The price of liberty is eternal vigilance
–Thomas Jefferson.
The human family at the dawn of the 21st century is faced with many problems: an increasingly polluted and otherwise threatened planet composed of finite resources whose limits may soon be reached; gross imbalance in the distribution of wealth, which inhibits vast majority of the human species from becoming the best that they can be and ensures that vast numbers die prematurely; and regrettable patterns of social and political injustice, in which racism, sexism, and other forms of unfairness abound, and in which representative government is relatively rare and torture and other forms of oppression, distressingly common. This is just a tip of the iceberg.
A universal phenomenon, conflicts occur (within and) between individuals, groups, organizations, and nations the world over. In his masterpiece, “Agenda For Peace”, one-time United Nations Organization Secretary General, Boutrous-Boutrous-Ghali (1992:27) estimated that since (despite) the formation of the UNO in 1945, over 100 major conflicts have occurred globally, leaving in their wake over 20,000,000 million people dead, unaccounted numbers wounded, and produced over 17,000,000 million refugees and approximately 20,000,000 million displaced persons (emphasis mine). Another estimate puts the average number of wars around the world per year since 1989 at an average of 30 to 34 (CRESNET, 2001:1). Majority of these conflicts occurred in third world countries – especially African countries.
The most disturbing fact to note is that stupendous sums of money and sundry other resources – human, material and time – are being expended, not in solving what we might call the “problems of peace”, but in prosecuting senseless conflicts, leaving behind a gruesome trail of sweat, tears and blood in form of: social and political animosities, economic collapse, displacement of persons and disease migration, trauma, pains, neglect, enmity, underdevelopment, increased insecurity, anarchy etc; a litany of avoidable woes. The compound lesson from contemporary warfare is that” the costliest peace is cheaper than the cheapest war”.
A critical observation of the methods commonly adopted in addressing some of these conflicts presents a picture of false starts, inconsistencies and avoidable failures on the part of stakeholders in adequately dealing with these conflicts both at their manifest and latent stages. The customary – and often ineffective – tendency has been to focus on termination, settlement, management, resolution, etc; as if the preventive aspect is insignificant. This contrasts with the age-long axiom that “prevention is better than cure”. Guilty of this anomalous – and often costly – oversight are: the peace practitioners (commonly known as conflict managers), peace scholars, state institutions and other critical stakeholders in the peace project. This gross oversight has often resulted in the manifestation, and at times, escalation of preventable conflicts.
For a world in critical ferment, with woeful records of very destructive conflicts, a more proactive response to conflict has become expedient. This will go a long way in nipping most potentially destructive conflicts in the bud and help maintain an atmosphere of positive peace.
Conflict prevention, also known as Preventive Diplomacy or Pre-Conflict Peace Building is a proactive strategy in the peace process that is meant to douse tensions before they spiral into full-blown violence (or actions directed at checking violent conflict if it erupts by addressing its background causes). This requires measures geared towards building confidence via early warning based on information gathering and formal and informal fact-finding, improved policing and judicial processes, human rights monitoring, electoral reforms, demilitarization, control of small arms, institutional reforms, socio-economic development, peace education etc.
Although the civil society, government agencies and other stakeholders have contributed their various quotas towards this noble ideal, much more still needs to be done. While the civil society and other stakeholders have been bogged down by the peculiar constraints of the global political cum economic environment, and at times the limited scope of their thrusts, governments on their own part have most times worsened issues by adopting confrontational conflict handling styles. These shortfalls have increased the urgency for the evolvement of timely, efficient and effective conflict prevention strategies to ensure that potentially damaging conflicts are checkmated and transformed into productive, positive peace.
Pundits might point out at this juncture that conflicts are endemic societal phenomena and, hence, cannot be prevented. Valid as this argument might be, the point here is not in preventing conflicts in the literary sense of the word, but in restricting them from snowballing into physical violence. Warding off violent conflicts and creating a much more peaceful and tranquil world is the collective task of all members of the human family everywhere: individuals, national governments, international organizations and agencies, civil society and religious groups etc; all stakeholders in the peace project must begin to contribute their quota towards facilitating the development of an information system that can provide data on conflict indicators which would be used in forecasting the possible emergence of conflicts with the aim of putting in place a proactive response mechanism to avert impending conflicts and promote a common spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful co-existence amongst men and nations, all geared towards stimulating co-operation among people, and help lesson obstacles and threats to peace and progress.
There is a popular maxim that “a stitch in time saves everything” (emphasis mine). If we desire a world of peace and prosperity, we must be continually vigilant. A positively peaceful, tranquil, egalitarian, informed, educated, strong, developed and united world is possible; a world where nonviolence is a national ethic; where conflicts are seen as opportunities to seek for common grounds, and where the citizens of the earth can be the best that they can be without inhibitions.
Peace to the world!