Wednesday, September 21 marks the 40th anniversary of the first celebration of the International Day of Peace in 1982 and has been designated Peace Week 2022.
I was a child during the tail end of the Vietnam War. I remember seeing it on the television in our living room. I was told the war was happening far away but here it was in my living room before my very own eyes. It didn’t seem that far away to me and it certainly wasn’t far away for the people on the screen.
As a child, I could not comprehend why this was happening. What did the people in Vietnam do to deserve this? I felt confusion, and dread, and was deeply upset. Even after the war supposedly ended i remember there were years of people fleeing – the refugees the news referred to as “boat people”. Why? Why war when peace is clearly so much better?
What does conversation have to do with peace?
John and I were recently invited to attend a panel session at the UN exploring the role of innovation in education and peacebuilding. It was sponsored by The Permanent Missions of Costa Rica and El Salvador to the UN, in collaboration with the Permanent Observer Mission of the University for Peace to the United Nations (UPEACE), the Peace Innovation Initiative (PII), and the Business Council for International Understanding (BCIU). This was the beginning of the initiative focused on “building an ecosystem for sustainable peacebuilding.” Visionary leader, Barbara Winston, Founder, Chair and President of PII set the stage by personally welcoming everyone and intoning the need to revive the global conversation on peace as she invoked peace as a practice disruptive of the status quo.
I was surprised it felt like home to be among this group, yet up until now, when John and I think of our work in culture and conversation we hadn’t thought much about “peacebuilding.” But why not? Why isn’t peace at center stage?