david This month’s CPNN bulletin shows that initiatives for a culture of peace are taking place in most regions of the world. As discussed in previous blogs, Latin America and Africa are in the leadership, although this may be difficult for the North to accept . The Arab States took two steps forward with the “Arab Spring”, although the turnaround in Egypt moved them one step back. … Read more
When we drafted the Declaration and Programme of Action for a Culture of Peace at UNESCO in 1998, adopted by the UN General Assembly a year later as Resolution a/53/243, we envisaged that progress towards a culture of peace could be achieved through the following: – Partnerships between and among the various actors [including civil … Read more
The CPNN bulletins for August 1 and September 1 illustrate how history is moving dialectically. Two opposing tendencies exist and interact simultaneously, the culture of war and the culture of peace. At the same time the culture of war advances towards self-destruction, the culture of peace is slowly growing. While the commercial media drowns us with news about the culture … Read more
The CPNN bulletin this month is in great contrast to the headlines of the commercial mass media. CPNN tells us of progress in participatory democracy in the cities of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal and the United States. Ordinary citizens are deciding directly what should be the priorities for the budget in their neighborhoods. And the results … Read more
It is not by accident that the progress in democratic participation is being made at the level of the city and not at the level of the nation state. At the level of the nation state, there is no progress. Instead, we are going backwards. More and more the American model is being imposed at … Read more
This month’s CPNN bulletin illustrates clearly that we cannot make progress towards a culture of peace without engaging in conflict. The divestment from companies that aid the Israeli apartheid oppression of the Palestinian people is a good example. Several years ago we carried an article at CPNN by a young Palestinian activist at Wesleyan University who … Read more
In this month’s CPNN bulletin, we consider both positive and negative sides of the discourse about human rights. On the positive side, the state of human rights is a good indicator of progress towards a culture of peace. In this regard, the lead taken by Latin American countries to ratify and enforce human rights treaties reflects … Read more
Johan Galtung, the guru of peace research, predicts that as we get closer to the crash of the American empire, the United States will increasingly realize that wars and preparation for wars are destroying its economy and it will be forced to limit its military adventures. Already last year the top military official in the US wrote … Read more
Is it by chance that the leadership for the culture of peace is coming from the continents of Latin America and Africa, continents of the Global South? The detailed evidence for this may be found in many CPNN articles, some of which are summarized in the CPNN bulletins for March 1 and April 1 this year, as well as … Read more
Again this month we indicate in the CPNN bulletin that Latin America and the Caribbean continue to be in the vanguard of the Global Movement for a Culture of Peace. This month it is the national governments that have taken the leadership with their declaration in Havana that the region will be a “zone of peace” privileging … Read more