What's Changing? - Peace

Please see selected peace-related change below.

See also:

• What's New? - Peace
• What's Changing? - Conflict

February 2023

• Fewer than 10% of peace agreements have female signatories. Between 1990 and 2014, out of the 130 peace agreements reached, women signed only 13, despite the fact that sexual violence is used as a weapon in wars and conflicts all over the world.

January 2022

• Five nuclear powers and permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, UK, Russia, China, and France - pledged to avoid nuclear war, agreeing that it “cannot be won and must never be fought.” Reaching consensus is significant considering ongoing tensions between China and Russia and the Western states.

September 2021

• GZERO warned that climate change now threatens peace itself by heightening conflicts over increasingly scarce water and crops, and by exacerbating political tensions through forcing larger migrations of people fleeing war, famine, or flooding. 

December 2020

• Wu wei means - in Chinese - non-doing or ‘doing nothing’. It sounds like a pleasant invitation to relax or worse, fall into laziness or apathy. Yet this concept is key to the noblest kind of action according to the philosophy of Daoism – and is at the heart of what it means to follow Dao or The Way. According to the central text of Daoism, the Dao De Jing: ‘The Way never acts yet nothing is left undone’. This is the paradox of wu wei. It doesn’t mean not acting, it means ‘effortless action’ or ‘actionless action’. It means being at peace while engaged in the most frenetic tasks so that one can carry these out with maximum skill and efficiency.

October 2020

• After years of conflict that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and displaced some 2 million people, Sudan's transitional government has now formalized a peace deal with rebel factions to stabilisee the country. The accord comes a year after Sudan's joint civilian-military government -which came to power after popular protests ousted the country's long time strongman President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 - and the Sudanese Revolutionary Front, a rebel bloc, began negotiating conditions of a peace deal, reported GZERO Media. 

December 2019

• Wars between states continue their slide toward obsolescence, with no more than three in any year since 1945 and none since 2003. Though civil wars persist, the overall rate of deaths in wars of all kinds plunged a hundredfold between 1950 and 2005, from 22 per 100,000 people per year to 0.2.

September 2019

• The average level of global peacefulness improved very slightly in the 2019 Global Peace Index. This is the first time the index has improved in five years. The average country score improved by 0.09 per cent, with 86 countries improving, and 76 recording deteriorations. The 2019 GPI reveals a world in which the conflicts and crises that emerged in the past decade have begun to abate, but new tensions within and between nations have emerged. 
• Over the past 60 years, United Nations peacekeepers have been deployed to conflict zones around the world to help keep order and facilitate political reconciliation. Today, there are more than 86,000 uniformed personnel (police, UN military experts on mission, staff officers and troops) deployed to 14 peacekeeping missions on four continents. Yet, while the permanent five members of the UN Security Council - China, Russia, the US, the UK and France - yield the most power at the UN, including the mandate to authorise peacekeeping missions, they provide less than five percent of peacekeepers globally, with China sending more than the other four combined. It's the developing nations who pick up the slack. 

June 2019

• The Global Peace Index showed that during the 2010s the world seemed less at peace than it was a decade earlier, with an average decrease of the index by 3.78% since 2008. Iceland has held the status of the world’s most peaceful country since 2008. followed by New Zealand and Portugal. On the other end of the spectre, Afghanistan was in last place, followed by Syria and South Sudan.

May 2019

•  A Quartz analysis showed that mentions of “depression” and “anxiety” have increased in pop and hip-hop songs, while use of the word “peace” has declined.

March 2019

• Peacekeeping is often seen as one of the most effective tools available to assist countries navigate the difficult path towards sustainable peace. However, operations are not without criticism, noted Friends of Europe, which critiqued the development of peacekeeping operations, current missions, troop and budget contributions, the role of women, as well as key peacekeeping initiatives.

February 2019

• Further reading:
  • A new book argued that peace - not war - will inspire biotech’s biggest breakthroughs

October 2018

• The European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) analysed the significant and recurrent factors that influence support to peacebuilding and how these will impact the future engagement of the peacebuilding community in the years to come.
• Microsoft is working with others in industry and government fighting to prevent digital attacks as part of the Digital Peace Now movement - see the Digital Peace Now Petition.

September 2018

• Heads of state, NGOs and UN officials discussed how international cooperation in space can translate into peace on earth.

June 2018

• Biggest contributors to the UN peacekeeping budget 2018:
  • 1 US 28.5%
  • 2 China 10.3%
  • 3 Japan 9.7%
  • 4 Germany 6.4%
  • 5 France 6.3%
  • 6 UK 5.8%
  • 7 Russia 4%
  • 8 Italy 3.8%
  • 9 Canada 2.9%
  • 10 Spain 2.4%
• The achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals remains threatened by conflict, warned Chatham House’ asking how can the private sector best contribute to prosperity, peacebuilding and security by how and where it does business? Which industries are well positioned to contribute and what role can tools such as finance and technology play? Which regions, countries and markets are most salient? And how can companies convince their internal stakeholders to prioritise contributing to peace and security around the world?
• Strategic commitments to humanitarian action by large companies are becoming increasingly common, argued Chatham House. Some companies have formed practical humanitarian partnerships with UN agencies and NGOs that aim to leverage their expertise in areas affected by war, disasters and conflict. Yet, the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals remains threatened by conflict, raising the question of how can the private sector best contribute to prosperity, peacebuilding and security by how and where it does business?
• An acclaimed psychologist argues that despite the horrors of the 20th century, global violence is actually on the decline over the longer-term.
• The media loves conflict. It can often seem like war is everywhere. And, although there are still many bitter conflicts around the world with serious impacts locally and internationally, the fact is, things used to be a lot worse. This chart from University of Uppsala’s Department of Peace and Conflict Research Unit shows that deaths in battle are low in comparison to almost any period since the Second World War.