Involves a range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and sustainable development. Peacebuilding strategies must be coherent and tailored to specific needs of the country concerned, based on national ownership, and should comprise a carefully prioritized, sequenced, set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives.
Understanding Peace Holistically: From the Spiritual to the Political argues that spiritually rooted and morally oriented peacefulness is relevant to the socio-economic–political structures that provide the conditions for a culture of peace. GHFP’s Scherto Gill and Garrett Thomson are the co-authors of this book.
Through developing a theory of positive and holistic peace, from the spiritual to the relational, and from communal towards the socio-political, this book identifies key principles that characterise international and institutional processes that nurture peace. The innovative conception of peace developed in this book may guide and inspire individuals, institutions, and international organisations with regards to how to make peace.
On Sunday the 15th August, the Project Hijas de la Paz was inaugurated in Amanecer, Colombia, with a ceremony that included the local Mayor and other local dignitaries and the chairperson of Subud Colombia.
45 young women took part in a four-month residential programme, most of who are from indigenous and Afro-communities who are living in terrible conditions of poverty and violence. 11 children who came with the young women joined Amanecer Kindergarten and received International Child Development Project (ICDP) support.
The entire community was involved and provided 900 hours of training and formation. There were 16 tutors on the Programme (academic, personal, entrepreneurial, cooking, gardening), and 10 of them are residents of Amanecer. Other Subud members were acting as ‘helpers’ to the participants, supporting them in processing and addressing the deep traumas.
The Hijas de la Paz Project has enabled these vulnerable young women to feel their intrinsic value as persons, and from a place of deep quiet, they learned and worked harmoniously with the Subud community of mentors. This is how they can be nurtured into future leaders and peacemakers.
“Today is a day to celebrate peace. This award recognises that positive peace can be expressed in many ways, such as a spiritual presence, a serene psychological state, a relational consciousness, a loving community, a caring institution, an economy centred on human well-being, and a way of inter-being on the planet with all that is.
These diverse aspects of peace are united by a common ethical core – the search for the global good and the flourishing of all. It is this ethical core that invites our imagination of structural peace, co-construct a culture of well-being, and support pillars for positive peace.
I am most grateful for this award which gives so much meaning to our work for peace. More importantly, it draws our attention to those who are pioneering positive peace – who have shown us that so long as we see humanity as embodiment of dignity, love as the promise of mutual belonging, community as the commitment to our deep relatedness, peace is already within reach.”
Prof Gill and her colleagues at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David are working to develop Masters in Peace Studies. This is a programme that uniquely focuses on positive peace.
We live in an increasingly globalised world where children have many spaces for learning and collaboration, but also a world of increasing distrust and fear of the other. Today, more than ever, we need to recognize the role of education in building safer, equitable, and inclusive societies.
Education needs to support children’s sound and holistic development, not only cognitive and physical but also social, emotional, and spiritual. By nurturing in children ethical values, such as empathy, respect, and responsibility, and life skills such as critical thinking and the ability to solve their differences with others, children can learn to live together with people of different cultures, religions, and beliefs. Ethics education can empower children to become global citizens and work together to build peaceful societies.
The Transforming Education symposium aimed to accelerate global action and support to prioritize ethics education as a critical aspect for societies to foster learning to live together, contributing to “building forward better”. Through a series of panel discussions and interactive workshops, participants have learned from the experience, insights, and expertise of diverse partners working at national, regional, and global levels. To enhance children’s meaningful participation, an advocacy session for children was held on the 23rd, inviting reflections on how ethics education might help to learn to live together; share recommendations and engage in dialogue with adult leaders.
The GHFP’s Scherto Gill spoke at the Panel on Research and Practice to Advance Knowledge on Ethics Education, and she highlighted the importance of applying an innovative conceptual framework for understanding ethics education which can serve as the basis to direct research interest and co-create knowledge.
Overall, the Symposium provided a platform for various stakeholders to share experiences on ethics education programmes and their contribution to peaceful societies and to the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. It also offered an invaluable opportunity to learn from good practices, programmes, and policies illustrated by governments and schools, with the participation of several Ministries of Education.
A critical result of the symposium has been to identify key benefits of integrating ethics education into national curricula and programmes, and put forth policy recommendations and concrete programmatic actions on integrating ethics education as a core tenet of equal and inclusive education for all children. Read the Full Report HERE.
At the GHFP, we conceptualise peace as an inner spiritual state that has implications for our worldly processes. Here Dr Scherto Gill, our Senior Fellow, draws on the GHFP’s book entitled “Understanding Peace Holistically“, and offers three interconnected ideas:
First, peace is a spiritual value. As an inner state, peace is a special kind of tranquillity where we identify with the self as the essence of the ‘I’, the soul. Hence the expression: “I am a Soul.” The ‘I’ connects well with that which is peaceful, such as the Divine, the Sacred, the Spirit. When our spiritual self-identification is primary, it can generate a blissful serenity that defuses the potentially violent nature of inner conflict. The peaceful ‘I’ can transcend the lived psychological tensions and calm their non-peaceful tendencies. This inner state is then experienced in our relationship with our self, other people and other beings in the world. In this way, inner peace denotes our intention and capacity to be in the right relationship, including living harmoniously with others near and far. When we are in such a state of peace, we can be ethical in our thoughts, attitudes, and acts – these are spontaneous expressions of spirituality.
Second, peace is a potential feature of all aspects of human life that involve conflict. Our world is characterised by diversity, and where there is difference, inevitably there is conflict, tension, and contradiction. These are normal ebbs and flows of life and they should not be equated with violence. Hence, conflict is not the opposite of peace, and peace does not require eliminating conflict. Often, the presence of conflict can invite us to encounter, to dialogue, to engage our humanness, to recognise each other as human beings, as part of a ‘WE’. With this mutual recognition, we can transform conflict towards innovation and positive change. With this mutual recognition, we can resolve violence – not only because violence dehumanises and therefore we reject it, but also because if others are violated and hurt, one is equally hurting – that is precisely the nature of being part of a WE. Therefore non-violence is always part of peace-making in the world – It is an active striving towards love, friendship, respect and justice that denounces all forms of antagonism, violence, and enemy-making.
Third, peace is constituted in human life itself, our well-being and flourishing.Peacefulness as a spiritual value is rooted in the intrinsically valuable nature of our being. Being human is itself valuable, regardless who we are, where we are from, nor what we are, what we do. This self-perception is a fundamental form of dignity, self-respect, or self-love. Seeing human beings (and other beings on the planet) in this way allows us to recognise that all lives, well-being and flourishing are likewise valuable. Similarly, the contents of our lives, including our experiences, activities, processes, relationships, also have intrinsic value. Peace as a spiritual state directs our appreciative awareness to these values.
For peacefulness to pertain to our spiritual and non-violent ways of being, and constitute our personal well-being, and collective flourishing, it requires that our institutions be underpinned by a culture that embodies the values of respect and compassion, our public practices to be humanising and forgiving. Equally, our global socio-economic and political systems need to reflect this respect for the inherent non-instrumental value of human being, human life, and all lives on the planet.
Bringing these three ideas together, we can see that peace is simultaneously spiritual, ethical, cultural and political. Peacefulness as an inner spiritual state has bearings on our worldly processes, and vice versa.
On this International Day of Peace, when we are invited to join millions around the planet to meditate together, by quietening our minds, widening our hearts, we also open a collective space for our spirits to speak to us about what it means to make peace, build peace, and above all, to be peace.
At our present time of uncertainty, many people and communities are experiencing powerlessness, and even despair. This short EPLO video message below is powerful, and empowering. The GHFP believes that WE can build peace, live peace, and be peace together.
Understanding Peace Holistically: From the Spiritual to the Political
This GHFP book argues that spiritually rooted and morally oriented peacefulness is relevant to the socio-economic–political structures that provide the conditions for a culture of peace. As the authors build up a theory of peace from the spiritual to the relational and communal towards the socio-political, this book also identifies key principles that characterise international and institutional processes that nurture peace. The holistic conception of peace developed in this book may guide and inspire individuals, institutions, and international organisations with regards to how to make peace.
Hosted by IofCI’s Trustbuilding Program in partnership with the GHFP Research Institute, this international seminar offers a unique opportunity to meet, share and discuss the process of building trust.
At a time of increasing fragmentation, trust is diminishing around the world. Communities face racial, ethnic and religious divides, intergenerational conflict, and the rise of extremist attitudes, as well as social divisions and the legacy of war. The Seminar poses a critical question: “How can we address these challenges?”
Among the discussants will be Letlapa Mphahlele, commander of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army during apartheid times. His anger was such that he ordered retaliatory massacres of white civilians. After a radical transformation he now sees the whole of humanity as ‘my people’. Letlapa, who, until 2013, was President of the Pan Africanist Congress and a Member of the South African Parliament, is a protagonist in the award-winning film, Beyond Forgiving, which depicts a profound story of tragedy, forgiveness and hope.
This is by invitation-only event. For further information and interest to contribute, please contact events@ghfp.org.
Collective and community initiatives can empower those suffering from the wounds of a violent past to collaborate towards mutual healing, thus creating new possibilities for peace.
To better understand the significance of these community-rooted collective healing endeavours, the GHFP and the UNESCO Slave Route Project hosted a one-day International Symposium, at the Royal Society for the Arts in London.
The event brought together practitioners and scholars who have experiences and expertise in the field of communal and collective healing of mass traumas, for an intimate dialogue focused around three core questions:
What are the typical psychological and social symptoms encountered in communities resulting from the experience and legacies of past atrocities?
What might constitute collective healing in these situations?
How do community-based processes and practices contribute to collective healing? (And how would the community evaluate collective healing? What are the relevant indicators that some healing has taken place?)
