Welcome to the Online Research Internship of the Global Peace Institute, London.
Watch the lesson above. What is said in it is written out below, for reading and revision.
When the fighting stops, it is tempting to say that peace has arrived. But a ceasefire is only a beginning.
Here is a test you may apply to any country you study. If the soldiers, or the peacekeepers, left tomorrow, would the conflict start again? If the honest answer is yes, the work of peace is not yet done.
At the Global Peace Institute, our work rests on three ideas: preventive peace, people and peace, and peace hospitality. You will meet each of them in this lesson, and they will run through everything you write with us.
Very few wars come out of a clear blue sky. Most give warnings, often years in advance: rising hate speech, an election whose result one side refuses to accept, one community shut out from land or water.
And the longer we wait, the higher the price, in lives and in money. A joint study by the United Nations and the World Bank, Pathways for Peace, published in 2018, reached precisely this conclusion: prevention is far cheaper than responding once violence has broken out.
Yet prevention is hard to fund, because when it works, nothing dramatic happens. Nobody sees the war that did not take place.
That is why our first idea is preventive peace. Notice tensions early. Explain them honestly, giving each side a fair hearing. And propose practical steps while there is still time to act.
Our second idea is people and peace. Treaties are signed by governments, but peace is kept, or lost, by people: by teachers and parents, by young people, by neighbours and communities.
The everyday choices of ordinary people add up, and good research never forgets them.
Two groups deserve special mention: women and young people. For too long, peace was negotiated by a small circle of older men, while those most affected by war were left outside the room.
In the year 2000 the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. And in 2015, resolution 2250 recognised young people as partners in building peace.
Young people and women can mediate in their communities, speak up early when tensions rise, build bridges across divides, and hold leaders to account. Peace lasts longer when they help to make it. And that includes you.
Our third idea is peace hospitality. The way a country, a city or a family welcomes strangers can build trust long before diplomats meet. A good welcome turns visitors into friends.
We see hospitality as a quiet form of diplomacy, and a path to peace in its own right.
Now for your first task. In about two hundred words, tell us who you are, and what you would like to write: either a commentary on one clear, current question, or a review of a recent book on international affairs.
Submit it using the form beneath this video. Good luck, and welcome.