According to Johan Galtung, founder of peace studies, there are two types of peace: the absence of war: negative peace, and the presence of the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies: positive peace. Positive peace is a long-term process that involves three strategies:

These are in line with his theory of three elements of violence: peacekeeping prevents direct violence, physical or verbal violence between people. Peacemaking involves efforts that restructure society so that systemic or structural violence, violence embedded in social structures, is reduced or transformed. And peacebuilding involves creating alternatives to cultural violence, those aspects of culture (beliefs, values, and ways of being) that lend legitimacy to violence and make violence seem an acceptable means of responding to conflict.

Unarmed civilian peacekeeping

There are several groups that send volunteers to conflict areas to protect local activists, such as Peace Brigades International, Community Peacemaker Teams and Nonviolent Peaceforce. These organizations give people basic training in non-violence and cultural knowledge and send them to some of the most dangerous conflicts in the world (think Sri Lanka, South Sudan and even Syria). When they work on the ground with local organizations, one of the things they usually do is simple but effective: provide ongoing guidance to threatened people, often human rights workers. They also engage in rumour reduction, serve as intermediaries, and provide other relevant services. For example, Nonviolent Peaceforce helped broker a peace agreement in Mindanao (Philippines) and rescued child soldiers in Sri Lanka.

To give a further impression, here is an example of what two NP volunteers experienced in South Sudan. They worked in a refugee camp in the Bor region, where there were more than two million internally displaced refugees. A heavily armed militia broke through the defensive barrier. The two volunteers, wearing distinctive khaki vests with the Nonviolent Peaceforce logo, began to take cover. Then they remembered what they had learned: you can’t outrun bullets. They helped some women and children to the nearest tent. Before long the valves flew open and men armed with axes, guns and sharpened sticks rushed in. They ordered the two men to leave. But one of them said: “We are international protectors. We’re not leaving.” The attackers looked at each other in bewilderment and backed away. A fluke? No. Two other groups broke in, and they too retreated. Outside the hut, fifty-nine people were slaughtered and three hundred wounded in twenty minutes. But inside, the women and children were safe. The armed UN troops are instructed not to shoot in such situations: their protection was therefore useless, while the unarmed non-violent presence saved the day. “If we had had a gun, we would have been killed,” said one volunteer, to which the other said, “We had another weapon: the motto of Nonviolent Peaceforce, what you can say yes to, when you say no to war.”¹

Make Peace

Peacemaking can take place at a very formal level, through diplomacy, and also at more informal levels, by people using conflict resolution methods. Making peace often involves bringing different parties together to reach some kind of agreement. As the level of violence increases, we must also increase the level of nonviolence. Thus, some methods may be effective in preventing conflict, while others may be effective in response.

A key tool in practising nonviolent conflict resolution is the “two hands of nonviolence.” It was first introduced by feminist writer and activist Barbara Deming. In her book Revolution and Equilibrium, she described active nonviolence as the creative tension that fuels both interpersonal transformation and social change, and has two aspects, or hands. She described it as follows:

“With one hand we say to someone who is angry, or to an oppressor, or to an unjust system: “Stop what you are doing. I refuse to respect the role you choose to play, I refuse to obey you. I refuse to cooperate with your demands. I refuse to build the walls and the bombs. I refuse to pay for the guns. With this hand I will even interfere with the evil you do. I want to break the easy pattern of your life.” But then the proponent of nonviolence drops the other hand. It is let down stretched out – perhaps with love and sympathy, perhaps not – but always stretched out. ​​​With this hand we say: “I will not let you go or cast you out of the human race. I have faith that you can make a better choice than you are making now, and I will be there when you are ready. Whether you like it or not, we are part of each other.”

A recent example is the speech that Greta Thunberg gave upon receiving the German prize ‘Goldene Kamera’. She pointed out that the celebrities in the audience often lead very unsustainable lives with their flying holidays, yoga retreats and expensive dinners. But at the same time she said: we need you to reach more people, because if you speak out about climate change, a lot of people will listen. In this way, Greta indicated the behavior she did not agree with, and at the same time tried to involve them in her fight to combat climate change.

In a conflict parties often oppose each other, and hostility arises. It is important that we try to prevent this as much as possible and speak out against the behavior, but not against people. (Sometimes this can be difficult, when people identify with certain behaviour, but you can still assume that someone can make a different choice).

Peacebuilding

As we mentioned, peacebuilding is about reducing the risk of lapses or relapse into conflict, and about creating alternatives to cultural violence, those aspects of culture (beliefs, values and ways of being) that give legitimacy to violence and make violence appear to be an acceptable means of responding to conflict. So it is the most long-term approach of the three. It is not about post-conflict intervention or construction, which may be the first association for many people, but goes much further than that.

Currently we don’t see many peaceful cultures and those that are left are disappearing. An example of a peaceful culture that is deeply concerned about the violence that Western cultures continue to commit on Earth is the Kogi people of Colombia and some other South American countries. They asked a filmmaker who worked for the Discovery Channel to help them get their message across to the “younger brother,” the white, Western people. Two films were made, one in 1990 titled ‘From the Heart of the World – the Elder Brothers’ Warning’ and one in 2012 called ‘Aluna’. (You can watch the film for free at www.alunathemovie.com)

Most people probably don’t want to “go back” to ways of life that many people had before the Industrial Revolution, and that some people (such as the Kogi) still practice. Fortunately, there are other ways we can move forward toward a sustainable peaceful culture. The United Nations offers us a model in its resolution for a Culture of Peace, which is detailed on this website. So peacebuilding is actually about creating an infrastructure for peace in various areas. Another more concrete example is Pace e Bene’s Nonviolent Cities project, also described on this website (link).