NEWER CONTEXTS, CONTENTS
AND CONCEPTS OF PEACE RESEARCH:
HOW TO ACHIEVE SUSTAINABLE PEACE?


By Amalendu Guha

Director of the Institute for Alternative Development Research
President of the Mahatma M.K. Gandhi Foundation for Non-Violent Peace, Oslo



Introduction

The contexts and contents of the emerging conflicts in the 21st century are not necessarily the same or similar to those of the foregone century. The sustained and prolonged conflicts have also been achieving not only the newer dimensions, but newer contents and meanings too. Peace research of this century, has, therefore, been meeting the challenges of newer outlook, analysis, conceptual and contextual diversities and distinctiveness, besides the contents variations for the purpose of seeking and finding solutions for sustainable and balanced peace. Peace research of this century attains a new dimension and a new infrastructure to meet the challenging needs of the new time. Besides the territorial dimension it is meeting the challenge of meeting a broadened shift towards the human dimension.

The desired Territorial and Human premises and principles that lead to the construction of the infrastructure of sustainable peace may be traced and presented as such:



Sustainable peace, besides the territorial or spatial coverage has to have the human and social coverage too. Human and societal peace-oriented and led development is the new concept of human development peace that the human territoriality and human society needs and opts for. Such peace is not only to enable but to ensure also

a) balance between and among societal members,
b) avoidance of creating priviligentsia of political, economic, social and cultural power at the cost of and over the marginalized masses,
c) avoidance of tensions, violence and conflicts,
d) avoidance of self-defeating exercises of affluent standard of living over the human peripheries, and
e) removal of ownership and control power by 15% of the global population over access to around 80% of the globe's sources, resources, production and consumption.

Therefore, a balance has to be established between and among the people by de-overdevelopment of the excess of the priviligentsia and de-underdevelopment of the deprivantsia. This new concept of balance between more-haves and less-haves, in respect of needs, rights and duties, by downgrading the former and upgrading the later, through legitimized, legal and consensus-based norms and acceptability can be considered as the essential prerequisite and part of sustainable peace, necessary for human and humanistic development.

Most of the global conflicts generated in the 20th century have been maintained long and unresolved. Such continuation legacy of conflicts means the conflict-prolongation, contributing consequently, to human sufferings. At the very preamble of the infrastructural premises of sustainable peace and peace sustenance stand the following rational cognitive values and judicious arguments:

i) cooperation is more important than competition,
ii) human survival is more essential than human loss and destruction,
iii) contentment is more important than greed,
iv) human-centric self-realization is superior to ego-centric optimization,
v) communitarianism is better than the individualist alienation and isolationalism,
vi) social and human service is more important than possession for self,
vii) needs-based sustenance is more important and effective than unnecessary and extravagant affluence, etc.

The most striking and challenging to the peace research community of now is to find out the means and ways for generating and achieving

a) no poverty and no affluence society in all and every corner and locality of the globe,
b) no over-production and under-consumption society and territory on our earth,
c) no deterioration of the correlation human and natural ecological situation which is to take care of each other and which is not to overpass each other, and
d) no disparity in the prices of basic needs-satisfying goods and services and wages.

Humankind of today needs the very peace, peace for sustainable development and, at the same time, such development that guarantees sustainable peace, whose cores and anti-cores, or positives and negatives, in terms of values and anti-values may be drawn as such:



The processing of values the peace research undergoes may be of three types, namely, (a) Educational Values, (b) Knowledge Values and (c) Wisdom Values. They are of succeeding stages, but they have to inter-act and cross-act, in order to produce the effects and qualities of time-bound, space-bound and situation-bound sustenance and relevance. Certain of their aspects, within each value-dimension, are being traced below:

Scheme 1. Value Dimensions




Conceiving and Practicing Peace:

Peace is to be conceived and practiced by every global being of today. In our complexities-ridden life, in modern context, we observe and experience (i) self-conflict within each individual, (ii) conflict within social group or community level, (iii) conflict at ethnicity level, (iv) conflict at class and strata level, (iv) conflict at national level, (v) conflict at center (core) and periphery level, (vi) conflict at regional level, (vii) conflict at haves and have-nots level and, finally, (viii) conflict at global level. For overcoming conflict and attaining peace each individual citizen of the globe is to undergo several stage processes, as produced below:


Scheme 2. Peace Conceiving and Practicing Process



Learning peace means assimilating it and its inherence within self with conviction.

Activating and behaving peace means the putting into application of the conceived values and aspects of peace (which may be called as Applied Peace).

Participating in and Caring for Peace means being and becoming a peace activist and nurturing peace so as its meanings and goals do not get hurt or injured.

Enriching the Contents and Contexts of Peace means developing and promoting these aspects through testing and experiencing in time, space and circumstances.

Dialoging for Peace means co-discussing, co-experiencing, co-sharing, co-learning, co-evaluating, co-applying, co-existing and co-living.

Spreading Peace means the dissemination of messages, actions and effects of peace.


Culture of Peace:

The 21st century witnesses that making weapon and talking peace has become the double standard and double morality affair of most of the superpower, sub-superpower and becoming power nations of our world. To fight against this structural immorality the common people are to think of a peace culture, which is a value in concept and non-violent force in action for peace. Cultivating the culture of peace in people's mind and putting it into action may become a challenge to militarization and the economics of war-cum-armament. Culture of peace is a paradigm that is beyond and above the concept of negative peace, absence of war and conflict of arms. It is a paradigm of common human security that is based on common human rights, common understanding, common respect, common activities and cooperation for human development and advancement. Culture of Peace, at human dimension level, needs (a) moral adjustment based on moral judgment, (b) material adjustment based on the surrounding natural sources and resources and human/social-cum-natural ecology. Culture of peace cannot and does not accept co-existence with the culture of war and the action of the so-called just war. No war can be a just war and any war is an anti or against common human security. Culture of peace is both the goal and the means and is
beyond conditioning and conditionality. Its main functional motivation is global common and humanistic transformation.


Culture of peace needs the wide range functioning of the culture of democracy and culture of democracy, in its turn, has to remove (i) social exclusion, (b) economic exclusion, (c) political exclusion and (d) ecological exclusion, because exclusionism is based on deprivation of many for excess or excessive gains for the social few. Culture of peace needs to be universalized that presupposes and presumes the globalization of human rights, even within the cultural diversities. We live in our earth of cultural plurality and this plurality means the co-living co-existence of diverse human cultures, the very spirits of civilizational and value enrichment. Sustenance of peace culture has to be a social/human property, social obligation and social recognition.


Challenges of Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights:

Freedom has two dimensional meanings: (a) freedom at the top, at the cost of deprivance of freedom at the bottom, which leads to excessive or over the basic freedom-needs. This may be called as the laissez faire freedom and (b) freedom at the bottom by curtailing the excess of freedom of the top-dog class or strata and liberating the suppressed human rights of the under-dogs may be called as the genuine freedom or freedom of the masses. Such freedom leads to democracy and democratic human rights. The ongoing freedom for development concept some affluent intellectual circle in international arena has been encouraging the increase in the development and consumption process, pattern and behavior of the haves, not of the have-nots. Unlimited freedom at the top does not and cannot create the possibilities and perspectives of generating rights to employment, means of job and purchasing power at the mass level. Such freedom, in other words, leads to violation of common human rights, where the commoners account for 65% of our globe, most of them being the marginalized human and territorial peripheries of the globe. The problem and challenge which the 21st century will meet and has to solve is the democratization or communization of the human rights. In dialectical process, common human right is the thesis the uncontrolled freedom is its antithesis, while the basic and egalitarian democracy for all may become the desired synthesis. Juridical/legal foundations, norms, conventions, declarations, resolutions, principles, rules, recommendations, etc. have, so long, been either partially effective, or, ineffective at both the national and international levels. It is the universalization of the behavior and common practice of human rights that can generate the society of the civility and common humanness beyond the discrimination of race, religion, skin-color, ethnicity, sex, old-age, language, political opinion, social or economic status belonging, class or strata origin, caste-belonging, etc. Civil and social freedom, not only economic freedom, is the parameter of all in the society and this should constitute the basis of democratic freedom for all in our post industrial and post 20th century society. Extension of human rights is an essential element of the infrastructure of the culture of peace that paves the way for a sustainable peace for generating human well-being, dignity, integrity and solidarity, emancipation, and finally, the spirit of a global human family. Anti-violation of human rights, anti-laissez faire and anti-hegemonic democracy constitute the very preamble of the civilian human rights.

There are certain aspects of human rights, which cannot be termed as missing links, but simply neglected and violated. We are aware of the general human rights, in which the children's rights, the old-aged people's rights, the opposition's rights, the minority's rights, the war prisoner's rights and, finally, the women's rights in the religiously fundamentalist societies are not much focused and being given attention to. There exist legal protective measures for the above neglected rights, in many countries of the world, but these are simply de jur, not de facto. This century is to find out the common protective measures of the neglected human rights of these human groups and sub-groups. Therefore, different aspects of human rights, today, need revisit, reform and revaluation. Illiteracy eradication is an important aspect of human rights, specially, in the underdeveloped societies.

21st century has to be the century not only to give shape but to activate the Comprehensive Human Rights with the concept that all persons are equal to and before each other and are entitled to common rights before the society, whose very basis should be (a) need-based rights, and (b) duties-performed rights. Human rights should not be considered as gifts to some people and as the objects of acquisitiveness by struggle to others. It should be regarded as (i) birth-right, (ii) means for humanistic self-realization, and (iii) sustenance-culture of equity, equality and human survival. The most refined and sophisticated essence of human rights is the right to peace. Right to peace consists of the desire and aspiration of the people, in the spirit of humanistic solidarity and to sustain it by eradicating war, violence, torture and dominance from humankind's life. Terrorism and mass violence of our time have become the scourges of humanity.

Human rights have to be internationalized, in which the local cultures, local values and local aspects have to get the consensus type of inclusions. Human rights concept, has, though undergone discussions, debates, suggestions, felt and valued, yet these have experienced different conceptual phases, experiences and meanings. Human rights has been a demand by the entire humankind of the globe, but the supply side of the human rights rested on the political and social gurus, who assumed the power of the destiny of human rights and structured the same, mostly, from the top. Human Rights have two characteristics of origin, namely, (a) of philanthropic or well-wishing nature, structured from the top and (b) of acquisitive and attainment nature, realized from the bottom. When human rights are structured by the nobility, experts, political leadership and selected representatives of the nation-states and regions at the national, regional, international and world body levels, the enacting bodies, they take into consideration of the vast specters. But what is missed there mostly are (a) the specific problems and aspects of each territory and locality as well as the right-needs of the people with diverse thoughts and behaviors and cultures. The general agenda and contents, in particular contexts of the particular territorial locality and community/group, need certain modifications and adjustments that depend on the mode of life, behavior, culture, values and life's philosophy. Therefore, the general human rights and the particular/specific human rights are to have periodical interaction for adding viability and vitality to each other. Human rights have undergone and have still been undergoing the systemic conceptual as well as phase experiences. Some countries of the West, belonging to the Capitalist Economic System, have developed human rights of the laissez faire type, in which the ethnic and colored minorities, besides the immigrants from their former economic and political colonies, as well as, the depending neighboring nation-states, do enjoy less de facto human rights. The former Socialist (or State Capitalist) Economic System introduced the collectivist human rights, in which each citizen was given the free right to education and economic life, but not much the right to express and impress. Here the citizens were transformed into state-clients. In Scandinavian system, they introduced a highly developed Social Democratic Human Rights system, combining strongly and creatively the troika of Human Needs, Human Rights and Human Duties. East European countries, in transitional phase of transformation from socialism to capitalism, have been experiencing two trends, namely, laissez faire rights by the haves (with more rights than duties) and de facto suppressed rights by the have-nots (or the new proletariat with more duties and less rights). Systemic conversion has, for the time being, created there a non-systemic anarchy. The states have pulled out from its statal social welfare duties for functioning as equalizer between the haves and have-nots. China has been practicing a new type of human rights, though criticized mostly by the Western Capitalist System. Former USSR accorded political rights before economic reforms and strengthening the economic base of the country. According to Mikhail Gorbachev, as admitted to the author, the demand and pressure for political rights mounted so high in the late eighties of the last century that he had no other choice than granting the political emancipation of the people before economic emancipation. Chinese system of today is being interpreted by certain analysts as national capitalism under communist umbrella. The means and ways for competitive economic rights have been opened to her citizens on the pattern of competition and remuneration on the qualitative and creative human resource input, instead of the former leveled-system. Political part of human rights in China is yet to be released and the system watch-dogs still subjugate and undermine this part of right.

There have emerged, in the late 20th century, two human security concepts: (a) collective human security and (b) cooperative human security, beside the existing individual human security concept. The first one is of tight integration while the second one is of loose integration. The first one was advocated by the communist type of socialists who believed in the collective social welfare, in which the individual human being had to be an integral part without dissenting voice and entity. Though the intention behind collective security was social consensus, yet it followed the path of enforced or pressed homogenization from the top. In cooperative human security, that got shape in the Scandinavian social democratic concept, the individual identity and entity was not sacrificed to the collective homogeneity, but was bound by the cooperative consensus type of consciousness. Similarly, the concept of collective human rights, had been the concept and idea that was experimented in the East European and other socialist countries, which apparently failed because of the dictatorial trend. The concept of cooperative human rights, in essence, is a societal concept that is yet to be developed further and applied.


Civil Democratization: Another Challenge for the 21st Century

Civil democratization or society's democratization, in entirety, is expected be a great challenge for the 21st century. Structured system and its functional mechanism have, so far, failed to democratize the society, in real and functional sense. The NGOs and non-structuralization of social functions may broaden the democracy and its ideals as well as principles. Democracy is an evolving process and its preconditions are equality and equity. Democracy enables all round, total, social and human development. Is democracy the by-product of human development, or, is human development the by-product of democracy ? It can be asserted that both are correct and inter-linked. When there exists the broad and societal democracy it enables human development. Again, when there exists human development it widens the scope for all round and total development. The cause-consequence relationship between the two may inter-change their goals and functions.

We have been living in a society of conflicts. Will there appear a post-conflicts society and what will be our roles in the post-conflicts society ? This will constitute another challenge to the peace researchers in this new century. Democracy is neither a model of trade, nor can its principles be traded. It is not only a legitimized framework of political and civil rights, it involves the full exercise of economic, social, cultural, political and ecological rights. Quality of democracy and the quality of development are the two facets of human rights-in-use. It is to be well understood that democracy not only enables, sustains too, the real development.And, genuine development sustains democracy. State's role and function for democracy and development cannot still be nullified. Only its mode of function is to be changed and reshaped. State has to adopt measures in order to function as equalization-stabilizer between the haves and have-nots, excess and inadequacy, wealth and wants. It will, again, be the function of the state to create, promote and ensure the sovereign equality. Sovereign equality is just the opposite of the limited and granted equality. Sovereign equality is to be attained, sustained, maintained and promoted.

There had been and are talks of the Agenda for Peace, Agenda for Development and Agenda for Human Rights. This century urges us to move from the agenda to action. This is the time for action, to move from proclamations and resolutions to actions and realizations. For doing so, we are to have interdependence of attainment, sustenance, maintenance and promotion of sovereign equality and human equity. We have been experiencing today a type of democracy which we may term as delegated democracy. In essence, it is a dictated democracy for a certain period of time to certain persons. Therefore, democracy has to be localized, socialized and humanized. Democracy, at such stage and level, ascertains local, social and civil peace and stability. Democracy for and at peace needs people's participation, consensus pluralism, decentralized socialization and common civility.

The concept of globalization, in our time, should be shaped as the concept of equal and equitable interdependence, not of the globalization of power by the political and economic power blocs. Globalization is a participatory function of the common people of the civil and civilian societies. If the globalization in the 21st century cannot remove the inadequacies or missing actors and factors of democracy, not only in the spatial level, but in the human dimension level too, it will remain the globalization of inadequacies. Such inadequacies are of economic, social, political, cultural, juridical and ecological types. These are the outcome of power hegemony, corruption, imposed dependence, pressurized marginalization, etc.

We also witness, nowadays, the functioning of parallel power structure, besides the state-nation power structure. These are parallel economy, black economy, corruption economy, mafia economy, etc. which are uncontrolled, unaccounted and unaccountable. Again these are the criminal governance parallel to official governance. These undermine the functioning of real democracy and human economy.


What type of Development and What types of Values?

Global people, their modes of living, habits, traditions, customs, cultures, behaviors, thoughts, etc. are not homogenous, these are rather heterogeneous. Therefore, there cannot be only one and homogenous development model for entire, but diversified humankind. Since there are so many diversities varying and differing with climatic and territorial locations or placements there has to be development models and functional procedures based on relevant values and cultures for each respective human community and territory. Such development behavior has to be promoted in such a way as to give birth to the coexistence of pluralistic values and pluralistic cultures.

We now experience the syndromes of extremism. Extremism is a behavioral trend which does not accept tolerance, adjustment and compromise. Extremism is the conditioned state of function and behavior. A conditioned state looses its capacity of acceptance from other states, stages or situations. Therefore it is rigid and does not accept unconditioned attitude. Unconditioned behavioral attitudes are tolerant and possess the capacity of adjustment and adaptation. Conditioning of mind is the result of constant practice of certain rituals, behaviors and faith, which, in course of such continuous practice becomes a belief, dogma or ism that fail to learn or see alternative in other or others, because of the closure of eyes to rationality, tolerance and power of judgment of right and wrong. Like conditioned state of mind, extremism is also a conditioned state of idea, thought and mode of action. Extremism to which we are used to, and which can be considered as non-value or anti-value, from the peace research point of view, have, generally, four types of manifestation, with the similar numbers of remedial measures, which can be drawn as such:

Scheme 3. Forms of Extremism and Proposed Remedies



Extremism, whether of right or left orientation, needs to adjust to realities related to broad human interest under the context of time, space and circumstances. The solutions, as shown above, are of more objective and rationalistic types that correspond to needs and aspirations.

Micro-nationalism and Macro-Marginalization (mainly, caused by Trade Globalization with mass production at the cost of the lack of mass employment and purchasing power in the territorial and human peripheries) are also two challenging problems of this century to be solved. While Micro-Nationalism of protectionist isolationalism in outlook has to be removed, remedied and converted to or replaced by Macro-Humanism for entering, as equal partner, into broad Globalism, the Macro-Marginalization of human territorialities is to be wiped off from the global and local scenes.

There can be put forward certain constructive suggestions for broader perspectives for the 21st century peace research dynamism and these may be signified as:

a) Human Capacity Building
b) Human Consciousness Building and
c) Applicative Means and Measures Building

under democratic preconditions and procedures, for the purpose of solving the problems of peace and human development.

Peace research of the 21st century has to be motivated towards humanistic globalism, but not towards a standardized globalization, as initiated by WTO, IMF and World Bank. Globalization is adjustment according to people's basic requirements.


Selected Bibliographical Reference:

Ghali, Boutros Boutros (ed.): The Interaction between Democracy and Development,
UNESCO, Paris, 2002

Guha, Amalendu: Philosophy, Science and Culture of Peace, Mahatma M.K. Gandhi
Foundation for Non-Violent Peace, Oslo, Norway, 2002

Civilizations, Cultures, Values, idem, 2003

Conflict and Peace: Theory and Practice, Institute for
Alternative Development, Research, Oslo, Norway, 1985


Poverty, Sustenance Choice, Development Option, idem,
1999

Wallensteen, Peter: Understanding Conflict Resolution, Sage Publications, London, 2002



Amalendu Guha is Professor/Director of the Institute for Alternative Development Research and President of the Mahatma M.K. Gandhi Foundation for Non-Violent Peace, Oslo. Professor Guha, an internationally famed economist, who served the College in its initial years, has also enriched Assamese literature by a number of books and articles.


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