Theories "Just Peacemaking" much more than non-violence There is a compassionate rebel in everyone Healing the wounds Peacemakers Children can learn to be Peacemakers Local Peacemaker Makes a Difference The landmine issue Banning landmines: why the US won't sign the treaty Kids on the edge of a minefield |
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Larry Rasmussen's Just Peacemaking speech Check out Stassen's books about Just Peacemaking at Amazon.com |
The Ten Practices of Just PeacemakingTHE ten practices of Just Peacemaking are divided into three groups: cooperative forces, justice, and peacemaking initiatives. B. Advance Justice for All3. Promote democracy, human rights, and religious liberty.Extensive empirical evidence shows that the spreading of democracy and respect for human rights, including religious liberty, is widening the zones of peace. Democracies do not make war on each other. Established democracies fought no wars against one another during the entire twentieth century. And they generally devote lower shares of their national products to military expenditures, which decreases threats to other countries. Influences that played significant parts in producing the recent extensive wave of transitions to democracy include changes in some religious institutions (including transnational ones) from primarily defending the status quo to opposing governmental authoritarianism; citizens' groups and non-governmental organizations dedicated to human rights; and states and international organizations more actively promoting human rights and democracy. The empirical evidence also supports practices described by the first two papers: "Ties of economic interdependence--international trade and investment--form an important supplement to shared democracy in promoting peace." The degree that nations are engaged in international organizations like the various arms of the United Nations, and regional and functional institutions, is also a clear predictive factor that they will be much less likely to engage in war. Powerful threats to democracy's spread exist: grim economic conditions in numerous struggling democracies; ethnic, racial, nationalistic, and religious conflict; instabilities during the transition to democracy; external threats from nondemocratic neighbors. The possibility of a widespread and growing zone of peace requires a network of persons who are willing to work together to gain public attention for those they are trying to protect from human rights violations. And it requires financial and expert help to strengthen the just and sustainable economic development of struggling democracies. 4. Foster just and sustainable economic development. "Focusing on the poor and providing them with opportunities is not
only
Scripturally based, it is also strategically crucial in the development
sense.... Experience shows that not only are the majority of the poor
extremely creative and entrepreneurial in eking a living out of the few
resources to which they have access, but also that giving them access to
resources, information, and opportunities produces impressive results."
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