Peace-building is the action taken to identity and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace so as to avert a relapse into conflict.
It includes fostering nonviolent behaviour among nations, specifically but not exclusively as peace proclaimed by international treaties. In the broadest sense, creating nonviolent, non-aggressive, non-competitive global conditions of the relations between man and man, and man and nature.
The United Nations has elaborated an Agenda for Peace whose main goal is that of building a culture of peace. Volunteers with Peace Brigades International are not just citizen diplomats; they put their lives and lifestyles on the line and live with endangered people. Their most active work has been in Guatemala, where it is claimed that just by being there they have prevented violence and forwarded the cause of justice.
In 1993, the General Conference of UNESCO adopted the Action Programme for the promotion of a Culture of Peace, stressing its linkage to a culture of human rights and democracy. This culture entails the transformation of violent competition into working cooperatively for shared goals. It consists of attitudes, behaviours and ways of life based on non-violence, respect for human rights, intercultural understanding. tolerance and solidarity, the free flow of information, and the full participation and empowerment of women.
SERVAS International is a a cooperative travel scheme hosted in individual homes and 'open doors'. It seeks to build world peace, goodwill and understanding by providing opportunities for personal contacts with people of other cultures and backgrounds; provide educational travel by enabling people to share home hospitality, discussions and exchange of ideas in homes around the world.
The White Poppy is a symbol of peace, originally chosen in 1933 by the UK Women's Cooperative Guild to proclaim that peace is something we can all work together to achieve. It is worn on 11 November to honour the war dead and those millions who suffer from the devastation of war by working for peace.
His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi proclaimed in 2003 that is now possible to establish a permanent group of 16,000 peace-creating experts in India. Their collective practice of Vedic technologies of consciousness will create coherent world consciousness and lay the foundation for harmony in the family of nations. The full scale of Maharishi's programme to create permanent world peace calls for a group of 40,000 peace-creating experts practising Maharishi's transcendental meditation and yogic flying in India and additional groups of 8,000 experts in every other continent. Maharishi's plan also calls for the establishment of 3,000 peace palaces in the world's largest 3,000 cities, each of which will be home to groups of 10.
If peace is to thrive, it must be creative. It must be constructed (and provided with the necessary resources) on the bases of respect for fundamental rights of women and men, the free self-determination of peoples, the welfare of individuals and the development of societies in a spirit of solidarity. It is in this way that world interdependence will be fashioned.
To achieve peace and justice, policies from above are not sufficient. Neither are they sufficient for the implementation of fundamental human rights. It is necessary to strengthen the knowledge, motivation, and participation of individuals and groups entitled to these rights. It is therefore vital to maintain a strong commitment from below through education. This brings together learning, formation, information, and action, so as to favour an integrated development of the individual and re-enforce their sense of social responsibility in daily life.
With every true friendship we build more firmly the foundations on which the peace of the whole world rests. Thought by thought and act by act, with every breath we build the kingdom of nonviolence that is the true home of the spirit of man (Mahatma Gandhi).
Nonviolence is about speaking the whole complicated truth, the truth of our rage, the truth of our longing, the truth of our tears and our laughter, the truth of our smallest fears and our grandest dreams (Pam McAllister).
In our generation when men continue to be afflicted by acute hardships and anxieties arising from the ravages of war or the threat of it, the whole human family faces an hour of supreme crisis in its advance toward maturity. Moving gradually together and everywhere more conscious already of its unity, this family cannot accomplish its task of constructing for all men everywhere a world more genuinely human unless each person devotes himself to the cause of peace with renewed vigour. Peace is not merely the absence of war; nor can it be reduced solely to the maintenance of a balance of power between enemies; nor is it brought about by dictatorship. Instead, it is rightly and appropriately called an enterprise of justice. The common good of humanity finds its ultimate meaning in the eternal law. But since the concrete demands of this common good are constantly changing as time goes on, peace is never attained once and for all, but must be built up ceaselessly. Moreover, since the human will is unsteady and wounded by sin, the achievement of peace requires a constant mastering of passions and the vigilance of lawful authority. But this is not enough. This peace on earth cannot be obtained unless personal well-being is safeguarded and men freely and trustingly share with one another the riches of their inner spirits and their talents. A firm determination to respect other men and peoples and their dignity, as well as the studied practice of brotherhood are absolutely necessary for the establishment of peace. Hence peace is likewise the fruit of love, which goes beyond what justice can provide. (Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes, 1965).
The greatest enemies of peace are poverty and political exclusion.