Human Rights and Sustainable Peace
By Debra DeLaet (Executive Director, Iowa United Nations Association)
These remarks were given at a public lecture sponsored by the Des Moines Faith Committee for Peace in Celebration of the International Day of Peace on September 21, 2024.
In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly established the International Day of Peace, observed each year on September 21, to promote a vision of a world in which countries and communities would commit to resolving conflicts and differences through peaceful means.
The UN General Assembly elaborated on the meaning of peace in its 1999 Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace. This declaration affirms that peace is not only the absence of violent conflict but also requires respect for fundamental human rights, the pursuit of justice, and the development of institutions that foster cooperative, non-violent settlement of disputes.
The UN’s vision of peace aligns with the distinction in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies between “negative peace” (defined as the absence of war) and “positive peace” which encompasses not only the absence of war but also the realization of human rights, human security, and other indicators of human well-being and flourishing. My remarks today focus on the importance of promoting and protecting fundamental human rights to achieve sustainable peace.
The concepts of negative and positive peace are fundamentally interconnected. Just as there can be no peace without justice, there cannot be sustainable peace without human rights. Violence commonly emerges and escalates in contexts where there is pervasive inequality and poverty, where fundamental political rights and freedoms are repressed, and where self-determination is denied.
Likewise, there can be no human rights without peace. The human rights tragedy unfolding in the war in Gaza makes the interconnectedness of peace and human rights abundantly clear. The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of almost 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians. The war launched by Israel in response to the attack by Hamas has resulted in the killing of over 40,000 Palestinians as of mid-August. In addition to the thousands of deaths attributed to direct killing, the war in Gaza has decimated social and political infrastructure in critical ways, contributing to mass deaths from famine and starvation, the destruction of health care systems, and re-emerging cases of communicable illnesses like polio.
Although the interconnections between negative and positive peace are abundantly clear, the current state of global political violence shows that it is not enough to merely say that states and non-state actors should resolve their disputes peacefully. Ongoing wars and violence in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Sudan, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (to name just a few) show the persistence of war as a strategy for countries responding to political disputes.
While the absolute number of deaths from war has been declining since the end of World War II, the UN notes that political conflict and violence are currently on the rise, especially conflicts involving non-state actors. Increasing political and ideological polarization, a rise in hyper-nationalism, and resource scarcity, including scarcity exacerbated by climate change, are important drivers of increasing violent conflict across the globe.
According to the International Crisis Group, a breakdown in commitment to global norms and institutions, such as the UN, is also contributing to the rise in global political violence. Governing elites across the globe are disengaging from global institutions that have contributed to peace, stability, and prosperity since the end of World War II. This disengagement from global institutions undermines the willingness of countries to engage diplomatically to resolve conflicts and deprives these bodies of the resources they need to succeed in their efforts to foster global cooperation.
This sobering information begs the question of how to cultivate a culture of peace in precarious times. Given rising levels of global political violence in a polarized world, how can activists and advocates cultivate a culture of peace in the face of powerful forces working against it?
I would like to speak to five issues that I believe are essential for cultivating a culture of peace. These issues focus especially on stopping wars before they start. Once a war has begun, it often ends only when violence has been exhausted and one side emerges—after extensive bloodshed and human suffering—as a victor.
First, conflict monitoring, early warning, and prevention are vital to cultivating a culture of peace. Human rights violations and discrimination are a major indicator of risks for violent conflict. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights engages in human rights monitoring and analysis to identify potential hot spots for future violence. Support for the UN’s work in conflict monitoring and prevention offer a pathway to prevent violence before it breaks out. The global community should invest more in conflict monitoring and prevention and to the enhancement of human rights—it is easier and more affordable to prevent violent conflicts before they begin than it is to resolve them once they are underway.
Second, investing in human development is critical to working towards sustainable peace. The UN Development Program developed the concept of human development in 1990. Rather than focusing simply on national wealth as an indicator of national development, the Human Development Index also considers life expectancy and average levels of education. Human Development data shows clearly that there is a strong relationship between peace and human development. If you examine the data, you can identify sudden and often steep declines in human development when war emerges in a particular country. Conversely, countries with high scores on the human development index are much more likely to be at peace. This data indicates that investing in basic human needs not only improves human development but also increases the probability of peace.
Third, non-violent resistance is more likely to promote peace and human rights than violence. Proponents of peace—from activists to diplomats—need to raise awareness about the relative effectiveness of non-violent resistance as a response to human rights oppression and violence. Although many recognize the right of oppressed groups to adopt violent methods to respond to state violence, the fact is that violent resistance commonly does not work. Indeed, violent resistance frequently contributes to conflict escalation. Violence begets violence. Conversely, the empirical evidence shows that non-violent resistance strategies often work. Erica Chenoweth (a political scientist and professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School) and Maria J. Stephan (a political scientist, co-lead and chief organizer of the Horizons Project, and former director of the program on non-violent action at the U.S. Institute of Peace) have conducted research showing that 20th century campaigns of non-violent resistance are more than twice as effective in achieving their aims as violent campaigns. Chenoweth and Stephan’s work also has shown that a participation threshold of just 3.5% makes it likely that non-violent resistance movements will succeed. These findings show that a small proportion of a population has the capacity to produce major, positive change in a country.
Fourth, it is essential to investing in global institutions and diplomacy. It can be tempting to reject global institutions in the face of failed diplomatic efforts connected to major contemporary wars. But that is a mistake. While global institutions like the UN cannot force diplomatic agreements on states, they play an essential role in creating space for diplomatic solutions. Frustration with the inability of the United Nations to force diplomatic solutions to violent conflicts is understandable. Yet, the reality is that there is no legal mechanism for the UN Security Council to override the dynamics of major power politics. For example, Russia’s veto power on the Security Council prevents the UN from authorizing enforcement action against Russia in response to its unlawful intervention in the Ukraine. Likewise, the lack of global consensus and political will among major powers impedes the Security Council’s ability to force a ceasefire in Gaza. But these hard cases do not tell the full story. The UN has had significant success and saved countless lives through its implementation of peacekeeping operations, which require Security Council approval and the consent of parties to conflicts. It is imperative to remember peacekeeping successes as well as the hard cases in which the UN is unable to act. Global power politics are in play with or without the UN. Madeleine Albright and others have said some variant of the quotation, “If the UN didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.” There are no existing alternatives to the UN or an international organization like it for the facilitation of diplomacy to address collective global problems.
Finally, it is imperative that diplomats, human rights advocates, and peace activists continue to work for peace even in settings of extraordinary violence. It is essential to remain committed to the diplomatic pursuit of peace even in seemingly intractable conflicts. The case of South Africa is instructive. The brutal system of apartheid persisted in South Africa for almost 50 years, from 1948-1994. This system, built on a foundation of white supremacy and white minority rule, committed egregious human rights violence and discrimination. In fighting oppression, the military wing of the ANC committed violence and perpetrated human rights violations against civilians. Nelson Mandela, a prominent anti-apartheid activist, spent 27 years in prison for violent acts and conspiring to overthrow the South African government. The apartheid government characterized ANC militants as terrorists, and the violence in South Africa seemed intractable. But in 1990, then South African President F.W. de Klerk, released Mandela from prison in response to domestic and international political pressure and growing fears of largescale war. Mandela and de Clerk went on to play critical roles in negotiating a peaceful end to apartheid and a transition to an independent, democratic South Africa. They were jointly awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their work. Nelson Mandela went on to become the first President of the new South Africa and pursued a strategy of reconciliation rather than retribution.
I would like to end my remarks with this important historical example. To cultivate a culture of peace in a world filled with war, we must look not only to the peace activists and diplomats but to those who have been active partisans in violent conflict. This requires seeing enemies as potential partners in peace negotiations and, perhaps, even as future recipients of global peace prizes.