Celebrating International Peace Day by Shaping Peace Together

By Kiran Peter, Programme Manager at a Civil Society Organization

September 21, 2020

Today, the International Peace Day is being celebrated all across the world. This year, the day invites us all to spread compassion, kindness and hope in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic; and join hands against the attempts to use the virus to promote discrimination or hatred. This day was established in 1981 by the UN General Assembly (A/RES/36/67) to commemorate and strengthen the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and people. Two decades later, in 2001, the General Assembly unanimously voted (A/RES/55/282) to designate the day as a period of non-violence and cease-fire. The day reminds us that we need to work hard to maintain peace in our beloved country Pakistan. According to the Global Peace Index Report 2020, Pakistan has jumped up a place from 153 to 152 among 163 countries to improve on the peace front. While Pakistan’s neighboring country India surprisingly jumped by two places from 141 to 139.

Peace is essential for the economic and societal growth of a country. The countries who have grown economically demonstrates high level of peace such as China, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia. Secondly, no country can develop or grow economically without peaceful coexistence among its population, and within its borders. Therefore, interfaith socioeconomic cooperation needs to be promoted in Pakistan by engaging the 68% Youth bulge (Development Advocates Pakistan UNDP 2020) in the country. The statistics indicate that Pakistan has a demographic dividend which is greater than half of its population and young people to be empowered to shape the country's future direction. Therefore, to benefit from youth full potential it is important to mobilize youth to accept and include the youth of all religions for entrepreneurship. The diverse faith youth should be mobilized on the notion that they have to understand their difference and act on commonalities because focusing on commonalities will create more synergies and economic uplift. The government and civil society organizations have to take greater initiatives in building capacity of diverse faith youth in entrepreneurship skills through skill development courses and provision of seed grants to start up their enterprises. It is essential for Pakistan to engage its youth bulge in meaningful and state development activities as in the past years the energies of youth have been utilized negatively resulting in adverse security situation.  In addition, the enhancement of the concept of nationalism among youth will also help improve peace rather than leaving them sticking to narrower perspective limited to ethnicity, denominations and religions.

Moreover, the biased textbooks syllabus being taught in schools is also one of the major reasons for exclusion of people other than Muslim faith in the country. The children are taught since their childhood that only one religion is supreme and the other citizens are not equivalent to the majority religion. This factor is disturbing peace in the country which needs to be addressed at its earliest.

Another dilemma facing Pakistan is lack of proper implementation of laws which inhibits peace to prevail in the country. Therefore, the current government should focus more on strong rule of law which will protect human rights and prevent and mitigate violent crime and conflict by providing legitimate processes for the resolution of grievances and disincentives for crime and violence. Conversely, weak economic development and inequality can be a trigger for crime and violence. It has been observed that the fastest developing nations are among those with the best rule of law having peace and tranquility thriving within them.

Thus, as the theme of the International Day of Peace 2020 “Shaping Peace Together” recommends, we need to continually work for the promotion of peace within Pakistan at community, academic and public policy level to maintain peace in the country.