Universal Peace Research Articles

China’s Proposition to Build a Community of Shared Future for Mankind and the Middle East Governance

:The proposition to build a community of shared future for mankind is a new concept that the Chinese government has advocated after the 18th National Congress of the CPC, aiming to develop a new structure of international relations and upgrade the global governance model. As a Chinese proposition that reflects China’s wisdom, this concept is based on the long-standing cultural tradition and the advanced Chinese ideological system, representing a new perspective for international cooperation and international order and the new concepts of development, security and civilization. This proposition offers the right direction for the ongoing efforts to improve global governance. The governance in the Middle East is a weak link in global governance, but it is a critical factor for improvement. As a rising power, China is playing an increasingly prominent and constructive role in the Middle East governance. China’s proposition to build a community of shared future for mankind and the “Belt and Road” initiative does not only fit very well in the diverse cultural context of the Middle East, but also support the realistic needs of the people there. The proposition, as well as the initiative, will surely drive the improvement of governance in the Middle East and help the region solve issues hindering development and achieve lasting and universal peace.

Advancing the debate on a culture of conflict prevention

“The best way to prevent societies from descending into crisis is to ensure they are resilient through investment in inclusive sustainable development.” This truth, as stated by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, underpins his recent vision for conflict prevention, in which the maxim of reversing inequalities and strengthening institutions applies to all countries. Putting prevention first is at the forefront of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and it frames the global community’s commitment to “strengthen universal peace in larger freedom”, captured in the preamble of United Nations General Assembly resolution 70/1 that introduced the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to the world in October 2015. The specific framework for prevention is found in SDG 16 which seeks to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”. SDG 16 places political action at the forefront of the peace-security-development nexus by recognizing that governance deficits are largely responsible for poverty and conflict. By virtue of this debate, the SDGs direct the international community to prioritize prevention by removing the causes of conflict through political process and the pursuit of development outcomes which leaves no one behind.

Blooming of the Novel in the Bloomsbury Group: An Investigation to the Impact of the Members of Bloomsbury Group on the Composition of the Selected Works of Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster

“For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice…”. Woolf’s belief has been put to the test in the Bloomsbury Group and this paper intends to investigate the validity of her claim through a critical analysis of the selected works of its novelist members. In a central part of London during the first half of the twentieth century a group of intellectual and literary writers, artists, critics and an economist came together which later on was labeled as Bloomsbury group. The group’s members had an influential role in blooming novel in a different form of expression and profoundly affect its literary figures, Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, in the composition of their fictions The Waves, A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse and Forster’s A Room with a view and Howards End. The formation of Bloomsbury circle acted as a bridge from the Victorian bigotries and narrow-mindedness to the unbounded era of modernism as they searched for universal peace, individual liberalism and human accomplishments due to ideal social norms. They freely exchanged their views on variety of subjects without any limitation. The reasons behind their popularity compared to several contemporary groups were their innumerable works, the clarification of their lives through their diaries, biographies and autobiographies and their diverse kinds of activities such as criticism, painting, politics and literary writings. They were adherents of truth, goodness, enjoyment of beautiful object, intrinsic values, aesthetics, friendship and personal relationship. Intellectual intimacy and cooperation can be considered as the main attribute of its members as they collaborate with each other and employ the fundamental tenets of the group within their works. The modern style of its artists as post-impressionist highly affects the narration technique of its literary figures. These novelists tried to narrate the verbal utterances in a visual way as if the whole of the story is depicted on a canvas. Furthermore, this paper tries to discover the role of the non-literary (painters and critics) members of the group in blooming and forming of a different and novel kind of narration technique, namely ‘stream of consciousness’, through the visual impact of the painter and the discussion method of critic members of the group.

The Newcastle Upon Tyne Peace Society (1817–50)

The 1816 foundation of the Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace in London was followed by the creation of a number of Auxiliary societies throughout the country. This paper analyses the history of the Newcastle Auxiliary, covering its establishment in 1817, its disaffiliation from the London Society in 1840, and its subsequent re-affiliation in 1850. After an initial period of quietism after their formation, the paper demonstrates how the radical pacifism of the society developed in the 1830s and 1840s, placing their activities in relation to the specificities of Newcastle’s political history, wider transformations in the British peace movement, and the influence of transatlantic networks of American peace advocacy and anti-slavery activism. The local Richardson family of Quakers personified these transformations, even as anarchists such as Joseph Barker represented a militant outer fringe of the society. Ultimately, however, the society struggled to garner wider support in Newcastle, clashing with local Chartists and with the town’s militarist merchants and businessmen in 1848. The paper therefore demonstrates how the Auxiliary societies need to be thought of active, agential organisations which negotiated the contradictions between their pacifist ideologies and the local and regional milieus within which they were enmeshed.

Passions, interests, and Hobbits

Passions, interests, and Hobbits

How to Construe a Myth: Neutrality within the United Nations System Under Special Consideration of the Austrian Case

In the 19th century neutrality was a highly appreciated concept. In the 20th century it has widely lost relevance and in principle it should be incompatible with UN membership. However, also under the UN system some states have opted for neutrality and it can be argued that there is still space for this status within the universal peace order. In fact, this peace order is far from perfect. There are several lacunae in the prohibition of the use of force and this concept is open to different interpretations. New challenges, such as international terrorism, are emerging that could threaten the absolute prohibition of the use of force. It is contended here that neutrals could play an important role when it comes to find an interpretation of this prohibition that best could reconcile the goals of peace and security with the overall - still imperfect - structure of the UN system. These questions are analysed with primary reference to Austrian neutrality which on the hand seems obsolete but on the other is forcefully looking for a new meaning.

Soviet International Law: Between Slogans and Practice

This article is devoted to an analysis of the Soviet doctrines of foreign policy, international law and relations. It is claimed that Soviet international law was based on two conflicting ideas – the idea of universal peace and the idea of world revolution. These ideas were reflected in two conflicting principles of Soviet international law – the principle of peaceful coexistence and the principle of socialist internationalism. Throughout its history the ussr was balancing between these ideas and principles depending on its internal and external interests and the current political situation, moving its foreign policy from the first principle to the second one, and vice versa. The article divides the history of Soviet foreign policy into five major stages – the foreign policy of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev – to analyse each of these stages in turn.

Global security: confronting challenges to universal peace

The challenge of peace is complex and intractable. Much depends on the meaning of the concept and the definition of the term. And in that respect much depends on whether a diplomatic-legal or a sociopolitical approach is adopted. The diplomatic-legal approach is enshrined in the United Nations Charter of 1945. The primary goal of the United Nations is to protect future generations from the scourge of war. The charter bestows on the Security Council the primary responsibility for maintaining, or restoring, international peace and security.

How Does it Fit? Multiple Religious Belonging, Spiritual but not Religious, and The Dances of Universal Peace

Abstract Are people who call themselves “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) actually practicing multiple religious belonging (MRB)? Or are “multiple religious participation” or “multiple religious involvement” better designations? This article suggests that “multiple religious orientation” fits their practices better. But a subset of the SBNR movement, The Dances of Universal Peace, is used as a case study in straddling the boundaries between MRB and SBNR. It also suggests ways to understand and locate the practices of SBNRs within the MRB discussion.

“Order Is the Best We Can Hope For”: <em>Sicario</em> and the Sacrificial Violence of the Law

"Order Is the Best We Can Hope For":Sicario and the Sacrificial Violence of the Law Kojo Koram (bio) The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo. —James Baldwin The spectacular modes of violence witnessed within contemporary politics offer a persistent challenge to the end-of-history proclamations that were made at the end of the previous century.1 The imagined resolution of social antagonism that was presumed to follow the fall of the Berlin Wall promised a global order in which liberal, capitalist democracy would provide a cohering anchor for all nations and cultures to coexist within a single universal. Rivalry between sovereign nations had been accredited as the source of murderous global conflict in what had been the bloodiest century in human history up to the end of the Cold War; with the twenty-first century heralding the suppression of that rivalry, it was anticipated that the violence would dissipate under the glare of a shared adherence to rule of law. However, the preponderance of increasingly spectacular images of violence delivered by contemporary politics and reflected in our popular culture troubles this [End Page 230] presupposition. The sight of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on fire that has been seared into our collective memory is read as confirming the end of "the end of history."2 The so-called War on Terror launched in the aftermath of 9/11 has continued to remind us of the return of a violence that was never truly contained, particularly with the images of Lynndie England's Abu Ghraib and the capture of Saddam Hussein. Critical scholars have responded by taking up the task of unpacking the insights that the War on Terror can offer us with regard to the contemporary workings of violence within the modern global legal order.3 However, absent from this critical engagement has been another abstract war that has both preceded and paralleled the War on Terror: the so-called War on Drugs. The task I will undertake in this essay is to address this absence by drawing some insights into the structuring of contemporary violence and its operative function within our proclaimed peaceful global legal order. I will examine first the legal architecture that governs the War on Drugs and then the representation of this inexhaustible war within popular culture, particular through Denis Villeneuve's 2015 film Sicario. Sicario, a cinematic interrogation of the irresolvable conflict between drug enforcement agents and narcotraffickers along the U.S.-Mexican border, captures the ways in which the drug war offers a telling instance of law underwritten by violence. The drug war and its damning representation in films such as Sicario offer a significant challenge to the presuppositions of the universal triumph of the rule of law heralding the realization of universal peace, for the legal project of universal drug prohibition requires reconciling an expansion of law with an expansion of violence. I will illustrate how the drug war reveals a violence that is not only present within the legal order but also in fact constitutes its very ground, a violence that takes a (re)generative form due to the way in which the construction of its victims imbues it with legitimacy. I term this violence "sacrificial violence," following the work of philosophical anthropologist René Girard. My exploration into the sacrificial undercurrent of legal ordering begins with an evidential problem: that the empirical violence that has resulted from the law's determination to prohibit drugs cannot be explained without challenging the orthodoxy that international law is opposed to violence. The contradiction between international law's founding claim to save "succeeding generations from the scourge of war"—as stated in the opening line of the preamble to the United Nations (UN) Charter—and its concurrent declaration of a War on Drugs holds significance for both scholars and practitioners who continue to uncritically invest in the redemptive power of law. [End Page 231] The Drug War as Catastrophe To intimately associate the violence of the War on Drugs with the workings of the international legal order is to call into question a primary orthodoxy of the law: that...

Een gebreidelde Atlas en zijn hemelkloot. De geschiedenis van een stadhuisbeeld

A Bridled Atlas and his celestial globe. The History of a Statue on the Amsterdam Town Hall. The central figure at the back facade of the former city hall -now royal palace- in Amsterdam is the mythological giant Atlas. His presence is 'an allusion to universal peace', according to art historians who refer to the Treatry of Munster (1648) that also inspired other decorations by the architect Jacob van Campen (1596-1657). Yet in the visual language of the early modern period, the image of Atlas rather points to a transfer of power. During his preliminary design of the building, Van Campen was faced with the death of his former patron, stadtholder Frederick Henry of Orange, who was succeeded by his son, William II. The Amsterdam burgomasters agreed with a statue referring to their less-than-beloved stadtholder only because he was flanked and watched by two ladies: Temperantia (moderation) and Vigilantia (vigilance). Around 1667 the bronze Atlas with a large globe on his shoulders was placed on the tympan at the rear side of the town hall. Visitors who dared to climb into the sphere were rewarded with a magnificent view of the city. Coloured green by corrosion, Atlas still dominates the western side of the royal palace today.

John William Graham and the Evolution of Peace: A Quaker View of Conflict before and during the First World War

John William Graham was the author of Conscription and Conscience (1922), the official history of the No-Conscription Fellowship. The commission to write it was based on his status as advocate and activist in the cause for peace, dating from well before the First World War, and continuing until his death in 1932. Yet he never committed himself to an absolute pacifism. This article attributes this stance mainly to his belief in social evolution: God was working within human beings to bring about universal peace, but this progress had to take place slowly and in stages. War had been necessary in the past to develop human character and political organisation, but now it was obsolescent. Quaker pacifism bore witness to an ideal of peace that was to be fulfilled hereafter. Quakers were to lead the way, but meanwhile the use of force could not be universally abjured. Relativism was built into the evolutionary outlook.

Policy Brief for the International Coffee Organization (ICO) on Behalf of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Regarding Human Rights Violations on Coffee Farms in Guatemala

This policy paper outlines the issue of human rights violations on Guatemalan coffee farms in the form of forced labor. It outlines two recommendations for the International Coffee Organization, an intergovernmental organization dedicated to bringing together coffee’s largest importing and exporting nations and tackle challenges the coffee sector faces today through international cooperation, to consider when addressing the issue. This policy is presented on behalf of the International Labor Organization, an organization dedicated to promoting social justice and human rights in the labor market that will lead to lasting and universal peace.

Invigorating spiritual engagement: reflections for organisational leaders, managers, and “people-of-faith”

In the context of intensifying globalization, and emanating from their responsibilities in large or small businesses, leaders, managers, and people-of-faith must respond to the impacts of increasing competition for resources, jobs, and liveable environments along with everybody else. These competitive dynamics exacerbate tensions among individuals, communities, organizations, and nations. Such tensions are often given religious attributions. Encouragement to express religious influences openly may further exacerbate such tensions. Paradoxically perhaps, we advocate for greater engagement with religious diversity as a source of value rather than a driver of divisions. Managers must ensure such value is realized. We posit that dangerous competitiveness must be transformed to life-sustaining ways of being human. We encourage management educator and practitioner participation in conversations at the conceptual level in order to contribute pragmatically to the confluence of faith, hope, and love to achieve organizational well-being based on ideals of universal justice, environmental restoration, and global peace.

Role of Youth in Peace Building via New Media: A Study on Use of New Media by Youth for Peace Building Tasks

The present paper discusses how new media is put to use by the youth. The focal area is how youth is using or not using the variety of new media available, for peace building tasks. The study was conducted with 150 respondents, and aimed to relate the usage of new media by youth to peace building activities. With the innovations in new media, if the youth was completely abreast with the latest technologies, shall be a part of the findings of the study. Furthermore, it will try to comprehend if the youth is putting the knowledge of new media to optimal use. In majority of the cases, it is found that youngsters use new media to connect to people via social network sites, read online, use various application-based programs, and use new media for financial transactions, online shopping and bookings. It was a rarity that they would use new media for activities to enhance peaceful coordination and associations in the society, unless they belonged to such a social group or organisation that works for peace building tasks in the society. In all this, the fact remains that conflicts of the nation per se, and the entire world have to be resolved by one way or the other, in order to bring about universal peace. Herein, the role of youth in peace building comes into play. Hereby, the paper aims at gauging the number of youth (a representative section of a larger whole), willing to work for peace-building, with the help of new media. Peace building is a much diversified genre to be understood in basic terms. It can apply to almost every happening or event or people involved therein, in the society. The study conducted to understand if the youth was aware of the utilization of new media technologies for peace building tasks in the society, has been successful in finding valuable data and tried to arrive at workable solutions in that regard.

Revitalizing the Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility with Traditional Indian Wisdom

Corporations are legal entities operating within the boundaries of society. They have social responsibility both for business and moral reasons. The responsibility encompasses economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic aspects and in the context of deterritorialised global business environment, the responsibility assumes wider ramifications especially in the context of diminishing role of governments and ascending role of corporations. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now an offshoot of the realization that corporation is answerable for the consequences of its operations. Ethical way of doing business for social and economic sustainability is inherent in the thinking of seers of ancient India who proclaimed for universal peace and happiness. The essence of CSR can be traced to Rig Veda which pronounced that a person who enjoys himself being totally oblivious of society is taken over by sin. The sense of charity, sacrifice, dharmic way of doing business and the ideas of live and let live permeate throughout the literature of ancient India. The search for spiritual routes strengthens the convictions towards CSR and for preserving the planet for future generations. An attempt is made in this article to discuss the nature of CSR in the global perspective and try to search for the roots in the cultural milieu of ancient India and trying to integrate the ancient Indian spiritual thoughts for the modern arguments favoring corporate responsibility. The intention here is to strengthen the theoretical thought structure with spiritual inputs for better appreciation and promotion of CSR. The aim of the article is to get insights in to ancient wisdom for connecting spiritual linkage to the theoretical edifice of the CSR and hence the methodology is exploratory in nature aiming to understand the concepts in a better way.

The Concepts of Great Feminine Governance and Age of Holy Spirit, in the Axiological Re-Ordering of the XXIst Century Global Society

The present paper focuses on searching for a comprehensive definition of the “Great Feminine Governance” and “The Age of the Holy Spirit” paradigm. In addition, it attempts to make an approach on some of their features, such as there are connected to concepts of ”power” and ”authority” that can be re-defined in a completely new manner. The Age of Holy Spirit is the Era of the Great Change, when human beings become aware of exploiting and discriminatory, unjust effects (for the freedom of women) of insisting on believing in a patriarchal-imperial type of system. It is an Era of moving towards alternative models of human society organization, based on perspectives that have abandoned the imperial-patriarchal old vision about the world, about human being and about God. The pattern of Absolute Father, as “absolute patriarch/tyrant”, Who wants only a perfect obedience and Who is isolated from His Creation (a hypothetical divine attitude, from which derives the schizoid, fragmented lifestyle of humans, such as living in a continuous “state of a generalized war”) becomes obsolete, being replaced with visionary and creative, fertile and positive conceptions about the world, about the relation God-mankind and with new types of gender relations. The article focuses on analysing the transfer from the model of a punishing and banishing divinity, to a divinity of inspiration, forgiveness and universal peace.

Messiaanse vredestichters: Intertekstuele relaties tussen Zacharia 9–14 en het Evangelie van Matteüs

Messianic peacemakers: Intertextual relationships between Zechariah 9-14 and the Gospel of Matthew. This article deals with images of war, violence and peace and with the role of messianic leaders in Deutero-Zechariah and the way in which texts from Zechariah 9–14 have been interpreted in the Gospel of Matthew. The first section describes the lines of meaning in Zechariah 9–14 on the basis of word fields related to violence and universal peace. The second section discusses Deutero-Zechariah’s own position in the development of messianic expectations in Old Testament texts. In the third section, the question is asked how the meaning of texts from Zechariah 9–14 about messianic leaders has been influenced by earlier prophetic texts, and how these texts in their turn have been transformed and updated in the Gospel of Matthew, which contains explicit quotations from Deutero-Zechariah in 21:5; 26:15; 26:31 and 27:9–10. The fourth section summarises some interesting semantic shifts appearing in Matthew’s gospel compared to Deutero-Zechariah. Moreover, some critical comments are presented against the idea defended in some recent studies that there is a sharp tension between Jesus’s role in Matthew as the bringer of a peaceful ethical message, and his violent and vindictive role at the final judgement. At the end of this article, the burning question is raised whether Zechariah’s and Matthew’s messages, both of which are characterised by a certain degree of exclusivity, can play a constructive role in modern multi-religious discussions about common roads leading to global peace.

Tourism in XXI Century: The Powerful Peacemaker Against “Great Nation” Threat

Tourism as a significant social-economic event can wholly stand against a number of global dangers to have been forwarded anti society progress. Doubtless there are so many natural disasters as: earthquake, tsunami, flooding that from time to time damage the better loved tourism sector but together with this the global terror and conflicts jeopardize tourism more than. A man or a group of people struggling to demonstrate their advantage over others, their poisoned myth, their lost tolerancy are openly criticized in this article. We must be strong goodwill ambassadors in protecting universal peace and international tourism. But despite this the tourism as the phenomenon of the XX century has already been considered a means against all kinds of global dangers in the hand of the civilization in the new millennium that bases on science and thoughts of the people.

Military sporting events in the Balkans

Military sporting events are planned and prepared, and in a given period of time performed, sports events of public interest, involving members of armed forces of one or more countries, with the aim to demonstrate, compare and improve their knowledge and skills in sports through competitive or non-competitive sport activities. As regards their nature and targeted effects, the military sports events can be: training, competitive, scientific research, development, military professional, informative, humanitarian, and special ones. Military sports, as key element of sporting events in the armed forces, include typical military sports (military multi-sports events), sports of military nature (martial arts, sport shooting, fencing, parachuting, orienteering, biathlon), and any other team and individual sports that are practiced in an organized manner in military units and institutions. The first competitions, which had been organized since ancient times in order to get winners in various sports disciplines, were conducted among soldiers, in the Balkans exactly, which suggests a very long tradition and rich history of military sporting events in the region. In Ancient Times, the most famous competitions of this type were the ancient Olympic Games. In the Middle Ages, military sporting events were knight tournaments and duels. Across Europe, including the Balkans, there were various organizations of knights, which represented specific forms of professional army. In the late 19th and early 20th century, in several Slav countries, including Serbia, Sokol societies were founded, which promoted physical exercise and the fight for liberation and unification of Slav nations. Sokol sports meetings and events may be partly considered as military sporting events as well, because the Sokol movement was approved in the military, and soldiers and officers were regular participants of these events. In the 21st century, the main objectives of the military sporting events have been: the development of friendship and solidarity among members of the armed forces; the promotion of physical education and sports; the contribution to balanced and harmonious development of military personnel; and strengthening of peace, security, trust and cooperation in the world. By taking part in these activities, members of armed forces develop their courage, mental stability and physical condition, promote the values of the military and the military profession, encourage the spirit of tolerance and mutual respect, enhance the defense capabilities of their countries, and contribute to universal peace.