A handbook for peace

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”, such are the founding words of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Unfortunately, sixty seven years after the creation of this United Nations specialized institution, the mankind is still torn by conflicts. And even in the heart of the individual, there is no peace. We are living permanently in doubt and anxiety. We withdraw on a defensive attitude and develop phobia and mistrust towards other peoples, behaviour that generally leads to misunderstandings and sometime to opened confrontations.

In order to alleviate such kind of situations, I think that it could be useful to develop a schedule for education to common life, a kind of “handbook for peace” that would lean on a twofold frame, namely mutual comprehension and improvement of the life conditions of underprivileged and vulnerable levels of the society.

Understanding the other peoples means first going towards them, beyond fear and ulterior motive, listening to them and learning to discover them; it’s also observing and appreciating them from their viewpoint. In this way, as Edward Saïd, an American intellectual from Palestine said, “If it’s genuine, the will to understand the other cultures preclude any dominating ambition. That’s humanism. Otherwise the barbarity will carry off”. A such will of understanding is built upon dialogue, sincerity, justice, love, liberty, briefly in a confidence relationship.

Understanding the other peoples needs also to accept their originality and individuality, to stand their differences in so far as diversity, according to the French philosopher Antoine de Saint-Exuperry, is a factor of enrichment. It’s also admitting that they can think, feel, desire differently without representing a threat. It’s the categorical refusal of ethnocentrism and assimilation.

Education to the acceptation of the others will prosper through school, where young intelligences meet each other; in the quarters and suburbs, where populations of different origins are mixed; in leisure and spectacle places, particularly in sport activities, where people learn to confront without clashing and communicate through the language of the fair-play.

Besides, since I read Martin Luther King, I’m convinced of one thing: any society project that is interested in people’s minds without devoting the same importance to their economic and social conditions is a dying project, waiting for the moment it’ll be put underground. How can we envisage living in peace into societies deeply characterised by unequal distribution of available resources? Indeed, urban and country violence is the symptom of societies crossed by injustices, disparities and exclusions. Immigration for example seems to be a threat for some states, western states (worries about security, demography and employments) while it’s the last chance for other peoples, African peoples essentially, trapped in the despair and extreme poverty. So for me it’s urgent to tackle together the great problems that endanger the cohesion of states and the international system, by insuring education notably to cultural diversity, but also by guaranteeing employment, decent accommodation and equality of chances to everybody, doing all that by enforcing the place of young people into more and more competitive societies.

In sum, I would like to say that peace is not a ready-to-wear clothes; it’s an everyday and everyone construction at the centre of which are the young people who are the future of the humanity. In this regard, they need first to appropriate this culture to peace, to spread in the heart of peoples the seeds of tolerance, to support and actively participate to a lasting and shared progress, in order that finally emerges the “new world” called of all his wishes by Frederico Mayor, former General Manager of UNESCO from 1987 to 1999.