 . “ ‘God Damn This War”: Virginia Woolf's Struggle for Peace between the Wars .” E-rea 17.2. Accessed March 17, 2023. https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.9612 .

Bessner Daniel . 2022 . “ Ending Primacy to End U.S. Wars .” Quincy Brief No 24, April 7. Accessed March 17, 2023. https://quincyinst.org/report/ending-primacy-to-end-u-s-wars/ .

Bessner Daniel . “ Belarusian Nobel Laureate Alexievich Says Lukashenka's Actions over Ukraine a ‘Crime’ .” 2022 . March 5, RFE/RL's Belarus Service. Accessed March 17, 2023. https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-alexievich-lukashenka-crime/31737561.html .

Caine Barbara . 2015 . “ Love and Romance in Interwar British Women's Autobiography .” In Love and Romance in Britain, 1918–1970 , edited by Harris A. , Jones T.W. , 20 – 40 . London : Palgrave Macmillan .

Cohen Laurie . 2012 . “ Early Endeavors to Establish a (Soviet) Russian WILPF Section, 1915–1925: A Little Known Episode in Feminist Transnational Peace History .” Deportate, Esuli, Profughe 18–19 : 178 – 99 .

Committee on the Bureau of International Research in Harvard University and Radcliffe College (n.d. c. 1923) . 2022 . In Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon , edited by Owens Patricia , 39 – 40 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Cooper Sandi . 1991 . Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe, 1815–1914 . New York : Oxford University Press .

Costin Lela . 1982 . “ Feminism, Pacifism, Internationalism and the 1915 International Congress of Women .” Women's Studies International Forum 5 ( 3–4 ): 301 – 15 .

Ewing Keith , Anthony Gearty Conor . 2001 . The Struggle for Civil Liberties: Political Freedom and the Rule of Law in Britain, 1914–1945 . Oxford : Oxford University Press .

Gankin Olga Hess , Fisher H.H. . 1940 . Manifesto of the International Conference of Socialist Women at Berne, March 1915 . In The Bolsheviks and the World War: The Origin of the Third International . 295–297. Palo Alto, CA : Stanford University Press . Accessed March 17, 2023. https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C1735304 .

Huber Valeska , Pietsch Tamson , Rietzler Katharina . 2021 . “ Women's International Thought and the New Professions, 1900–1940 .” Modern Intellectual History 18 ( 1 ): 121 – 45 .

Kaldor Mary . 2005 . “ Old Wars, Cold Wars, New Wars, and the War on Terror .” International Politics 42 ( 4 ): 491 – 98 .

Kollontai Alexandra . 1916 . Komu nuzhna voina? Bern : Ts. K. R.S.D.R.P .

Kollontai Alexandra . [1926] 1994 . “ An Epitaph for Hope. From An Autobiography of a Sexually Liberated Communist Woman .” Peace/Mir. An Anthology of Historic Alternatives to War , edited by Chatfield Charles , Ilukhina Ruzanna , 123 – 125 . Syracuse : Syracuse University Press .

Lee Hermione . 1997 . Virginia Woolf . New York : Alfred A. Knopf .

McCarthy Helen . 2011 . The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism c. 1918–45 . Manchester : Manchester University Press .

McCarthy Mary . 2022 . In Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon , edited by Owens Patricia , 121 – 26 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Moorehead Caroline . 2019 . “ Last Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich Review: The Astonishing Achievement of the Nobel Prize Winner .” The Guardian, July 11, 2019. Accessed March 17, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/11/last-witnesses-by-svetlana-alexievich-review .

Moyn Samuel . 2021 . Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War . New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux .

Myrdal Alva . 1977 . The Game of Disarmament: How the United States and Russia Run the Arms Race . Manchester : Manchester University Press .

National Peace Federation . 1915 . “ The Manifesto Issued by Envoys of the International Congress of Women at the Hague to the Governments of Europe, and the President of the United States, Chicago, IL .”

Novikau Aliksandr . 2017 . “ Women, Wars and Militarism in Svetlana Alexievich's Documentary Prose .” Media, War & Conflict 10 ( 3 ): 314 – 26 .

Owens Patricia 2007 . “ The Humanitarian Condition? On War and Making a Global Public .” In Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt . Oxford : Oxford Academic . https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0008 .

Owens Patricia . 2022 . “ Geopolitics and War .” In Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon , edited by Owens Patricia , Rietzler Katharina , Hutchings Kimberly , Dunstan Sarah C. , 75 – 126 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Owens Patricia , Rietzler Katharina . eds. 2021 . Women's International Thought: A New History . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2021.

Owens Patricia et al.  2022 . “ Introduction .” In Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon , edited by Owens Patricia et al.  , 1 – 22 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Owens Patricia , Rietzler Katharina , Hutchings Kimberly , Dunstan Sarah C. , eds. 2022 . Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Savage Barbara . 2021 . “ Beyond Illusions: Merze Tate's International Thought .” In Women's International Thought: A New History , edited by Owens Patricia , Rietzler Katharina , 266 – 85 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Sluga Glenda . 2005a . “ National Sovereignty and Female Equality: Gender, Peacemaking and the New World Orders of 1919 and 1945 .” In Frieden – Gewalt – Geschlecht , edited by Davy Jennifer A. , Hagemann Karen , Katzel Ute , 166 – 83 . Essen : Klartext Verlag .

Sluga Glenda . 2005b . “ Gender .” In Palgrave Advances in International History , edited by Finney Patrick , 300 – 19 . Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan .

Sluga Glenda . 2006 . The Nation, Psychology, and International Politics, 1870–1919 . New York : Palgrave Macmillan .

Sluga Glenda . 2014 . “ ‘Add Women and Stir’: Gender and the History of International Politics .” Humanities Australia 5 : 65 – 72 .

Sluga Glenda . 2015 . “ Turning International: Foundations of Modern International Thought and New Paradigms for Intellectual History .” History of European Ideas 41 ( 1 ): 103 – 15 .

Sluga Glenda . 2017 . “ Peace, Gender and the New International Politics of Humanitarianism,1900–1948 .” In Oxford Handbook on Gender, War and the Western World since 1600 , edited by Hagemann Karen , Rose Sonya , Dudink Stefan , 561 – 584 . Oxford : Oxford University Press .

Sluga Glenda . 2021 . “ From F. Melian Stawell to E. Greene Balch: International and Internationalist Thinking at the Gender Margins, 1919–1947 .” In Women in International Thought: A New History , edited by Owens Patricia , Rietzler Katharina , 223 – 43 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

“Speech by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at the Conference on Shaping Feminist Foreign Policy .” 2022 . “ Speech Made on September 12, 2022 .” Accessed March 17, 2023. https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/feminist-foreign-policy/2551610 .

Stapleton Julia . 2007 . “ The Classicist as Liberal Intellectual: Gilbert Murray and Alfred Zimmern .” In Gilbert Murray Reassessed: Hellenism, Theatre and International Politics , edited by Stray C. , 261 – 91 . Oxford : Oxford University Press .

Stawell F. Melian . 1929 . The Growth of International Thought . London : Thornton Butterworth .

Stöcker Helene . 2022 . In Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon , edited by Owens Patricia , Rietzler Katharina , Hutchings Kimberly , Dunstan Sarah C. , 373 – 78 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 405.

Stöckmann Jan . 2018 . “ Women, Wars, and World Affairs: Recovering Feminist International Relations, 1915–39 .” Review of International Studies 44 ( 2 ): 215 – 35 .

“Sud nad tsinkovimi malchikami .” 1994 . Druzhba narodov 5–7 : 130 – 155 .

Sylvest Casper . 2004 . “ Interwar Internationalism, the British Labour Party, and the Historiography of International Relations .” International Studies Quarterly 48 ( 2 ): 409 – 32 .

Tate Merze . 1942 . The Disarmament Illusion: The Movement for a Limitation of Armaments to 1907 . New York : Macmillan .

Vellacott Jo . 1993 . “ A Place for Pacifism and Transnationalism in Feminist Theory: The Early Work of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom .” Women's History Review 2 ( 1 ): 23 – 56 .

von Suttner Bertha . 1899 . “ Universal Peace: From A Woman's Standpoint .” North American Review 169 : 50 – 69 .

von Suttner Bertha . [1899] 2022 . “ From “Universal Peace: From A Woman's Standpoint .” In Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon , edited by Owens Patricia , Rietzler Katharina , Hutchings Kimberly , Dunstan Sarah C. , 373 – 78 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Winter Jay . 2019 . “ Between Sound and Silence: The Inaudible and the Unsayable in the History of the First World War .” In Qualitative Studies of Silence: The Unsaid as Social Action , edited by Murray Amy , Durrheim Kevin , 223 – 35 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Woolf Virginia . 1966 . Three Guineas . Orlando, FL : A Harvest Book .

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Advertising and Corporate Services

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 2634-3797
• Copyright © 2024 International Studies Association
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Explainer: Five practical tools for keeping peace

Facebook Twitter Print Email

In 1948, the United Nations took a pivotal step by deploying  peacekeepers to support countries in their journey toward peace. Since then, more than two million people – military, police and civilians – have served in over 70 peacekeeping missions around the world, offering assistance amidst ongoing conflicts or their aftermath. 

Their tireless efforts span from monitoring ceasefire agreements to protecting civilians, rebuilding key infrastructure and facilitating elections to help countries and communities transition from war to peace. Peacekeepers can be soldiers, police officers, engineers, doctors, veterinarians, human rights officers, justice and corrections officers, radio producers, environmental scientists and surveillance experts.

When we think about keeping peace, we often think of mediation, treaties and international laws. However, peacekeepers use a wider array of tools to keep and nurture peace in some of the world's most fragile places. As we mark the  International Day of UN Peacekeepers on 29 May, we look at five non-traditional tools peacekeepers use to protect the communities that they serve.

1. Helicopters

Across Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, Europe and Asia, peacekeepers have used helicopters to overcome geographical barriers and extend their support to communities across diverse landscapes.

Helicopters are critical aviation assets in peacekeeping missions for a variety of reasons. They help peacekeepers reach remote villages inaccessible by road or water, allow rapid response and evacuation during emergencies, deliver essential supplies and aid to communities in need and provide aerial surveillance and reconnaissance to monitor and gather intelligence. In some instances, armed helicopters can act as a deterrent to armed groups.

Helicopters have also played an indispensable role in delivering electoral materials to make sure that people in remote places can take part in their countries’ democratic processes. Sometimes, in the remotest places, peacekeepers rely on helicopters, followed by foot or carts, to make sure the materials reach people on time.

Their versatility remains vital in providing the support and protection that people need. There are currently 81 helicopters operating in peacekeeping missions. The United Nations branding is visible on the exterior of the helicopters, including on its underbelly, to signal that it’s a peacekeeping or humanitarian convoy. 

Despite this, UN helicopters have come under attack, an indication of how volatile the security situation can be in many missions and how peacekeepers  risk their lives every day. Earlier this year, a helicopter conducting a medical evacuation was  attacked by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) eastern province of North Kivu.

2. Engineering tools

To truly build peace, peacekeeping focuses on people and their needs. In countries affected by conflict, the loss and lack of key infrastructure such as schools, medical facilities, roads and bridges hinders any efforts to help communities build sustainable peace. That’s why engineers and sappers in peacekeeping operations are instrumental in helping people recover and rebuild from the destruction of war and natural  disasters.

“We are saving people not from bullets but floods,” said  Captain Taimoor Ahmed , an engineer working for the  UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) . Using excavators and other construction equipment, his team built dikes to help hundreds of people stranded due to the devastating floods in Bentiu. They also built roads along the dikes to make sure essential humanitarian supplies reached people displaced by the disaster.

Just outside South Sudan’s capital Juba, peacekeepers built  new classrooms , a football field and a playground for a small school catering to a community that mostly relies on subsistence farming and has limited access to education. In the DRC, peacekeepers built an  Ebola Treatment Centre in North Kivu and rehabilitated and expanded the road to the facility at the height of the disease outbreak in the country. 

3. Satellite imaging

In the last two decades, satellite imaging has been used in peacekeeping missions to provide a good overview of conflict zones, greatly enhancing situational awareness. Peacekeepers, who are surveillance and geospatial experts, use satellite imagery to monitor troop movements, displacement trends and flows, potential threat and movements of armed groups and the impact of impending natural disasters.

With such critical information, they can make informed decisions, effectively plan patrols and coordinate response. Satellite imaging, one of the most innovative tools available to peacekeeping, helps to enhance operational awareness in many missions, particularly those in countries with vast, remote and difficult terrains. Real-time imagery of inaccessible regions also enables peacekeepers to swiftly assess the extent of any damage or needs and prioritise their interventions accordingly.

In Mali, where the  Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission was deployed from April 2013 to December 2023, satellite images helped identify routes used by traffickers in the north of the country. In the  DRC , the imagery is used to track the movement of armed groups, monitor illegal mining activities and assess the impact of conflict on civilians.

In South Sudan, satellite data is used for an array of purposes, from monitoring natural disaster preparedness, response and recovery to tracking displacement patterns and cross-border movements. The  UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus , which was established to monitor the ceasefire agreement between the island’s Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, uses the data to monitor activities along the buffer zone. 

4. Mine detectors

Mine detectors have played a crucial role in saving countless lives worldwide. From Angola to Cambodia, landmines remain a terrifying legacy of wars, killing or maiming mostly civilians. Today, nearly 70 countries and territories have landmines. The  UN Mine Action Service deploys deminers to nearly 20 countries and territories, including in peacekeeping missions, to detect and destroy the mines. 

Clearing landmines not only prevents the loss of lives and limbs, it also makes land safe and productive again, allowing local communities to farm or build schools or hospitals, essentially rebuilding their lives and livelihoods. Unfortunately, the cost of clearing landmines could be detrimental to the lives of deminers. In recent years, casualties among deminers have occurred in several places, including Afghanistan, South Sudan and Syria. 

How do deminers protect themselves? They wear personal protective gear like blast suits, helmets, gloves and boots. They use metal detectors, prodders and mine clearance vehicles to detect and destroy mines. The detectors, which use electromagnetic waves to identify metal, are instrumental in locating buried landmines.

There are limitations to the detectors, but they have generally proven to be highly effective in mitigating risks. Since the late 1990s,  more than 55 million landmines have been destroyed, over 30 countries have become mine-free and casualties have been dramatically reduced.

Radio may not be the first thing we think about when looking for information today, but it remains a powerful communications tool in many parts of the world, including in countries where UN peacekeeping exists. 

Radio has played a vital role in  many missions since the late 1980s. Today, three peacekeeping missions have their own radio stations –  Radio Miraya in South Sudan,  Radio Okapi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and  Guira FM in the  Central African Republic . Peacekeepers, who are radio producers and communications personnel, use radio for vital news, early warnings about potential threats, discussions on pertinent issues and educational programmes, empowering communities to make informed decisions. Moreover, they provide an invaluable platform for local voices and perspectives, helping to foster reconciliation between divided communities.

Why does radio work better than newspapers, television or the internet? Radio receivers and frequency are relatively inexpensive and widely available, even in the most remote areas. In places with low literacy rates, radio programmes can reach a wider audience, fostering a more inclusive way of information sharing. Radio can also provide information in local languages in real time.

Given its reach, radio is a reliable tool to counter misinformation and dispel rumours that can be harmful to people’s safety and health. During the  COVID-19 pandemic , Radio Miraya, which reaches two thirds of South Sudan, ran programmes to help counter the local population’s resistance to physical distancing. In the DRC, Radio Okapi worked with the Congolese Government to provide on-air education to roughly 22 million children who could not leave their homes, transmitting essential French, math and reading lessons.

Learn more about UN peacekeeping operations here .

• International Day of UN Peacekeepers

Your Article Library

Essay on peace: need and importance of peace.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Essay on Peace: Need and Importance of Peace!

The issue of war and peace has always been a focal issue in all periods of history and at all levels relations among nations. The concern of the humankind for peace can be assessed by taking into account the fact that all religions, all religious scriptures and several religious ceremonies are committed to the cause of peace and all these advocate an elimination of war. The Shanti Path recited by the Hindus, the sermons of Pope and the commands of all the holy scriptures of the Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and all other communities hold out a sacred commitment to peace.

Yet the international community fully realized the supreme importance of the virtue of peace against the evil of war only after having suffered the most unfortunate and highly destructive two World Wars in the first half of the 20th century. The blood soaked shreds of humanity that lay scattered in several hundred battle grounds, particularly on the soils of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cried for peace, peace and peace on the earth.

The UN Charter and International Peace and Security:

The human consciousness then rallied in the Charter of the United Nations to affirm. “We the people of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our life time has brought untold sorrow to humankind…. and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security….. have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.”

Since 1945, the United Nations and its specialized agencies, several international associations and institutions, international peace movements, global and national level human rights movements and in fact all members of the international community have been consistently and strongly advocating the need for the preservation and promotion of peace against war.

In contemporary times, the most urgent and important international objective has been to preserve protect and defend peace against terrorism and terrorist organizations like A1 Qacda, Talibans, and other enemies of peace.

How International Community has been trying to secure peace:

Through international peace keeping under the aegis of the United Nations through the development and use of international law; creation of more international and regional institutions committed to promote peace, promotion of friendly cooperation for development among the member countries; popularization of peaceful means of conflict-resolution, institutionalization of relations among nations; integration of international community through strengthening of human consciousness in favour of peace against war; and by enhancing the ability for crisis-management, the humankind has been trying to secure peace against war.

Currently, through:

(i) Globalization i.e. by encouraging the free flow of people goods, information services and knowledge;

(ii) Establishment of non-official people to people socio-economic-cultural relations;

(iii) Organisation of international peace movements against nuclear weapons, armament race, militarisation, and environmental pollution;

(iv) Launching of special drives for elimination of such evils as apartheid, poverty, illiteracy; ill-health, hunger, disease, inequalities, tyranny and terrorism; and

(v) organised attempts at environment protection and protection of Human Rights of all, the international community has been making meaningful attempts to limit the chances of war.

What is Peace?

One elementary way of defining peace has been to say that peace is absence of war. This is, however, a very narrow view of peace. No doubt absence of war is the first condition of peace, yet peace is not merely an absence of war. It is in reality a condition characterised by peaceful, cooperative and harmonious conduct of international relations with a view to secure all-round sustainable development of the people of the world.

Nevertheless, since absence of war is the first condition of peace, one of the major concerns of all scholars and statesmen has been to formulate and follow the principles and devices needed for securing this primary objective. The cold war that kept the world preoccupied during 1945-90, indirectly secured this objective in a negative way by developing a balance of terror in international relations.

While it was successful in preventing a global war, it failed to prevent local wars and in fact gave rise to several tensions, stresses, strains and crises in international relations. The international community had to work very hard for keeping the conflicts and wars limited. It, however, successfully exhibited a welcome and positive ability in the sphere of crisis-management.

In fact, till today there have been present several hindrances in way of securing a stable, healthy and enduring peace. Fortunately, the final end of cold war came in the last decade of the 20th century and the world found herself living is an environment characterised by a new faith and commitment to peace, peaceful co-existence, peaceful conflict-resolution, liberalisation, cooperation for development and attempts at sustainable development.

The people began focusing their attention on the need for the protection of human rights of all, protection of environment and securing of a real and meaningful international integration. However several negative factors, ethnic conflict, ethnic violence, ethnic wars, terrorism in its several dimensions, neo-colonialism, hegemony n-hegemony and the like kept on acting as big hindrances.

The need to secure peace by controlling these evils continues to be a primary aim of international community. Crises have been repeatedly coming and these are bound to keep coming. This makes it very urgent for the humankind to prepare and act for managing crises through collective efforts and by the use of several devices.

Related Articles:

• Does Peace Require Non-Violence?
• 8 Devices used for the Preservation of Peace

No comments yet.

Leave a reply click here to cancel reply..

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Home — Essay Samples — War — Vietnam War — The Vietnam War and the Effectiveness of the Peace Movements

The Vietnam War and The Effectiveness of The Peace Movements

• Categories: Peace Vietnam War

About this sample

Words: 1290 |

Published: Oct 17, 2018

Words: 1290 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof. Kifaru

Verified writer

• Expert in: Life War

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 932 words

1 pages / 581 words

2 pages / 1047 words

3 pages / 1355 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Vietnam War

In the short story "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, the author effectively captures the predicaments faced by soldiers during the Vietnam War. Each soldier carries both literal and symbolic objects that serve as a link [...]

In conclusion, "Where The Domino Fell" offers a comprehensive analysis of the Vietnam War that is both enlightening and accessible. Through its examination of historical context, military strategy, social movements, and [...]

Juxtaposition is a powerful literary technique that involves placing contrasting elements side by side to create a deeper understanding or meaning. In Tim O'Brien's novel "The Things They Carried," juxtaposition is used to [...]

The Vietnam War, which lasted from 1955 to 1975, was a complex and significant conflict that had far-reaching implications for both Vietnam and the United States. This essay will provide a detailed examination of the causes, [...]

The Vietnam War has been a topic of heated debate for decades, with many people arguing that it was unjustified and unnecessary. Others, however, believe that the war was a necessary and justifiable conflict. In this essay, I [...]

The American forces in Vietnam had trouble dealing with North Vietnamese troops and the Viet Cong for numerous reasons. These reasons include the North Vietnamese determination to never give up on the war, the South Vietnamese [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

America’s Military Is Not Prepared for War — or Peace

By Roger Wicker

Mr. Wicker, a Republican, is the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

“To be prepared for war,” George Washington said, “is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” President Ronald Reagan agreed with his forebear’s words, and peace through strength became a theme of his administration. In the past four decades, the American arsenal helped secure that peace, but political neglect has led to its atrophy as other nations’ war machines have kicked into high gear. Most Americans do not realize the specter of great power conflict has risen again.

It is far past time to rebuild America’s military. We can avoid war by preparing for it.

When America’s senior military leaders testify before my colleagues and me on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee behind closed doors, they have said that we face some of the most dangerous global threat environments since World War II. Then, they darken that already unsettling picture by explaining that our armed forces are at risk of being underequipped and outgunned. We struggle to build and maintain ships, our fighter jet fleet is dangerously small, and our military infrastructure is outdated. Meanwhile, America’s adversaries are growing their militaries and getting more aggressive.

In China, the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has orchestrated a historic military modernization intended to exploit the U.S. military’s weaknesses. He has overtaken the U.S. Navy in fleet size, built one of the world’s largest missile stockpiles and made big advances in space. President Vladimir Putin of Russia has thrown Europe into war and mobilized his society for long-term conflict. Iran and its proxy groups have escalated their shadow war against Israel and increased attacks on U.S. ships and soldiers. And North Korea has disregarded efforts toward arms control negotiations and moved toward wartime readiness.

Worse yet, these governments are materially helping one another, cooperating in new ways to prevent an American-led 21st century. Iran has provided Russia with battlefield drones, and China is sending technical and logistical help to aid Mr. Putin’s war. They are also helping one another prepare for future fights by increasing weapons transfers and to evade sanctions. Their unprecedented coordination makes new global conflict increasingly possible.

That theoretical future could come faster than most Americans think. We may find ourselves in a state of extreme vulnerability in a matter of a few years, according to a growing consensus of experts. Our military readiness could be at its lowest point in decades just as China’s military in particular hits its stride. The U.S. Indo-Pacific commander released what I believe to be the largest list of unfunded items ever for services and combatant commands for next year’s budget, amounting to $11 billion. It requested funding for a raft of infrastructure, missile defense and targeting programs that would prove vital in a Pacific fight. China, on the other hand, has no such problems, as it accumulates the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal with a mix of other lethal cruise and attack missiles.

Our military leaders are being forced to make impossible choices. The Navy is struggling to adequately fund new ships, routine maintenance and munition procurement; it is unable to effectively address all three. We recently signed a deal to sell submarines to Australia, but we’ve failed to sufficiently fund our own submarine industrial base, leaving an aging fleet unprepared to respond to threats. Two of the three most important nuclear modernization programs are underfunded and are at risk of delays. The military faces a backlog of at least $180 billion for basic maintenance, from barracks to training ranges. This projects weakness to our adversaries as we send service members abroad with diminished ability to respond to crises.

Fortunately, we can change course. We can avoid that extreme vulnerability and resurrect American military might.

On Wednesday I am publishing a plan that includes a series of detailed proposals to address this reality head-on. We have been living off the Reagan military buildup for too long; it is time for updates and upgrades. My plan outlines why and how the United States should aim to spend an additional $55 billion on the military in the 2025 fiscal year and grow military spending from a projected 2.9 percent of our national gross domestic product this year to 5 percent over the next five to seven years.

It would be a significant investment that would start a reckoning over our nation’s spending priorities. There will be conversations ahead about all manner of budget questions. We do not need to spend this much indefinitely — but we do need a short-term generational investment to help us prevent another world war.

My blueprint would grow the Navy to 357 ships by 2035 and halt our shrinking Air Force fleet by producing at least 340 additional fighters in five years. This will help patch near-term holes and put each fleet on a sustainable trajectory. The plan would also replenish the Air Force tanker and training fleets, accelerate the modernization of the Army and Marine Corps, and invest in joint capabilities that are all too often forgotten, including logistics and munitions.

The proposal would build on the $3.3 billion in submarine industrial base funding included in the national security supplemental passed in April, so we can bolster our defense and that of our allies. It would also rapidly equip service members all over the world with innovative technologies at scale, from the seabed to the stars.

We should pair increased investment with wiser spending. Combining this crucial investment with fiscal responsibility would funnel resources to the most strategic ends. Emerging technology must play an essential role, and we can build and deploy much of it in less than five years. My road map would also help make improvements to the military procurement system and increase accountability for bureaucrats and companies that fail to perform on vital national security projects.

This whole endeavor would shake our status quo but be far less disruptive and expensive than the alternative. Should China decide to wage war with the United States, the global economy could immediately fall into a depression. Americans have grown far too comfortable under the decades-old presumption of overwhelming military superiority. And that false sense of security has led us to ignore necessary maintenance and made us vulnerable.

Our ability to deter our adversaries can be regained because we have done it before. At the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, in the twilight of the Soviet Union, George H.W. Bush reflected on the lessons of Pearl Harbor. Though the conflict was long gone, it taught him an enduring lesson: “When it comes to national defense,” he said, “finishing second means finishing last.”

Regaining American strength will be expensive. But fighting a war — and worse, losing one — is far more costly. We need to begin a national conversation today on how we achieve a peaceful, prosperous and American-led 21st century. The first step is a generational investment in the U.S. military.

Roger Wicker is the senior U.S. senator from Mississippi and the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

The Remarkable Contributions of Jane Addams to Society

This essay is about Jane Addams’ significant contributions to social reform, women’s suffrage, and peace. It highlights her founding of Hull House in Chicago, where she provided essential services to immigrants and the poor. Addams also championed labor rights, advocating for better working conditions and child labor laws. She was a key figure in the women’s suffrage movement, helping to secure the right to vote for women. Additionally, Addams was an active peace advocate, co-founding the Women’s Peace Party and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Her efforts earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, cementing her legacy as a pioneering social reformer.

How it works

In the annals of social reform, Jane Addams emerges as a trailblazing luminary whose impact reverberates across the spheres of social work, women’s suffrage, and peace advocacy in the United States and beyond. Born in 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, Addams was reared in an environment of privilege yet was profoundly stirred by the disparities she witnessed in her milieu. Her life’s vocation was marked by an unwavering dedication to ameliorating the plight of the underprivileged and disenfranchised, championing social equity, and fostering tranquility.

Among Addams’ seminal achievements was the founding of Hull House in Chicago in 1889. Inspired by the settlement house movement in England, Hull House was conceived as a haven for immigrants and indigent individuals. Offering an array of services encompassing educational endeavors, childcare, and healthcare, Hull House aimed to uplift the living standards of its denizens. It burgeoned into a nexus for social transformation, attracting kindred spirits committed to tackling urban impoverishment and effecting systemic metamorphosis. The settlement house also served as a springboard for Addams’ broader social endeavors, including campaigns for improved housing, labor legislation, and public health reforms.

Addams’ endeavors at Hull House transcended mere philanthropy. She emerged as a staunch advocate for labor rights, cognizant of the exploitation and harsh vicissitudes confronting workers in the nascent industrial milieu. She lent her support to labor unions and agitated for legislative safeguards for workers, encompassing statutes addressing child labor and the implementation of the eight-hour workday. Her exertions precipitated substantial ameliorations in labor conditions and galvanized subsequent labor reforms.

In tandem with her endeavors in social welfare, Addams assumed a prominent mantle in the women’s suffrage movement. Propounding that women’s enfranchisement was indispensable for achieving parity and social justice, she collaborated with fellow suffragists in lobbying for women’s voting rights, leveraging her platform and influence to effect legislative change. Her advocacy proved instrumental in propelling the cause of women’s suffrage, culminating in the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, enfranchising women in the United States.

Another salient facet of Addams’ oeuvre was her steadfast commitment to peace. Amidst the tumult of World War I, she emerged as a vociferous critic of the conflict, laboring indefatigably to espouse peace and conciliation. In 1915, she co-founded the Women’s Peace Party and subsequently the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), entities dedicated to averting war and espousing pacific resolutions to global strife. Her endeavors in the cause of peace garnered global recognition, culminating in her becoming the inaugural American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Throughout her lifetime, Addams penned voluminously on social issues, disseminating her insights and advocating for change through tomes, treatises, and orations. Her literary corpus served to shape public sentiment and sway policymakers, contributing substantively to the broader social reform ethos in the United States. Addams’ intellectual bequests, coupled with her pragmatic endeavors, catapulted her to the vanguard of the struggle for social equity and human rights.

The reverberations of Jane Addams’ legacy transcend the boundaries of time and space. She laid the groundwork for the contemporary social work discipline, emphasizing the imperatives of compassion, communal engagement, and systemic reform. Her advocacy for labor rights, women’s suffrage, and peace resonates enduringly, inspiring successive cohorts of activists and reformers. Addams’ legacy stands as a poignant testament to the potency of social reform and the enduring imprint of individual commitment to effectuating positive change.

In summation, Jane Addams bequeathed her life to the service of bettering the lot of the downtrodden and championing social equity. Through the establishment of Hull House, her advocacy for labor rights and women’s suffrage, and her unwavering commitment to peace, Addams wrought indelible contributions that echo resoundingly in the present day. Her legacy serves as a beacon, illuminating the pathway toward a more just and compassionate world.

Cite this page

The Remarkable Contributions of Jane Addams to Society. (2024, May 28). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/the-remarkable-contributions-of-jane-addams-to-society/

"The Remarkable Contributions of Jane Addams to Society." PapersOwl.com , 28 May 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/the-remarkable-contributions-of-jane-addams-to-society/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Remarkable Contributions of Jane Addams to Society . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-remarkable-contributions-of-jane-addams-to-society/ [Accessed: 31 May. 2024]

"The Remarkable Contributions of Jane Addams to Society." PapersOwl.com, May 28, 2024. Accessed May 31, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/the-remarkable-contributions-of-jane-addams-to-society/

"The Remarkable Contributions of Jane Addams to Society," PapersOwl.com , 28-May-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-remarkable-contributions-of-jane-addams-to-society/. [Accessed: 31-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Remarkable Contributions of Jane Addams to Society . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-remarkable-contributions-of-jane-addams-to-society/ [Accessed: 31-May-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

Skip to Content

Waging Peace Project Essay Contest Winner Announced

The Center for Asian Studies and Partnership for International Strategies in Asia (PISA) joined Norlin Library and several departments on campus to host the exhibit, Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War . Curated by Ron Carver, the display of photographs, documents, and oral histories documented dissent within the United States active duty armed forces, among officers, and returning veterans, as well as their means of disseminating information to mobilize others. Launched on October 30, 2023, the first week included a series of events that engaged multiple units across campus including the College of Music, the English Department, the College of Media, Communication and Information, the History Department, the College of Arts and Sciences Honors Program, the Applied History Program, and the Center of the American West. The Waging Peace Project at CU Boulder was made possible by support from the Chino Cienega Foundation.

With film screenings, panel discussions, poetry readings, and lectures, the Waging Peace project amplified the message that the American War in Vietnam has had a legacy of baneful consequences that endure to this day. Recordings of most of the events can be found on the PISA page on the Center for Asian Studies website .

As a key feature of the project, students were invited to submit essays with their reflections on viewing the exhibit. Renowned photojournalist Nick Ut, whose photo of the so-called “Napalm girl” helped to move public opinion against the war, selected Ian Messa’s essay and Vietnam Veteran Curt Stocker presented the award on behalf of Veterans for Peace. Ian hails from Golden, Colorado. He is majoring in geography and pursuing an environment-society geography B.A. with hydrology and GIS certificates, as well as a civil engineering minor. Congratulations Ian!

Curt Stocker, Vietnam veteran and member of Veterans for Peace presents a $500 check to Ian Messa, while Linda Yarr, director of PISA looks on.  

Ian’s  thoughtful essay, Waging Peace, empathically recalls his childhood as he reflects on the consequences of the American War in Vietnam as he viewed the exhibit. You can read his essay here:

Waging Peace

I’d never seen unexploded cluster bomb submunition before looking through Waging Peace in Vietnam . I thought it would be more hostile – silver-and-red rusted steel, maybe something bullet- shaped. Instead, I saw a photo of a dark-brown metal baseball with curious directional patterns cast into it.

When my brother and I were young, we would climb dead trees and swordfight with rusty steel fenceposts; we had a go-kart that was all too sparse and wobbly for its lawnmower engine. If we were to find one of these unexploded bombs on the ground, we would have made the same decision Hồ Văn Lai and his friends did – to play with the thing. With each throw, I bet we’d try to spin it the same direction the arrow-like things on its surface point.

It hurts to think about finding an object so strange and wondrous only to have it maim or kill you. It hurts more to think about the guilt and blame borne from those situations: Who lived and who died? Who found it on the ground? Whose idea it was to play with it at first – whose idea it was to play with it again on that day? And how hard would it be to remind yourself that Americans left it there; how would you cope with the fact that they won’t be held accountable because they’re long gone?

Across the library, covers from wartime magazines are spread across another black-papered posterboard. On an issue of FTA (“Fun Travel Adventure,” a stand-in for “Fuck the Army”), the soldiers at Iwo Jima raise a huge purple flower instead of the American flag. It’s hard to imagine producing an image like this as a soldier in Vietnam: Practically forced to knowingly kill innocent people, stuck with fear and protocol in an unfamiliar landscape for days on end, how did these soldiers return to base, meet at an anti-war coffee shop, and portray their hatred of the conflict in such a heartfelt way?

Waging Peace in Vietnam captures violent disjunctions. Kids play games with armed bombs; soldiers raise war-flowers on self-print magazines. Photos and media from the war hang in black and white, simple compared to the high-def colored pictures from decades after – survivors of cluster bombs and agent orange, volunteers cleaning the land, veterans standing stolid against their own memories of paralysis and misdeed. The war itself never ended: The U.S. military is gone, but it’s still tearing towns, families, and individuals apart with stray munitions, tainted memories, and violence against bodies and minds. That violence has only grown more difficult to trace.

What resonates with me most is the phrase “waging peace.” There are kids in the United States who play with syringes and firearms. There are police, soldiers, and security guards who feel helpless to do what they believe is right for fear of retribution, rejection, and ruin. People here, and around the world, are stuck in violence – born into it; forced into it; attracted to it until they see it, at which point they cannot turn back.

The violent scars of war loom so large in Vietnam, their tissue suffocating its inhabitants, that it is impossible to ignore them. Attaining peace is not an act of cessation or reflection, but of constant resistance against the tumorous spread of violence. It really isn’t something we “attain” at all; we need to constantly wage it with money, time, and passion – with everything we have.

• Spotlight All
• Spring 2021 Newsletter
• Spring 2020 Newsletter
• Spring 2019 Newsletter
• Spring 2018 Newsletter
• Spring 2017 Newsletter
• CAS E-News Newsletter
• Central Asia
• Southeast Asia
• Transnational/Comparative
• West Asia/Middle East
• Annual Themes
• Event Publications
• Past Events

Watch our Memorial Day tribute to the military who sacrificed all to serve their country

Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer. It's a time to gather with friends and family for a grill out, a picnic, or maybe a trip to the beach to soak up the sun. But while it may well feel like a day of celebration, what sometimes gets forgotten is that it was conceived as a day of commemoration for the brave military members who died serving their country.  

A University of Phoenix survey found that less than half of Americans polled knew the exact purpose of Memorial Day, while around a third were unsure of the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

To clarify, Veterans Day, which takes place in November, is a tribute to all those who served honorably in the military in wartime or peacetime, whether living or dead.

The confusion is compounded by Armed Forces Day, a military celebration held in May for those currently serving. However, while the reasons differ, the sentiment of each day is the same: all three are important opportunities to show gratitude.

So, when you chow down on that hot dog, barrel down that slip 'n slide, or whatever you do for fun this Memorial Day, spare a moment to acknowledge the people in uniform whose sacrifice made a difference.

On this Memorial Day, watch the video for a surprise reunion of battle buddies bonded by the loss of their leade r

Humankind is your go-to spot for good news! Click here to submit your uplifting, cute, or inspiring video moments for us to feature. Also, click here to subscribe to our newsletter , bringing our top stories of the week straight to your inbox.

LGBTIQ+ communities and the anti-rights pushback: 5 things to know

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to LinkedIn
• Share to E-mail

Recent decades have marked major advances for the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) people 1 in many places, including the legalization of same-sex relations, legal recognition of gender identity on the basis of self-identification, better access to essential healthcare, restrictions on interventions on intersex minors, and increased protections against discrimination and hate crimes. 

Nevertheless, significant discrimination persists. An estimated 2 billion people live in contexts where consensual same-sex relations are criminalized, with at least 42 countries specifically criminalizing consensual same-sex relations between women. Transgender people, and especially transgender women, are criminalized under these and other discriminatory laws. 

State and non-state actors in many countries are attempting to roll back hard-won progress and further entrench stigma, endangering the rights and lives of LGBTIQ+ people. These movements use hateful propaganda and disinformation to target and attempt to delegitimize people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and sex characteristics. 

Here are five things to know about this pushback. To learn more about how to stand for equality for LGBTIQ+ people, visit the UN Free and Equal campaign website .  

Anti-rights movements are on the rise

Transnationally, people opposed to equal human rights for LGBTIQ+ people have acted in social movements and governments to exploit social, economic, and political instability by attempting to bring reactionary beliefs into the mainstream and reverse gains for members of marginalized groups.

According to one study in the United States, anti-LGBTIQ+ hate crimes increased by 42 per cent in 2021. The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA)-Europe organization reported in 2023 that it had seen an increase in the frequency and brutality of violent acts against LGBTIQ+ people across 54 countries, with 2022 found to be the most violent year in the 12 years since the organization began such reporting. 

ILGA-Asia has also documented that events have been canceled, LGBTIQ-friendly businesses have been attacked, and trans people have seen their legal protections threatened and restricted throughout the region.

While the contexts and motivations of these movements are distinct, they often overlap in retaliation against what they view as “gender ideology”: a term used to oppose the concept of gender, women’s rights, and the rights of LGBTIQ+ people broadly. 

There is a long tradition in which anti-rights movements frame equality for women and LGBTIQ+ people as a threat to so-called “traditional” family values. Movements encompassing “anti-gender”, “gender-critical”, and “men’s rights” have taken this to new extremes, tapping into wider fears about the future of society and accusing feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements of threatening civilization itself. 

Anti-rights movements have pushed for overtly discriminatory policies and restrictions on essential services, and even for the criminalization of people based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

These movements play on stereotypes and engineered anxiety

Anti-rights groups have mobilized political support by creating and fostering a moral panic that falsely associates LGBTIQ+ people with mental illness and perversion.  

These actors depict LGBTIQ+ movements as indoctrinating influences that seek to corrupt and sexualize young people. Such allegations have rallied opposition to comprehensive sexuality education in countries from all regions around the world. From the media to the policy sphere, anti-rights movements are increasingly using both street and digital organizing to attack the fundamental freedoms of LGBTIQ+ people, often targeting transgender women in particular.

Indeed, not all LGBTIQ+ people are affected in the same way. Studies show that LGBTIQ+ women, girls, and gender-diverse people, including transgender men and women, who experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination—such as Black and Afro-descendant or Indigenous LGBTIQ+ women, migrant and refugee LGBTIQ+ women, and LGBTIQ+ women with disabilities—are at a greater risk of rights violations.

LGBTIQ+ rights are wedged into existing ‘culture-war’ narratives

Media and political campaigns have positioned the rights of LGBTIQ+ people as negotiable and debatable. Some try to frame the human rights of transgender people as being at odds with women’s rights, even asserting that trans women do not face gender-based discrimination or that they pose a threat to the rights, spaces, and safety of cisgender women. 

While they vary by cultural context, these campaigns often portray the push for LGBTIQ+ people’s rights as merely a generational dispute, part of a so-called “culture war”, or in some cases an imperialist agenda. 

Many such narratives position trans and non-binary gender identities as new or Western concepts, ignoring the rich history of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and sex characteristics across cultures and within the global South in particular.  

Falsely portraying the rights of LGBTIQ+ people, and particularly of trans people, as competing with women’s rights only widens divisions in the broader gender equality movement. This has given anti-rights actors space to advance rollbacks on sexual and reproductive health and rights, comprehensive sexuality education, and other critical issues.

LGBTIQ+ organizations and human rights defenders are being defunded and excluded from civic spaces  

LGBTIQ+ movements, especially those focused on women, are facing reductions in already inadequate funding. A 2021 report by the Global Equality Fund found that governments around the world were increasingly cutting funding for civil society organizations, including LGBTIQ+ rights organizations, and placing more restrictions on the use of funds that remained.

Heightened scrutiny has made many donors more hesitant to support LGBTIQ+ causes. Meanwhile, private funding for reactionary movements is on the rise. A 2021 report by the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) found that funding for global anti-rights movements—primarily from a small number of wealthy donors—had increased by 50 per cent since 2012, with anti-gender movements receiving more than triple the funding as LGBTIQ+ movements between 2013 and 2017.

At the government level, some states have passed laws prohibiting so-called LGBT or homosexual “propaganda”, making it nearly impossible for LGBTIQ+ organizations to operate without state interference. Other countries have made it increasingly difficult for LGBTIQ+ organizations to register, organize, and receive foreign funding for their work under laws prohibiting “foreign influence”. Some governments have gone so far as to ban all LGBTIQ+ events under the guise of “protecting security”.  

The narrowing of civic spaces, including online, has exacerbated this. As the survival of mainstream human rights organizations is challenged, some have become reticent or unable to support smaller organizations or explicitly LGBTIQ+ focused work.

LGBTIQ+ human rights defenders operate in extremely difficult and perilous circumstances. Their vulnerability is exacerbated by a lack of public support, funding, or space to advocate for themselves. They also frequently face arrest, harassment, torture, and murder. Additionally, LGBTIQ+ women, girls, and gender-diverse people especially remain locked out of key decision-making processes around the world.   

LGBTIQ+ voices are frequently absent from the “debates” on issues affecting them in media and politics, and their contested position in many countries means that they are unable to participate in essential decision-making processes where their voices should be heard.

Working for LGBTIQ+ people’s human rights is indivisible from working for women’s rights and gender equality

The groups promoting the human rights of women and LGBTIQ+ people share the same goals of achieving safe and fair societies. In doing so they are intrinsically connected to countering patriarchy, white supremacy, racism, colonialism, ableism, classism, and other systems of oppression.  

Building coalitions among those experiencing anti-rights pushback is crucial for resisting it. This requires countering disinformation that seeks to paint individuals as at odds with one another.

By pooling resources and power, and employing intersectional, intergenerational, multi-stakeholder allyship models, such coalitions can challenge both specific reversals on rights, as well as wider reactionary campaigns and movements. LGBTIQ+ movements have long worked alongside and as part of the roots of women’s and pro-democracy movements. 

The feminist goals of intersectional justice and gender equality can only be achieved if all women and all LGBTIQ+ people are included as part of a broad, intersectional feminist movement rooted in the universality and indivisibility of human rights. 

Feminist and women’s rights advocates and organizations, rather than stepping back, must push forward and act collectively to protect and promote LGBTIQ+ people’s equality and rights, with the understanding that all our human rights will either be upheld or rolled back together.

• Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex (LGBT) rights
• Gender equality and women’s empowerment

Related content

UN Women statement on the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia

Rebuilding the women’s movement in Afghanistan, one organization at a time

In the Pacific coast of Colombia, guardians of the mangrove sow seeds of change