Creating a Peaceful World

From the First World War to the creation of the now defunct League of Nations, its demise, World War 2 and the creation of the United Nations, the Cold War, the Gulf War and the over one hundred ongoing conflicts in different parts of the globe, greenhouse gases and global warming, increased poverty rate and emerging issues in child abuse, child labour and gender violence, we can say our generation has had her own fair share of violence, both direct, structural and cultural. Despite the fact that the past century has been the most industrialized/developed in the history of humanity, it has been the most turbulent. World leaders are ever engaged in discussions on the best ways to ensure and protect world peace, yet despite the numerous G-20 summits, peace has proven quite elusive.
The greatest challenge of the twenty-first century appears to be keeping our world whole. Fears of a possible nuclear war haunt us, fears of global warming clobber our hearts, and the news from Wall Street all but tells us we are dead from economic depression. We are our own worst enemy. Like highwaymen, the traveller; so we threaten ourselves.
Even at that, the tendency of today’s governments is to go for socio-political and economic processes that preach survival of the richest. Where a social class robs another social class because of its vantage position, the balance that represents the proviso for the existence of peace becomes absent. The world’s best sermon, the whole aim of peace movements is succinctly put thus: love your neighbour as you love yourself.
Love, therefore, represents my vision of world peace. Love and mutual understanding that will lay a fecund foundation for a world of development, justice and security.
A world where diamonds buried in the soils of Sierra Leone will not cause the burial of the sons of Freetown in the soils of Sierra Leone. A world where my mother will cease being my father’s subordinate, where she will air her opinions publicly without shouts of...