All posts by CPNN Coordinator

About CPNN Coordinator

Dr David Adams is the coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the International Year for the Culture of Peace, proclaimed for the Year 2000 by the United Nations General Assembly.

Catholic Institute for Nonviolence: new developments

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Email received from Pace é Bene (see authors below)

We are happy to announce that Ken Butigan, a long-time Pace e Bene trainer and organizer, has been selected to be the co-director of the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence. He will continue to serve as Strategy Consultant at Pace e Bene, where he has worked for many years.

With Pope Francis’ blessing, the institute was launched in 2024 with the aim of making nonviolence research, resources, and lived experience more accessible to Catholic Church leaders, communities, and institutions worldwide. It is a project of Pax Christi International’s Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, with which Pace e Bene has been actively involved since CNI was established after a landmark conference ten years ago this spring. [The institute is based in Rome.]


Ken Butigan and Marie Dennis in St. Peter’s Square, October 2024. Photo: Pax Christi International.

The “Nonviolence and Just Peace” conference was held at the Vatican and cosponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Pax Christi International in April 2016. It brought scores of theologians, scholars, Church leaders and, most significantly, practitioners from war zones and other hot spots around the world together to gather in hope of seeing this 2,000 year-old institution actively re-embrace the nonviolence proclaimed and lived by Jesus.

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Question related to this article:


How can we develop the institutional framework for a culture of peace?

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After a year of planning (which Ken Butigan and John Dear, representing Pace e Bene, were part of with so many others, including Marie Dennis of Pax Christi), the conference was a dazzling, multi-layered conversation that culminated in an assembly-wide, consensus-based document entitled, An Appeal to the Catholic Church to Re-Commit to the Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence.

CNI was formed as a project of Pax Christi not long after the conference, with leadership from around the world, including Pace e Bene. CNI has been at it ever since, building relationships at the Vatican and with partners worldwide, holding two other conferences in Rome, publishing books, papers and articles; sponsoring many webinars and seminars, and organizing countless meetings. All of this has been focused on inviting the Church to come to a richer and deeper understanding of a nonviolence that combines the power of rejecting violence, the power of refusing to harm others, and the power of love in action. We have been heartened by the prophetic call to nonviolence Pope Francis made repeatedly and that Pope Leo has continued.

The spirit of nonviolence is present in the pope’s recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, including its call to “disarm AI” and its declaration that “the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts.”

Ken is grateful for all the ways Pace e Bene has supported CNI and the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence. We look forward to deepening and broadening our ongoing partnership in working to advance nonviolence in the Church and the world.

Peace and all good,
Erin, Ken, Rivera, Stacie, Layal, Rosie, Mili, and the Pace e Bene Team

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DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, Europe, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, global,

World Peace Foundation: who is asking what’s next for peace? Part 2

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An article by Michelle E. Anderson from the World Peace Foundation

This April, WPF launched its newest research program on the future of peace. In part one this essay begins with a preliminary global mapping of contemporary peace-focused work and some of the different approaches and patterns that emerged across contexts. Part two turns to futures-oriented thinking and explores how WPF’s approach seeks to bring these conversations into dialogue.

Current ways of engaging the future

In order to think beyond stakeholders who identify with peace-related work, this mapping also explored who was engaging with questions of the future more broadly, and in what ways. This included the field of futures studies, which encompasses methods such as forecasting, foresight, and scenario-building, as well as other domains that work in the business of long-term change but in less explicit ways. These preliminary observations reveal a range of ways of understanding the future itself, and the different assumptions that shape how it is approached.

There is a group of actors that look at the future as something to anticipate and plan for- these are often multilateral institutions or governments, or groups that support them. In these contexts, foresight is integrated into governance processes, often through scenario-building and risk analysis. For example, the United Nations Futures Lab  is a strategic foresight unit that describes itself as “dedicated to future-proofing the UN and multilateral system.” The OECD Strategic Foresight Unit  is more outward looking, partnering with governments in member states on the basis that strategic foresight “helps policy makers improve the effectiveness of governments by identifying opportunities, challenges, risks and disruptions that may arise over the coming years.”

Other work focuses less on anticipating the future and more on reshaping the systems that will produce it. Institutions such as the Stockholm Resilience Centre  or the New Economics Foundation, for example, engage with the future with “transformation” in mind, pursued through collaborative efforts between local changemakers, researchers, and policy advocates to redesign economic, ecological, and governance structures. While not typically framed in terms of peace, their work is among a set of future-oriented efforts that address many of the underlying challenges– such as climate and economics– that shape its possibility.

A smaller and more diffuse but informative strand of work approaches the future as something to be reimagined and contested. Drawing on speculative, decolonial, feminist, and abolitionist traditions, among others, these types of efforts emphasize imagination, narrative, and the role of alternative epistemologies in shaping what futures become thinkable. Within this, the future is not simply something to be predicted or designed, but something that is actively constructed through political and cultural processes. Recent work on reproductive justice futures  and futurisms  offers a useful example of this orientation. Emerging from a black feminist tradition that links bodily autonomy (the goal) to social, economic, and environmental justice (the conditions through which that goal can be realized), it treats the future as something to be collectively defined through questions of care, experimentation, governance, and access to resources. Abolitionist approaches similarly emphasize that transformative futures are not simply distant ideals, but are built through present-day practices and experimentation, including community care networks, participatory defense initiatives, mutual aid, and other efforts that attempt to prefigure alternative social arrangements. Within these approaches, the future is both expansive and immediate: not something deferred until ideal conditions emerge, but something actively constructed through political, social, and cultural practice.

Another area of work that helps to expand this picture is that related to climate futures. In contrast to more clearly defined and explicitly-named “futures” strands such as reproductive justice futures, “climate futures” spans a wide range of modes of working, from forecasting and risk management  to frameworks that rely on justice and imaginaries. Some efforts, such as the Climate Futures Initiative  at Princeton, attempt to bridge scientific, normative, and policy-oriented approaches by examining questions related to climate justice, international equity, environmental values, and the political mechanisms through which scientific knowledge shapes decision-making.  Others, such as the Undisciplined Environments  platform for scholars and activists, approach climate futures through more critical and experimental lenses that foreground environmental humanities, alternative imaginaries, and the cultural dimensions of ecological crisis. Still others have written about using climate imaginaries  as tools for justice-centered policy evaluation, highlighting another possibility for combining deep theoretical work with practical outcomes. Work under the umbrella of “climate futures” illustrates how different orientations toward the future can coexist within a single domain, and possibly in support of one another.

Many transformative futures-oriented approaches can be traced to concepts of political imagination and imaginaries. While a wide range of understandings of “political imagination” exist, broadly speaking, it is concerned with how visions of the future take shape, whose perspectives gain traction, and how dominant ways of organizing social and political life are reproduced or contested. Much of this literature still also emphasizes the limits of imagination, which is not neutral and can be constrained, co-opted, or detached from the institutional and material conditions that shape what can be realized in practice. Increasingly, however, these ideas are not only the subject of analysis but are being taken up as part of practice. One strand of this includes participatory, artistic, or narrative-based approaches that treat imagination as part of processes of social and political change. Initiatives such as University of Southern California’s Civic Imagination Project, which uses workshops, storytelling, and collaborative worldbuilding exercises to help communities imagine and identify actions toward alternative social and political futures, or Adelaide University’s future-focused interactive museum exhibit  on practicing alternative futures, illustrate how imagination can function as both a method and a site of intervention, offering space not only for new futures to be envisioned, but also for collective reflection on how they might be pursued in practice.

Across these different orientations toward the future, peace is rarely the central organizing concept, yet the domains of focus are precisely those that shape how peace is constituted in practice. As a result, many of the most consequential questions about the future of peace are being taken up indirectly, across fields that do not name them as such. This points to a more diffuse landscape of work that does not sit neatly within either “peace” or “futures” as defined fields, but nonetheless grapples with many of the same underlying questions. Rather than forming a clearly bounded field, these efforts are dispersed across domains, practices, and vocabularies, often without being recognized as part of a shared conversation.

Bringing peace and futures into conversation

This initial mapping points not to a simple divide between or within peace work, futures work, and adjacent approaches, but to a complex landscape shaped by different assumptions about the future and how it can be engaged. These assumptions, in turn, shape how questions of peace are framed, where they are located, whether they are made explicit or remain implicit, and what becomes visible or obscured when it is not named as such.

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Question related to this article:


How can we develop the institutional framework for a culture of peace?

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One pattern that this mapping endeavor made clear is that institutions explicitly identifying with peace or peacebuilding tend to work in present- or near-term timelines, and most often through governance, security, or post-conflict recovery frameworks. While this does not mean that questions of the future are entirely absent, they are not often treated as a sustained or central area of inquiry. Some policy and multilateral institutions have held dialogues or produced reports that incorporate elements of foresight such as scenario-building, risk analysis, or the identification of emerging trends. These modes inherently attend to how existing systems might be strengthened, adapted, or made more resilient in the face of shifting geopolitical, technological, or environmental conditions, but without fundamentally challenging the underlying assumptions or institutional logics in which they operate. For example, a 2025 report from the Stimson Center on the Future of International Cooperation  argues for the need to strengthen global governance through measures such as expanding the jurisdiction of international courts, reinforcing human rights compliance mechanisms, establishing new coordinating bodies such as a United Nations Climate Change Council, and improving regional capacity and financing structures. These recommendations reflect a focus on reforming and strengthening existing institutions rather than rethinking the systems within which they operate.

Other efforts have gone somewhat further in attempting to rethink the assumptions, relationships, and practices through which peacebuilding is carried out. For example, Humanity United’s 2025 report, A Pathway to Peace, grounds its rationale in the many challenges facing peacebuilding today, including the limited adaptability of multilateral institutions and shrinking financial support for peace and humanitarian efforts. Drawing on input from peacebuilders around the world, it proposes an “engagement framework” centered on more inclusive, locally grounded, and adaptive approaches. However, this framework- perhaps necessarily in its effort to provide practical guidance for the current moment- remains largely oriented toward improving how peace efforts are carried out in relation to existing funding structures and institutional arrangements. Interestingly, the report acknowledges that their proposals may still challenge established assumptions about expertise, neutrality, and power, and may be met with resistance, highlighting a tension between efforts to rethink practice and the institutional contexts in which they are situated. It may also be a nod to Humanity United’s listed topical focus on “innovative pathways for peace,” suggesting that these efforts are part of an emerging area of work oriented toward linking imagination, innovation, and action.

There have been some efforts by explicitly peace-focused actors to take up questions of the future that argue for a more transformative approach, though these also mostly remain episodic. For example, the Re-thinking Peace and Conflict Studies in a Postcolonial World  conference held in Tunis in 2025 brought together scholars from multiple regions and disciplinary backgrounds to reflect on how the field itself might be reoriented. Discussions emphasized the need to move beyond dominant frameworks and rethink how knowledge is produced and whose perspectives are centered. This was reflected not only in the themes of the conference but in how it was organized, with one participant describing it as “a plurivocal ecology of knowledge,” a collaborative way of working that privileges neither centre nor periphery. While such efforts suggest a growing recognition of the need to think beyond existing models, they do not yet cohere into a sustained area of work across organizations.

Beyond individual reports or convenings, there are some early attempts to build more sustained platforms for this kind of exchange.  For example, the Alliance for Peacebuilding’s “Future of Peace and Security” project seeks to bring together practitioners, policymakers, and researchers to examine how emerging trends, including shifts in technology, geopolitics, and governance, may shape the conditions for peace and conflict. In doing so, it creates space for forward-looking reflection within established networks.

Even so, what emerges from this mapping is a fundamental disjunction between those engaged in more imaginative or visioning work and those operating within policy and institutional frameworks. At a moment when dominant systems are fracturing, this divide is not just analytical but consequential. This suggests that the broader imperative is not simply to introduce future-oriented thinking into peace work, but to create spaces where different ways of engaging the future– whether anticipatory, structural, or imaginative– can be brought into conversation with different understandings of peace, and where long-term connections between them can and should take shape.

Implications for the Future of Peace

This dispersed landscape of conceptualizations and approaches relevant to the future of peace presents both opportunity and challenge. How can these different modes of thinking be brought into conversation without collapsing one into the other? How can they be used as building blocks for something new, rather than being forced into existing frames or reduced only to familiar forms such as policy forecasting or abstract scenario-building?

The Future of Peace program is an effort to explore synergies between approaches that are often kept entirely separate. It takes seriously the need for grounded analysis while also creating space for more expansive and exploratory thinking about what peace could be, and how those possibilities take shape in practice. The aim is not only to bridge existing efforts, but to open up novel ways of working across them.

Rather than centering a single framework, we aim to bring into conversation a range of people, modes of working, and schools of thought that are rethinking peace in different ways. This includes perspectives that have long challenged dominant assumptions about order, governance, and coexistence, alongside work grounded in policy and practice, without being limited to either.

In these early stages, the program is being shaped through a set of evolving guiding questions. Among them are the following: How is peace being reimagined in the current moment, and by whom, particularly in ways that look to longer-term futures or alternative possibilities? What would it mean to take these reimaginings seriously as starting points for inquiry and even guidance, rather than treating them as peripheral to policy or practice?

As the Future of Peace program develops, this work will continue through further mapping, engagement with different bodies of work and practice, and the cultivation of conversations that bring these perspectives into closer relation. The aim is not only to identify what exists, but to better understand how different approaches to peace and the future can inform one another, and where new connections or directions may be needed, helping to build a foundation for the program’s ongoing work.

At a moment marked by uncertainty, polarization, and rapid transformation, revisiting the question of peace is both necessary and fraught. The aim of the Future of Peace program is not to resolve these tensions, but to work within them, opening space for new ways of thinking about what peace is, how it is shaped, and what it might yet become.

We see this as an ongoing conversation, and an invitation to think together about the future of peace. This mapping is necessarily partial, and this essay even more so. We welcome hearing from those whose work is represented here, as well as those we may not have captured but who are engaging related questions and challenges. We look forward to connections, reflections, and suggestions as this work continues to take shape.

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If you wish to make a comment on this article, you may write to coordinator@cpnn-world.org with the title “Comment on (name of article)” and we will put your comment on line. Because of the flood of spam, we have discontinued the direct application of comments.

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World Peace Foundation: who is asking what’s next for peace? Part 1

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An article by Michelle E. Anderson from the World Peace Foundation

This April, WPF launched its newest research program on the future of peace. This two-part essay begins with a preliminary global mapping of contemporary peace-focused work and some of the different approaches and patterns that emerged across contexts. Part two turns to futures-oriented thinking and explores how WPF’s approach seeks to bring these conversations into dialogue.

Across policy, research, and practice, peace is often approached as something to be built, stabilized, or measured. Whether framed through the language of peacebuilding, security, or even strategic foresight, much of this work is concerned with how existing systems can be made more responsive to emerging challenges. Meanwhile, today’s immediate crises– including wars in Iran, Lebanon, Sudan, and Ukraine– alongside the erosion of multilateralism and the limits of liberal peace frameworks, underscore the difficulty of translating existing models for peace into durable outcomes.

Alongside this, a different set of conversations is unfolding across various movements, intellectual traditions, and future-oriented fields of inquiry. Here, the language is less about mitigation and stability and instead about transformation, alternative futures, imagination, and the reorganization of social and political life. Much of this work is deeply grounded in lived realities and ongoing struggles over justice, governance, care, and survival, even as it often remains fragmented across organizations, movements, and institutional settings. These efforts are also not often framed explicitly in terms of peace, despite engaging many of the underlying conditions that shape its possibility.

It is clear that a wide range of people and institutions are grappling with how societies might move toward less violent, more just, and more sustainable futures. However, the disconnect between these conversations, ways of thinking, and practical action raises broader questions not only about how peace is pursued, but about how it is understood and imagined. What does it mean to bring imagination into conversations about the future of peace while remaining grounded in political and practical realities? More fundamentally, who gets to imagine the future of peace, and under what conditions do certain futures become thinkable and actionable?

WPF’s new Future of Peace program emerges from a long lineage of peace studies and movements, from pragmatic and policy-oriented traditions to more critical and speculative lines of thought. We are not the first to ask what peace might look like beyond current frameworks, nor the first to question whether existing models and practices are adequate for the challenges we face. What matters, then, is not simply posing the question again, but considering what it means to ask it in the current moment. What can be learned from past efforts, and where do they fall short in addressing contemporary forms of violence, power, and uncertainty?

Approach & limits

As a first step in developing the program, we conducted an initial landscape mapping to better understand how different actors, including research and policy centers, think tanks, and related organizations, are currently engaging with the concept of the future of peace, whether explicitly or implicitly. First, though, it is important to note that the concept of ‘peace’ itself is not defined or resolved in this essay. Even within peace studies, there is no single agreed-upon meaning, with divergent and sometimes competing understandings. These range from conceptual distinctions such as negative and positive peace, to frameworks such as liberal peace and its critiques, to lenses such as everyday peace, among many others. This essay therefore treats peace as an open and contested term, which will be taken up more directly in future work within the program. This also shapes how work is identified and categorized in the mapping that follows.

This mapping focused in part on identifiable institutions and organizations as entry points, while recognizing that this offers only a partial view of a broader and more diffuse set of practices and ways of engaging these questions, particularly those not organized through formal institutional structures. This included actors who identify with peacebuilding or conflict-related work, those utilizing futures-oriented thinking, as well as those working in adjacent areas who do not use either label but are asking related questions. This initial mapping surfaces a wide range of work across policy, practice, research, and more exploratory or imaginative spaces. It points to a field that is active and evolving, but also uneven in how these conversations connect, or in the underlying assumptions of what ‘peace’ or ‘the future’ entails.

This preliminary mapping is unavoidably partial and shaped by the terms and methods used. These limitations include the use of English-language search terms, and the choices made about which terms to prioritize. For example, in looking just at peace related work, after some testing, we searched for “academic peace institutes” paired with different regional groupings. These choices helped make the landscape more legible, but also shaped what was made visible through this process. As a result, this approach risks overlooking work communicated through different vocabularies, in other languages, outside of formal institutional structures, or without a strong digital footprint. However, while the mapping initially sought to focus on academic and adjacent institutions, many results were for NGOs, think tanks, and practitioner networks, which is in itself revealing, and therefore included below. The regional groupings presented here are also provisional, reflecting just one possible way of describing an uneven landscape based on early patterns that surfaced in these searches.

Even with these limitations, this mapping points to several distinct areas of work that are relevant to the questions at hand. The sections that follow move across three of these. First, we look at actors who explicitly identify with peace or peacebuilding as their primary area of work, and the ways this field is currently structured across contexts. In part 2 of this essay, we turn to forms of futures-oriented thinking, examining how different actors approach the future itself, and what this might reveal about the conditions shaping peace. Finally, we consider efforts to bring these strands into conversation, looking at where questions of peace and the future begin to intersect and what this might suggest for future directions of the field.

The current landscape of peace work

An exploration of peace-focused institutions across the globe suggests important regional variation in how peace is framed, organized, and pursued, though these observations remain preliminary. These differences are not only conceptual, but institutional. That said, the regional distinctions outlined below should be understood as broad tendencies rather than fixed categories, with significant overlap, variation, and exceptions across contexts. While this phase of the mapping effort was not specific to the future of peace but rather peace related institutions more broadly, these initial findings offer insight into where and how more transformative or future-oriented conversations may already be taking shape. The regional groupings presented here are not based on a single predefined framework, but instead reflect patterns that surfaced through the mapping process, as well as an effort to attend to contexts where the organization and institutionalization of peace-related work appeared to differ in meaningful ways. Irrespective of region, explicit conceptual engagement with “peace” was uneven. While some institutions and initiatives treat peace itself as an object of critical inquiry, in many cases it functions more as an assumed or loosely defined outcome of ending or managing conflict.

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Question related to this article:


How can we develop the institutional framework for a culture of peace?

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In North America and Europe, peace-related scholarship is often embedded in dense networks of academic, policy, and practitioner institutions, and tends to focus on governance and institutional responses to conflict. However, these regions are not internally uniform; separating the United States and Canada would likely reveal further variation (particularly in how questions of reconciliation, indigenous sovereignty, and settler colonial histories are incorporated), as would looking more closely at subregions within Europe, given that many of the institutions that surfaced through this mapping are concentrated in the United Kingdom and Nordic countries. Alongside university-based peace and conflict studies centers and academic networks such as the UK’s Oxford Network of Peace Studies, independent Nordic research institutes such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) or the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) are looked to as thought leaders, producing data-driven analysis on conflict, arms transfers, and security. Accordingly, dominant narratives from both North America and Europe reflect an orientation toward analyzing, managing, and responding to conflict through institutional and policy frameworks, with “peace” positioned as an outcome of effective governance and security arrangements.

In Latin America and Africa, institutionalized peace work is more frequently connected to questions of social transformation, inequality, and justice. In both regions, peace is often treated not only as a matter of governance or conflict management, but as part of broader struggles over social and political order. In Latin America, there is a recurring emphasis on peace not simply as the absence of conflict, but as a lived, relational process shaped by social and political transformation. This is reflected in initiatives such as FLACSO Ecuador’s Acción No Violenta program, which situates peace as nonviolence within historically and politically specific contexts, and the CALAS Visions of Peace research program, which explicitly examines the ambiguities and “gray zones” between violence and peace rather than treating transitions as linear or complete. At the same time, institutions such as the United Nations-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica reflect a more internationally oriented institutionalization of peace studies, connecting peace and conflict education to sustainable development, environmental issues, and human rights.

In Africa, similar themes around justice, inequality, and social transformation are present, though the landscape appears more institutionally networked and practice-oriented than conceptually unified. Considerable regional variation likely exists, including across linguistic, political, and conflict contexts, but the search surfaced a particularly dense ecosystem of university programs, mediation institutes, training centers, and regionally embedded peacebuilding organizations operating within a broadly recognizable peacebuilding sphere.  Organizations such as the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) work across mediation, early warning, governance  and community-based peacebuilding, while institutions such as the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes  (ACCORD) combine conflict analysis, mediation support, policy engagement, and practitioner training through partnerships with regional and continental actors, including the African Union.These efforts reflect a field that includes- and sometimes bridges- institutional, regional, and locally embedded forms of peace practice.

In Oceania, the mapping suggests that there is a mix of globally oriented academic and policy approaches alongside initiatives more explicitly grounded in local and cultural understandings of conflict and coexistence. Academic institutions such as the University of Otago’s National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies  in New Zealand and similar programs at Australian universities tend to align with traditional peace studies approaches, often focusing on governance, security, and policy-relevant analysis, though there is some incorporation of critical and Indigenous-informed perspectives. In contrast, network-based and practitioner-oriented initiatives place greater emphasis on relational, nonviolent, and dialogue-based conflict transformation, and peace is understood through context-specific and relational understandings of social, ecological, and political life. For example, Transcend Oceania  describes its work as “building on local knowledge systems, skills and approaches of Oceania.” While not necessarily framed as a critique of dominant models of peace, these initiatives certainly reflect different assumptions about social order, responsibility, and coexistence, particularly where they draw on Indigenous knowledge systems and locally embedded practices.

In the Middle East, relatively few academic institutions explicitly identifying as peace-focused were identified. Instead, relevant work appears to be more often embedded within NGOs, policy organizations, or broader governance and security agendas.  For example, the Arab Forum for Alternatives  in Lebanon does not claim to do peace work, but hosts regional network building, research, training, and activism with the aim of advancing justice and equality through political transformation. Palestinian professor and peace activist Mohammed Dajani Daoudi points out  that, “Despite the state of crisis that evolved in a violent conflict which the Middle East has been undergoing, not a single university in the Arab region offers a Ph.D. program on peace, moderation, interfaith dialogue, and reconciliation studies to promote a culture of peace, tolerance, and coexistence.” While Professor Daoudi puts forth a compelling argument for why such a program is needed and how it would support critical thinking, dialogue, and innovation toward addressing the complexities of social transformation, the gap may reflect differences in how the field is institutionalized, what is seen as valuable or relevant, or the political conditions under which such work can take place.

Asia presents one of the most internally uneven and institutionally diverse landscapes identified through this mapping, with significant variation across subregions in how peace is framed, institutionalized, and practiced. In some places, these efforts rely on philosophical traditions (e.g., Gandhian, humanistic), while others use governance and security frameworks, and still others can be better characterized by applied peacebuilding ecosystems. In East and Northeast Asia, ‘peace’ is often institutionalized within universities and research centers, such as the Toda Peace Institute in Japan, frequently with an emphasis on topics such as security, diplomacy, and historical reconciliation. In Southeast Asia, mapping surfaced a developed ecosystem of training institutes, regional networks, and hybrid academic-practitioner initiatives centered on  capacity-building for applied peacebuilding. For example, the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute  in the Philippines describes itself as “a resource for peacebuilders: providing skills, conducting research and building solidarity within the Asia-Pacific Region.” In South Asia, by contrast, the landscape appears more fragmented, spanning policy-oriented think tanks, smaller institutes, and advocacy networks focused on security, diplomacy, and cross-border cooperation. Across these contexts, peace is framed through multiple and sometimes competing lenses.

Regional differences are evident not only in how peace is framed, but by the variation in the institutional forms and mandates across these examples. These divergences likely reflect not only political, economic, historical, and cultural contexts, but underlying conditions including funding structures and opportunities, institutional mandates, and political constraints. While these patterns do not explicitly or immediately point us toward who is similarly engaging with the ideas or ‘big rethinking’ efforts underlying the Future of Peace project, they might still suggest where alternative ways of conceptualizing and pursuing peace are already underway.

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DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, global

UAB School for a Culture of Peace annual report: highest number of armed conflicts in the world in the past decade

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A report from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The UAB School for a Culture of Peace publishes today its annual report—one of the main yearbooks in Spain on conflictivity, human rights and peacebuilding. The report identifies 40 wars currently existing in the world, the highest figure in the past decade, and warns about the increase of international conflicts and humanitarian consequences.

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The world is experiencing a new upsurge in global armed violence. In 2025, 40 active armed conflicts were registered (37 in 2024), the highest number since 2011 and one of the highest since the School for a Culture of Peace (ECP) of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has been producing its annual reports on international conflict. This is one of the main conclusions of the report Alert 2026! Report on conflicts, human rights and peacebuilding, published on 3 June. The report is mainly based on qualitative analysis of studies and information provided by the United Nations, international organisations, research centres, media and NGOs, among others, as well as the experience acquired in field research.

According to the study, there were 40 armed conflicts and 113 scenarios of socio-political tension around the world in 2025. Africa continues to concentrate the highest number of wars (17), followed by Asia and the Pacific (12), and the Middle East (7), while Europe and America register two armed conflicts each.

Rise in international conflicts

The report particularly warns of the increase in international conflicts. In 2025, nine clearly internationalised wars were recorded, the highest number since the ECP uses its current classification methodology. Among the new armed conflicts identified are the confrontation between India and Pakistan, the serious escalation between Thailand and Cambodia, and the war between Israel, the United States and Iran, known in 2025 as the “12-day war” and which was reopened in 2026. The ECP research team warns that this evolution reflects a deterioration in global security and is a reflection of an international system in which many powerful actors do not prioritise prevention, addressing the root causes of disputes and supporting dialogue.

Sudan, Gaza, Haiti and Ukraine: worsening of the humanitarian situation

The report concludes that almost half of the world’s armed conflicts worsened during 2025. Among the most serious cases are the Western Sahel region, Sudan, Haiti, Somalia, Gaza, Myanmar and the war between Russia and Ukraine. The ECP warns of the increase in civilian casualties, the bombing of populated areas, the destruction of infrastructure and the violations of international humanitarian law.

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Question related to this article:

Where in the world are zones of peace?

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Setbacks in women’s rights

Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of UN Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, the report warns of a global backsliding in women’s rights. According to the study, 70% of the highest-intensity armed conflicts take place in countries with low or medium-low levels of gender equality. Twenty-three of the 40 armed conflicts that took place in 2025 took place in countries with low or medium-low levels of gender equality, and 16 of the 20 high-intensity armed conflicts in 2025 (80%) took place in countries where the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association had documented legislation or policies that criminalise LGBTIQ+ people.

Moreover, women’s participation in UN-led peace processes continues to decline. The UN verified more than 4,600 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in 2024, a 25% increase over the previous year. A total of 93% of the victims were women and girls.

Over 117 million forcibly displaced people

The report notes that forced displacement remains at historically high levels. In mid-2025, there were 117.3 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, including refugees and internally displaced persons. Although the figure represents a slight decrease from the previous year, partly attributed to the return of people to countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan, the ECP highlights that the overall volume remains extraordinarily high. Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela account for 65% of the world’s refugee population.

An internationally renowned report

Alert 2026!, which this year reaches its 25th edition, is one of the main yearbooks produced in Spain on conflict, human rights and peacebuilding. The study combines data from the United Nations, international organisations, research centres and specialised fieldwork. The objective of the report is to offer tools for analysis and preventive warnings to political leaders, international organisations, the media and actors involved in the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

UAB School for a Culture of Peace report: Alert 2026! Report on conflicts, human rights and peacebuilding

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DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, global

Around the World, Global Solidarity and Cooperation Are Remarkably Popular

. . DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION . .

An essay by Lawrence Wittner in Foreign Policy in Focus

One of the curious ironies of our time is that, although many politicians spout heated nationalist rhetoric, rail against foreign nations, and belittle international cooperation, this approach to international affairs is not at all what most people want.

The climate of aggressive nationalism is clear enough. In nations around the globe, demagogues (usually of a rightwing variety) whip up xenophobia, preach superpatriotism, demand vast military buildups, and―if holding public office―often launch invasions of other nations under the banner of restoring an allegedly glorious national past.

But what is often overlooked is that, across the planet, most people favor a very different way of engaging with the world.

In late 2025, Focaldata, a major research company commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, conducted a landmark survey of 36,405 people across 34 countries. The resulting report, Demanding Results: Global Views on International Cooperation, revealed that 55 percent of people worldwide “believe their country should cooperate on global challenges even if it means compromising on national interests.” If international cooperation was proven to solve global problems, public support jumped to 75 percent. Respondents viewed such cooperation as essential for food and water security, jobs, health, trade, and climate.

Other opinion surveys confirm the widespread nature of internationalist sentiment. An Ipsos poll conducted between February and April 2026 found a substantial increase over the previous year in support for global solidarity and cooperation, with net disagreement shifting to net agreement. Among the more than 22,000 adults in the 31 countries surveyed, nearly two-thirds now supported the claim that, “for certain problems, like environmental pollution, international bodies should have the right to enforce solutions.” Some 42 percent (a plurality) agreed with the idea that “my taxes should go towards solving global problems.” And nearly four out of 10 respondents (a plurality) endorsed the statement: “I consider myself more a world citizen than a citizen of the country I live in.”

Another measure of the worldwide support for international cooperation is provided by polling on public attitudes toward international organizations. The Rockefeller Foundation-Focaldata study reported that public trust was strong for the United Nations (58 percent) and the World Health Organization (60 percent), although weaker for international financial institutions. The global popularity of the United Nations was also attested to by a Pew Research Center survey that appeared in September 2025. Covering 31,938 adults in 25 countries, it found that a median of 61 percent of adults had a favorable view of the world organization, while only 32 percent had an unfavorable one.

Even proposals for new, avant-garde global institutions have attracted more public support than opposition. Commissioned by Democracy Without Borders, Nira Data conducted a global survey in September 2025 of public attitudes toward the election of a citizen-elected world parliament to handle global issues. The survey, released in January 2026, drew upon 117,000 people in 101 countries that held 90 percent of the world’s population. The finding was that 40 percent of respondents approved of the world parliament idea, while only 27 percent opposed it.

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Question related to this article:


How can we develop the institutional framework for a culture of peace?

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But what about the United States? Surely in this flag-waving nation, engulfed in the rabid “America First” rhetoric of the Trump administration and its MAGA acolytes, no more than a small minority would support the ideals of global solidarity and cooperation.

But that’s not the case at all.

One of the most striking findings of the Rockefeller Foundation-Focaldata survey is that 61 percent of U.S. respondents believed that the United States should cooperate on global challenges even it meant compromising on some national interests.

When it came to the United Nations, the Pew Research Center report revealed that 57 percent of Americans held a positive view of the world organization, as compared to 41 percent with a negative one. Moreover, it found that positive views of the United Nations had increased by 5 percent over the preceding year.

A study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, issued in September 2025, reported an even more favorable public attitude toward the United Nations. Two-thirds of the Americans surveyed, it noted, said that the United States should be more willing to make decisions within the framework of the United Nations, even if this meant that the country would sometimes have to go along with a policy that was not its first choice.

Admittedly, opinion surveys found that the level of support for international cooperation varied significantly from country to country. Thus, for example, the backing for international cooperation when that meant compromising on some national interests was greater in India (81 percent) and South Korea (73 percent), the countries highest on the scale, than in Argentina (41 percent) and Japan (34 percent), the countries at the bottom of the scale.

Furthermore, there was often a political dimension to worldwide public attitudes toward foreign affairs. According to the Pew Research Center, “people who place themselves on the left of the ideological spectrum are more likely than those on the right to have a positive view of the UN.”

This political division was particularly wide in the United States, where, as the Pew report maintained, “81 percent of liberals―versus 34 percent of conservatives―have a favorable opinion” of the United Nations. When it came to the issue of support for cooperation with other nations, the surveys by Rockefeller-Focaldata and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs both found substantial differences between the attitudes of Democrats (quite positive) and Republicans (far more negative).

Even so, in most countries, including the United States, support for international solidarity and cooperation is very substantial, and growing. Consequently, political activists and politicians shouldn’t be reluctant to speak out for them. Indeed, given the popularity of this internationalist approach to global affairs, it might even prove a winning political issue.

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DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, global, United Nations,

Abu Sayyaf Threat And The Culture Of Peace In Basilan, Philippines: The Legacy Of Life And Martyrdom Fr. Rhoel Gallardo – OpEd

. EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

An article by Rommel C. Banlaoi in Eurasia Review

Fr. Rhoel Gallardo. Photo Credit: Toshiroo, Wikipedia Commons
Director Rommel Galapia Ruiz’s  film, Seeds of Peace: The Life Story of Fr. Rhoel Gallardo,  is more than a cinematic tribute; it is a stern reminder of the enduring struggle to defend faith and promote peace in the face of violent extremism.  Director Ruiz deserves the accolade for capturing the human dimension of Gallardo’s great sacrifice and situating it within the broader narrative of Basilan’s transformation from a safe haven for terrorists to a zone of peace. His work contributes not only to the preservation of memories of Fr. Gallardo but also to the rethinking of Philippine counterterrorism strategies.

My research on the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) has consistently emphasized that while the group cloaks its actions in religious rhetoric, its motivations are largely opportunistic—driven by ransom, criminality, and exploitation of local grievances. The abduction and killing of Fr. Gallardo in 2000 exemplified the nexus of crime, terrorism and violence exhibited by the ASG. Yet, his mission in Tumahubong was not simply about teaching Christian children; it was about nurturing a fragile culture of peace where Christians and Muslims could coexist despite the shadow of violent extremism from the ASG. His school became a sanctuary of dialogue, a seedbed of hope amidst fear and terror.

Gallardo’s contribution to promoting peace in Basilan resonates with the broader lesson that counterterrorism cannot be reduced to military operations alone. His life demonstrated that education, interfaith solidarity, and community empowerment are indispensable in resisting extremist narratives. This insight aligns with the Philippine government’s Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) framework, which emphasizes community-based approaches, interfaith dialogue, and livelihood programs as complements to security operations. Gallardo’s legacy anticipated this holistic strategy, showing that the culture of peace is itself a counterterrorism tool.

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Question(s) related to this article:

What are some good films and videos that promote a culture of peace?

Islamic extremism, how should it be opposed?

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The transformation of Basilan from a stronghold of the ASG into one of the most peaceful provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region is a testament to this integrated approach. Sustained military pressure and governance reforms were crucial, but equally vital were grassroots initiatives that fostered trust and resilience—initiatives that Gallardo embodied. Today, Basilan stands as a symbol of progress, with enormous declines in terrorist incidents reflecting the success of combining security with peacebuilding.

Yet, this achievement must not lead to complacency. Extremist threats persist, and the possibility of resurgence remains real. Vigilance is required to sustain the gains, and the state must continue to invest in education, livelihood, and interfaith dialogue as part of a comprehensive counterterrorism framework. Programs under the PCVE strategy must be strengthened, ensuring that communities remain resilient against extremist recruitment and propaganda.

Fr. Gallardo’s martyrdom reminds us that peace is fragile but achievable. His legacy challenges policymakers to rethink counterterrorism as a project of human security, where the culture of peace is the most enduring antidote to the culture of terror. The film Seeds of Hope ensures that his story continues to inspire, reminding us that the seeds he planted must be nurtured with vigilance, dialogue, and collective commitment. 

The film by Director Ruiz is profoundly timely as it coincides with two significant commemorations: the 26th year of Fr. Gallardo’s martyrdom and the 25th anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11. Both moments remind us of the enduring struggle against violence and the call to uphold peace, courage, and faith in the face of adversity. By reflecting on Fr. Gallardo’s sacrifice alongside the global memory of 9/11, the film becomes not only a tribute to his life but also a powerful reminder of the universal need for reconciliation, resilience, and hope in pursuit of peace.

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East Asia, EDUCATION FOR PEACE

Haiti: National Conference : Commitments of religious leaders, joint declaration

. TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY .

An article from Ici Haiti

On Friday, May 29, 2026, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Religious Affairs held the closing ceremony of the National Conference of Religious Leaders for Peace, Stability, and Civic Engagement. Following the workshops, the religious leaders adopted a Declaration reaffirming their collective commitment to peace, social cohesion, civic education, support for vulnerable populations, and the effective integration of young people.

Commitments of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders :

1 – We commit to promoting, within our religious communities, concrete initiatives for violence prevention, civic education, and support for vulnerable populations, and to working to raise awareness among our Haitian brothers and sisters of the values of peace, tolerance, civic responsibility, and living together, particularly through community activities, mediation efforts, awareness campaigns, and youth programs;

We also commit to strengthening, within our communities, mechanisms for violence prevention, spaces for dialogue, listening, and community mediation, as well as initiatives that promote the mentoring, training, and reintegration of vulnerable youth;

2 – We call for a national mobilization around peace, civic responsibility, and the effective integration and/or reintegration of young people, particularly those from vulnerable communities and those affected by violence;

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(Click here for a French article on this subject.)

Question related to this article:
 
How can different faiths work together for understanding and harmony?

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3 – We call upon the State, religious leaders, those of ancestral traditions, as well as spiritual and philosophical guides, the private sector, and civil society to unite their efforts to strengthen social cohesion, promote civic education, and build a culture of peace, stability, and civic responsibility;

4 – We reaffirm our commitment to supporting victims of violence and assisting young people through training, mentoring, psychosocial, cultural, and spiritual support initiatives, as well as the development of concrete alternatives to violence and crime;

5 – We recommend that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Religious Affairs promote the protection of places of worship and support religious leaders, those of ancestral traditions, as well as spiritual and philosophical guides in initiatives that foster interreligious dialogue, social cohesion, and the promotion of civic responsibility for peace, stability, and the strengthening of the Haitian social fabric;

• We urge the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Religious Affairs to establish a National Council for Interreligious Consultation (CNCI) to foster ongoing dialogue among all religious sectors, ancestral traditions, and spiritual and philosophical leaders to promote peace, security, and social cohesion in Haiti;

• We also urge the Government to declare May 28th “National Day of Religious Leaders, Ancestral Traditions, and Spiritual and Philosophical Leaders” to ensure the sustainability of this initiative, which involves groups from this sector in matters of national interest;

• We reaffirm our commitment to promoting responsible religious discourse that fosters hope, unity, fraternity, solidarity, and reconciliation in the best interests of the Haitian nation;

• Finally, we reaffirm our commitment to working alongside the Haitian State, particularly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship, and civil society, to implement strategic plans to give concrete form to this Declaration.

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Latin America, TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY

Burkina Faso/Culture: The 6th edition of FESCUSAN opens its doors at the Jean-Pierre Guingané Cultural Center

. . DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION . .

An article in Le Faso

The 6th edition of the San Culture Festival (FESCUSAN) officially opened on Thursday, May 28, 2026, in Ouagadougou. Scheduled to run until May 31 at the Jean-Pierre Guingané Cultural Center, the event highlights the cultural, artistic, and gastronomic values ​​of the San people.

Under the theme “Culture: A Factor of Peace and Unity in a Multiethnic Burkina Faso,” this edition brings together the sons and daughters of the San community to promote their rich cultural heritage within a context of social cohesion and… Living together. The Dafing (Marka) community is the guest of honor at this 6th edition.


Video

For four days, several cultural activities will punctuate the festival. Visitors will be able to discover traditional dances and songs, visit a craft exhibition, and also explore San cuisine, which will be featured throughout the event.

The organizers invite the people of Ouagadougou to come to the Jean-Pierre Guingané Cultural Center to discover the cultural specificities of the San people and share moments of fraternity around traditional Burkinabè values.

The festival’s promoter, who is also the president of the organizing committee, Urbain Toé, emphasized that this San cultural festival is not just a festive event but a place of remembrance, education, appreciation, and transmission. “At a time when the challenges of globalization threaten cultural homogeneity, it is our duty to preserve what our ancestors have given us.” “Our most precious legacy is our cultural identity,” he emphasized. According to him, the festival aims to showcase San culture in all its forms: language, traditional dances and music, crafts and weaving, gastronomy, and many other forms of knowledge.

Representing the Minister of Culture at the opening ceremony, Marguerite Douanio praised the festival’s importance in safeguarding and transmitting national cultural heritage. “The San people, through their language, social organization, and artistic and spiritual practices, have built an invaluable cultural heritage over centuries. FESCUSAN, now in its 6th edition, is a precious opportunity to revisit this wealth, revive it, share it, and above all, pass it on to younger generations. Through traditional dances and songs, masks, craft exhibitions, and local cuisine, this festival highlights everything that makes our heritage so grand and unique.” “This festival is a cultural event,” emphasized the representative of the Minister of Culture.

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(Click here for the French version of this article)

Question related to this article:

 

Can festivals help create peace at the community level?

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For her, this festival is also a platform for dialogue between the past and the present, between tradition and modernity, and between generations. “In a global context marked by globalization, it is imperative for each people to strengthen its cultural identity so as not to dissolve into a uniform mold. This festival therefore constitutes a strong and resolute response to this challenge of our time. I would like to emphasize here that culture is not a heritage frozen in the past. It is dynamic, evolving, and alive. It is also a factor in economic, social, and even political development. Cultural and creative industries offer opportunities for employment, income, and exchange. Traditional crafts, gastronomy, and musical instruments are export products and drivers of innovation.

That is why I am calling on young people: embrace your culture. Do not see it as mere folklore, but as a solid foundation upon which to build an authentic and prosperous future. Be proud of your heritage.” “Origins, names, languages, rites, and traditions. Progress does not mean abandoning oneself, but rather valuing who we are in harmony with others,” stated Ms. Douanio.

According to the sponsors’ representative, Mathieu Boro, the San community, through this festival, demonstrates once again its immense cultural richness, its resilience, and above all, its commitment to preserving, promoting, and transmitting its cultural identity to present and future generations. “In an increasingly globalized world, where cultures tend to become more uniform, it is imperative for each community to reclaim its roots, strengthen its sense of identity, and defend its tangible and intangible heritage.

This festival is therefore not just a simple celebration. It is an act of remembrance, an act of transmission.”

It is also a space for dialogue between generations, a bridge between the glorious past, the dynamic present, and the future we hope will be rich in values. These values ​​are not just words. They are at the heart of our traditional conflict management mechanisms. Before modern institutions were established, it was our traditional chiefs, our elders, our griots, our blacksmiths, who worked every day to maintain social peace, reconcile families, and prevent violence,” Mr. Boro explained.

For Céline Zina Bayé, representative of the Dafing community (Marka), true peace is not decreed solely through political agreements. Rather, it is built, step by step, in hearts and minds, through education, mutual respect, listening, and dialogue. “This is where culture plays an irreplaceable role.” Through music, dance, storytelling, proverbs, and traditional ceremonies, San culture teaches solidarity, justice, conviviality, and respect for others. Yes, peace can emerge from culture when it is used as a lever for inclusion, sharing, and unity. And this is how we will move from peace through culture to a true culture of peace. This requires a profound paradigm shift: considering culture not as a luxury or a distraction, but as a pillar of development, a tool for resilience, and a gentle weapon against violence and intolerance,” she noted. She concluded by thanking the organizers for the honor bestowed upon their community with this edition.

Through this cultural initiative, the festival organizers intend to contribute to strengthening national unity and promoting cultural diversity in Burkina Faso.

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Africa, DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION

Labor Unions Celebrate World Court Ruling Enshrining Right to Strike

. . DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION . .

An article by Marjorie Cohn from Truthout (licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

The right to strike is under attack throughout the world, including in the United States. Labor strikes are currently forbidden or restricted in the majority of countries.

Now, in a landmark 43-page advisory opinion  issued May 21, the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) has determined that the right to strike is protected under the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise.


Bank employees and members of various trade unions gather at Azad Maidan as part of a nationwide Bharat Bandh, or general strike, on February 12, 2026, in Mumbai, India.

“At a moment when workers’ organizations face sustained attacks around the world, this opinion reaffirms that the freedom to withhold one’s labor is not a privilege granted by the powerful, but a fundamental human right grounded in international law,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement.

The ILO  is the United Nations agency that sets global labor standards. It has 187 member states and has adopted 191 conventions since its founding in 1919. The ILO considers Convention No. 87 to be one of its 11 fundamental conventions.

In 2023, the ILO asked the ICJ to settle an internal dispute  about whether Convention No. 87 gives workers the right to strike, which is not specifically addressed in the convention. Although advisory opinions of the ICJ are not legally binding, many courts accept them as authoritative legal decisions.

The ICJ ruled in its 10-4 opinion that a strike “is one of the main activities engaged in and tools used by workers and their organizations to promote their interests and improve conditions of labour, thereby ensuring the effective exercise of the freedom of association protected under Convention No. 87.”

The Court found “that protection of the right to strike is encompassed in the protection of the freedom of association provided for in Convention No. 87.”

In reaching that conclusion, the Court considered provisions in two 1996 Covenants that contain relevant rules of international law regarding the right to strike. Both refer to Convention No. 87.

Article 8, paragraph 1 (d) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights  (ICESCR) expressly protects the right to strike, if it is exercised in conformity with domestic laws.

Article 22, paragraph 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights  (ICCPR) provides for the right to freedom of association. The ICJ noted that for more than 25 years, the Human Rights Committee — which monitors the implementation of the ICCPR — has considered the right to strike to be encompassed in the protection of freedom of association.

Due to the high degree of overlap between the states parties to the ICESCR and ICCPR, and Convention No. 87, the ICJ determined there was a common understanding among them on the right to strike. The Court thus concluded “that an interpretation taking into account the relevant rules of international law contained in the ICESCR and the ICCPR indicates that the protection of the right to strike is encompassed in the protection of the freedom of association provided by Convention No. 87.”

No Right to Organize Without the Right to Strike

“For generations, working people have understood a simple truth: The freedom to join a union means nothing if you cannot withhold your labor when bosses refuse to listen. Now, the world’s highest court has affirmed that truth,” said Jeffrey Vogt, director of the International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network, which issued the call for the ILO referral of this case to the ICJ.

The ICJ decision “affirms decades of judicial precedent and what workers around the world know: there is no right to organize and bargain collectively without the right to strike,” Shuler said in her statement. “When workers are barred from taking collective action on the job, they cannot defend their rights and demand the workplace conditions and contracts they are owed. The freedom to join a union becomes an empty formality.”

“This is an important day for the International Labor Organization [ILO], and for its continued relevance in the world of work. However, the significance of this opinion extends well beyond the institutional context in Geneva,” the ILAW Network wrote in a statement.

The ICJ advisory opinion came “at a moment of acute pressure on the international labour rights system,” ILAW stated. “Across the world, the right to strike is under sustained attack — through restrictive legislation, expansive judicial interpretation of essential services, the criminalisation of trade union activity, and the use of dismissals, injunctions, and damages claims to deter collective action.”

Legal restrictions on the right to strike are increasing. In 2022, strikes were outlawed or stringently restricted in 129 of the 148 countries tallied by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), one of the six organizations with consultative status at the ILO Governing Body.

The ITUC, which represents 191 million workers in 169 countries and territories, is dedicated to trade union democracy and independence. It has regional organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The ICJ decision “is important not only for workers and trade unions, but also for governments and responsible businesses,” ITUC stressed.

This decision “will serve as a powerful interpretive tool before national constitutional and labour courts, before regional human rights bodies, and before the ILO’s own supervisory bodies,” ILAW noted. “It strengthens the hand of every worker and union challenging strike bans, broad essential-services designations, criminal sanctions against strikers, prohibitions on solidarity and political strikes, and the dismissal and blacklisting of workers who exercise this right.”

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Question related to this article:
 
What is the contribution of trade unions to the culture of peace?

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Ruling Will Affect Tens of Millions of Workers

In October, 18 countries and five international organizations, including the ILO, presented oral testimony before the ICJ, and other nations filed written contributions. The majority of participants supported the right to strike, which is guaranteed in most European countries.

Bolivian miners march through La Paz on May 31, 2026 in opposition to the austerity policies of President Rodrigo Paz. (Photo by COB Central Obrera Boliviana/Facebook) From Common Dreams re-publication of this article.

Harold Koh, who represented the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) before the ICJ, told the judges that the case would “affect the real rights of tens of millions of working people around the world.” If the Court ruled that the Convention didn’t protect the right to strike, Koh warned, “National employer groups would contest the right to strike country by country, focusing first on nations with compliant courts, weak civil societies and ineffective media.”

Jeffrey Vogt worked with the legal team of the ITUC on the briefs and oral arguments presented to the ICJ. Vogt’s co-authored book, The Right to Strike in International Law, provided a legal roadmap for the case.

Vogt told Truthout that “the written view of the U.S. (under the Biden administration) was to support the right to strike, albeit on narrower grounds than what we had argued. When the Trump administration came in, they withdrew the Biden era brief but fortunately did not appear for oral arguments and take a contrary view.”

“The decision deals with the right to strike in the abstract — does the convention protect it — but does not go into the modalities,” Vogt added. The Court wrote that its “conclusion that the right to strike is protected by Convention No. 87 does not entail any determination on the precise content, scope, or conditions for the exercise of that right.”

“That was a conscious decision,” Vogt noted. “We did not want the court to attempt to define the scope, especially since we believe that is the proper role of the ILO supervisory system.” Vogt said that “the ICJ gave ‘great weight’ to the views of the supervisory system, which is helpful.” And although “the ILO has supported secondary strikes,” in which workers strike in solidarity with other workers at a different employer, the ICJ decision didn’t opine on that specific issue.

The Right to Strike in the U.S.

“The right to withhold one’s labor, inherent in the right to strike, belongs to all workers, but it has been restricted,” Jeanne Mirer, a labor lawyer in private practice working with the International Commission for Labor Rights, told Truthout. “Many unions have agreed never to strike while a collective bargaining agreement is in effect.”

Most private sector workers in the U.S. have the right to strike under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Employees, including international and undocumented workers, cannot be fired or disciplined for participating in a lawful strike.

“Those exempted from the NLRA, such as agricultural and domestic workers, are not restricted in the right to strike but have no protections against discharge if they strike and do not have the power to prevent such retaliation,” Mirer added.

Some states have their own laws granting protection to domestic workers and 14 states guarantee farmworkers collective bargaining rights.

Railroad and airline workers are not covered by the NLRA, but they come under the Railway Labor Act, which has several limitations on the right to strike.

In recent years, Congress and the courts have narrowed the definition of “protected concerted activity” under the NLRA. Union membership is dropping. Nevertheless, strike actions in the U.S. increased by almost 50 percent in 2022, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the legal protections for striking in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, making it easier for employers to sue unions in state courts. Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, writing, “The right to strike is fundamental to American labor law.” She noted:

“Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their masters. They are employees whose collective and peaceful decision to withhold their labor is protected by the [National Labor Relations Act] even if economic injury results.”

The NLRA’s protections for private sector workers don’t extend to public sector employees. “Public employees in the United States have been restricted in many ways from striking,” Mirer said.

Federal workers are legally prohibited from striking. Thirty-six states prohibit public sector workers from striking. Three other states that haven’t addressed the issue would likely outlaw public sector strikes as well. In the 12 states where strikes are not per se unlawful, various preconditions must be met before workers can engage in strikes.

The World Federation of Trade Unions, which played a decisive role in the creation of Convention No. 87 in 1948, applauded the ICJ’s decision:

“It is clear that the existence of a class-oriented and militant trade union movement is the essential, decisive, and irreplaceable factor to ensure that the right to strike, as well as conventions, collective bargaining, labor laws, and workers’ achievements, are not merely empty words on paper but are implemented in practice. The WFTU reiterates its call for struggle in every country, sector, and workplace to safeguard the sacred right to strike in practice.”

“It is up to workers and their organizations to build on the ICJ decision to ensure the right to strike can be an effective tool to build worker power,” Mirer said.

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DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, global

English bulletin June 1, 2026

. WHERE CAN WE FIND LEADERSHIP? .

Where can we find leadership for a culture of peace?

With rare exceptions, not in the nation-state and its leaders.

This confirms one of the two major conclusions of my History of the Culture of War, that the nation-state has created a monopoly of the culture of war.

But there are a few exceptions as we can see from a recent CPNN article. President Lula from Brazil attended a summit in Spain led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez who said “We want to double our efforts to work for peace and for a reinforced multilateral order. While others open wounds, we want to mend them and cure them.”

It is not a question of the person, but his role as leader of a state that makes Trump, Netanyahou and Putin the leaders of the culture of war. This is shown by the fact that many former heads of state take part in The Elders, the group founded by Nelson Mandela, and the Elders work consistantly for a culture of peace.

Similarly, it is not a question of religion, but its role when it becomes the religion of the state, that makes religion a culture of war in Israel and Iran. This is shown by three articles in CPNN: Pope Leo has called for a “new culture of peace;”< he has promoted peace in his recent trip to Africa and he has denounced attempts to link religion to the culture of war.

Since the United Nations and UNESCO are ruled by nation-states, they provide very little leadership for the culture of peace. The UN Security Council has passed a resolution justifying the attack by the US and Israel against Iran. And UNESCO has apparently abandoned its one culture of peace initiative, the Biennale of Luanda. But here, too, there are a few exceptions, as we see from aother recent CPNN article. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez honored  Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, for her outspoken advocacy against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

It’s in the civil society that we find leadership for a culture of peace according to the articles in CPNN.

There are effective peace movements such as Stop the War in the UK, United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) in the United States and Mouvement de la Paix in France.

Opposing the culture of war in the United States, there is leaership from Indivisible, MoveOn and some trade unions, especially those of teachers. There is leadership from socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and from NGOs like Pace e Bene.

Opposing the genocide of Israel, there are many mass demonstrations and the courageous Sumud flotilla.

Opposing the threats of the United States against Cuba, there is another flotilla.

Many cities promote a culture of peace, including the 8,600 cities represented in Mayors for Peace and individual cities such as Barcelona in Spain and Bahia i n Brazil.

There are university programs for culture of peace such as the one under construction in the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

In general, we find leadership from women and from youth. Women have always been in the leadership for peace. Youth, especially from the Global South, are the hope for the future. This is the first generation in history that is in contact with the entire world by social media. Thus, It is youth from Brazil, Nigeria and Pakistan who are in the leadership of the Peace Manifesto for social media.

The second major conclusion of my History of the Culture of War is that the control of information has become the most important weapon of the culture of war. Indeed, the commercial mass media is filled with war stories while ignoring news of those who work for peace.

Hence, the work of CPNN is of special importance as we disseminate the news of the culture of peace. It is here that you can find the leadership we need.

HUMAN RIGHTS


‘A Voice That Upholds the Conscience of the World’: Spain Honors Francesca Albanese for Efforts to Stop Gaza Genocide

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT


Indigenous Leaders Call for Global Recognition of Peacebuilding Role as UN Forum Echoes Summit Outcomes

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION


May Day Demonstrations Worldwide Condemn US-Israeli War on Iran, Champion Workers

WOMEN’S EQUALITY


Women, Peace and Security Index 2025-2026
  

TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY


Mouvement de la Paix: For Peace in the Caribbean; Stop the Blockade Against Cuba !

EDUCATION FOR PEACE


The pilot project “Yes, it is peace!” is launched in schools near the university of Barcelona

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION


Edgar Morin deplores “the world’s silence in the face of the carnage in Gaza”

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY


36,000 protesters rally in Tokyo against Japanese PM Takaichi’s push to revise constitution

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