What Does It Mean to Celebrate International Peace Day?

From “State of Disappearance” series (2018) by Chantal Meza.

We know the world continues to be dangerous. We know our cities are continued targets for indiscriminate attacks. We know we continue to sell arms to brutal dictators on the basis that if we don’t others will. We know we continue to invest heavily in military research and development because that’s just the established order of things. We know there are groups in the world like Islamic State, which revel in the most abhorrent and intimately barbaric acts of killing upon anybody who doesn’t fit into their dystopian visions.

We know that unscrupulous leaders wish to develop weapons of mass destruction for their own protections and to blackmail their neighbors – or worse to unleash their potential. We know we continue to speak about peace yet carry out violence like its business as usual. And we know the more we weaponise the world; the more we increase the chances of driving head on into our shared extinction.

When collecting his Nobel Peace Prize as the only war time President to have been a recipient of the award, Barack Obama, while acknowledging Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, brought us back to the ultimate question when it comes to thinking about the possibility for lasting peace when confronting our proclivities towards war and violence: ‘As a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle…

Read more