Key facts that motivate us

On the positive side:

1. Civil society is engaged and increasingly influential:

   • more and more women and men, here and elsewhere in the world, are standing up and requesting peace and a stop to violence

   • many private initiatives are sprouting up and proposing alternatives to violence, with new  ideas, new definitions, conferences and courses.

2. Schools are reacting :

   • Faced with the alarming increase in incivility, they're evolving away from providing knowledge and towards an educational content that includes behaviour rules

   • Conflict management techniques, mediation, societal rules, etc., are starting to being taught a the end of the 20th century.

3. The international institutions are better able to pull their weight:

   • ces institutions codifient et font appliquer des règlements internationaux pour promouvoir la paix et la réduction des violences

   • des règlements couvrent maintenant les droits humains, les droits des enfants, le rôle des femmes dans les processus de paix, la limitation d'armes et des mines antipersonnelles, les droits des migrants, la suppression de la peine de mort, etc.

All these accomplishments were largely unthinkable before the 20th century.

The facts:

Despite the efforts deployed by governments, NGOs, schools, religious bodies and many individuals and groups, herewith the facts:

1. Violence persists in the 21st century:

   • 22 regions of the world are at war and 36 other zones suffer from on and off conflicts according to www.warnews.it (2004 statistics, with no improvements in view). See the statistics …

   • Though peace is well established in Switzerland and in Europe, violence is not only present, but rising. Violence takes place inside families, at school, in the streets and at work, between friends and colleagues, against persons who speak out, against those one refuses to accept. See the statistics …

2. The transmission of human values is insufficient

   • Society is no longer able to convince children, from the youngest age, nor sometimes even ourselves, of the outright unacceptable nature of violence.

   • Civilisations that differ seem bound to the idea of destroying each other

   • Persons of differing cultures feel convinced that other cultures are per definition inherently evil and unchangeable – that there will never be an understanding regarding human values. The clash of civilizations seems to many inevitable…

The chance for humanity is that, because of these facts, a positive evolution is indeed taking place, like never before, made up of innumerable initiatives of all sizes, sowing more and more grains of peace.