Section 5. Promoting Peace

This and other sections in the Tool Box chapter on Spirituality and Community Building (Chapter 28) have been written with the support and contributions of experts connected with the Charter for Compassion. For more information about the Charter and its work, visit www.charterforcompassion.org.

 

“Everyone must be committed in the matter of peace, to do everything that they can …

Peace is the language we must speak.” — Pope Francis

Introduction

Peace is fundamental to community well-being. It involves more than the absence of war or visible violence. Peace also depends on whether people can live with dignity, participate in community life, resolve conflict fairly, exercise their rights, and trust that institutions will respond when harm occurs.

Peace-building can take place at many levels: within relationships, families, neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, organizations, communities, nations, and international systems.

It can include:

• Preventing violence
• Resolving conflict constructively
• Protecting human rights
• Addressing discrimination and exclusion
• Building fair and accountable institutions
• Expanding meaningful participation in community decisions
• Strengthening relationships across differences
• Improving conditions that support safety, stability, and well-being

Individual compassion, self-awareness, and nonviolence can support peace, but peace should not be treated solely as a matter of personal attitude. Housing, employment, education, health care, public safety, environmental conditions, discrimination, political participation, and access to resources can also shape whether a community experiences security or conflict.

Throughout this section, examples of peace-building illustrate possible approaches rather than universal solutions. Communities should adapt strategies to their own histories, needs, cultures, institutions, and circumstances.

Definition

Peace can be understood at several levels.

On an individual level, people may associate peace with calm, security, dignity, or freedom from fear.

In relationships and communities, peace involves the ability to address differences and conflicts without violence, coercion, discrimination, or dehumanization.

At a societal level, peace includes institutions and conditions that protect rights, support fair participation, provide ways to resolve disputes, and reduce preventable violence.

Peace does not require complete agreement. Communities can contain political, religious, cultural, economic, and personal disagreements while remaining peaceful when they have fair and accessible ways to work through those differences.

Related principles include:

• Human rights
• Justice and equity
• Safety
• Inclusion
• Accountability
• Democratic participation
• Nonviolent conflict resolution
• Access to resources and opportunities

Peace is strongest when these principles are supported through both relationships and institutions.

The Importance of Peace to Community Building

Communities are better able to thrive when people can participate without fear of violence, discrimination, harassment, or exclusion.

Peace-building can strengthen:

• Trust among community members
• Participation in civic life
• Cooperation among organizations
• Physical and emotional safety
• Access to education, employment, health care, and other opportunities
• Community capacity to respond to conflict and crisis
• Relationships across racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, political, and other differences

Peace and justice are closely connected. A community may appear calm while some residents experience discrimination, intimidation, exploitation, or exclusion. The absence of visible conflict should therefore not automatically be treated as evidence that a community is peaceful.

Ask:

• Do people feel physically and psychologically safe?
• Are conflicts addressed fairly?
• Can people participate in decisions that affect them?
• Are rights protected?
• Are some populations experiencing disproportionate harm?
• Do institutions respond effectively when violence or discrimination occurs?

Situations Favoring the Promotion of Peace

Detection and Action

Peace-building can be incorporated into everyday community work, but organizations can increase their effectiveness by identifying specific concerns, assets, and opportunities.

One useful framework includes four steps:

1. Discover and Assess

Learn about the conditions affecting peace and safety in your community.

Useful information may include:

• Residents' experiences of safety and belonging
• Violent crime and victimization data
• Hate crimes and bias incidents
• Domestic and sexual violence
• Bullying and harassment
• Community conflicts
• Discrimination complaints
• Housing instability and displacement
• Youth opportunities
• Access to behavioral health and social services
• Transportation, lighting, public spaces, and other features of the physical environment
• Community organizations and informal support networks

Use several sources rather than relying on crime statistics alone. Police data reflect reported incidents and enforcement practices, not every form of harm experienced in a community.

Speak with residents, community organizations, schools, public agencies, service providers, businesses, faith communities, youth, people with disabilities, immigrant and refugee organizations, and others who understand local conditions.

Participatory mapping can help identify locations where residents feel safe or unsafe, assets that support community life, and environmental conditions that may affect safety.

Avoid labeling entire neighborhoods as “high-crime” or “dangerous.” Identify the specific conditions, places, times, and experiences involved.

2. Focus and Commit

Work with community members to identify priorities.

Possible areas of focus include:

• Violence prevention
• Domestic and sexual violence prevention
• Youth development
• Bullying and harassment prevention
• Restorative practices
• Interfaith and intercultural collaboration
• Hate-crime prevention and response
• Community-based conflict resolution
• Public-space improvements
• Community-police relationships and accountability
• Support for people returning from incarceration
• Language and disability access
• Peace education
• Environmental and climate resilience

Select priorities based on the seriousness of the problem, who is affected, community-defined needs, available evidence, local capacity, and opportunities for meaningful change.

3. Build and Launch

Identify organizations and residents already working on the issue before creating a new initiative.

Build partnerships that include people directly affected by the problem as well as organizations with relevant authority, resources, expertise, or relationships.

Clarify:

• The goal
• Roles and responsibilities
• Who has decision-making authority
• What resources are available
• What safeguards are needed
• How community members will participate
• How progress will be evaluated

4. Evaluate and Maintain

Establish measurable goals and review progress regularly.

Evaluation should examine both outcomes and equity.

Ask:

• Has violence or harm decreased?
• Do residents feel safer?
• Are people more willing and able to participate in community life?
• Have relationships among institutions and communities changed?
• Are some populations benefiting more than others?
• Have policies or institutional practices changed?
• Are community members satisfied with the response?
• What should be changed next?

Contexts for Promoting Peace

When Defining Community

Peace-building begins with recognizing who belongs to the community and who is affected by its decisions.

Community membership should not depend on citizenship status, language, religion, race, disability, length of residence, housing status, or whether someone participates in formal organizations.

Ask who is not represented in public meetings, leadership bodies, planning processes, and other decision-making spaces, and identify the barriers limiting participation.

When Strengthening Policies and Institutions

Peace requires institutions that are fair, accessible, transparent, and accountable.

Policies should be reviewed for whether they produce unequal treatment or create unnecessary barriers.

In public safety, for example, communities may examine:

• Patterns of stops, searches, arrests, and use of force
• Racial, ethnic, disability, gender, or other disparities
• Complaint and accountability processes
• Community participation in policy development
• Crisis-response practices
• Training and supervision
• Transparency and public reporting

Strong community relationships should not substitute for accountability. Trust is strengthened when institutions communicate openly, address misconduct, and follow through on commitments.

When Community Members Need Additional Support

Some people face circumstances that increase their need for protection, services, accommodation, or institutional support.

These may include:

• Children and young people
• Older adults
• People with disabilities
• People experiencing serious illness
• People in prisons, detention centers, hospitals, residential facilities, or other institutional settings
• Immigrant and refugee residents
• People experiencing homelessness or housing instability
• People experiencing violence or abuse

Avoid treating these populations only as recipients of care. People within each group also contribute knowledge, leadership, relationships, culture, and resources to community life.

Peace-building means reducing barriers and supporting people's ability to make decisions about their own lives.

Environmental Conditions and Peace

Environmental change can affect community stability through displacement, food and water insecurity, disaster, loss of livelihoods, health effects, and competition over resources.

Climate change or resource scarcity does not automatically cause conflict. Conflict usually reflects an interaction among environmental pressures, governance, inequality, discrimination, political decisions, economic conditions, and other factors.

Communities can strengthen peace by incorporating climate resilience, environmental justice, emergency preparedness, and equitable access to resources into long-term planning.

Indigenous Nations and communities have diverse traditions and systems of environmental stewardship. Avoid treating Indigenous knowledge as a single universal tradition. Where Indigenous approaches are included, work with and accurately attribute the specific Nation or community involved.

Steps in Developing and Promoting Peace

Personal Reflection and Self-Awareness

Personal practices can support peace-building.

People may find value in reflection, prayer, meditation, counseling, spiritual practice, journaling, time outdoors, exercise, art, or conversations with trusted people.

Self-awareness can help people recognize fear, prejudice, anger, assumptions, or habits that affect how they treat others.

At the same time, people experiencing trauma, violence, discrimination, or serious conflict should not be told that peace depends on becoming calm or changing their attitude toward the situation.

Personal reflection can complement, but not replace, safety, accountability, justice, or professional support.

Supporting Peace and Safety in Families

Domestic violence, sexual violence, child abuse, and other forms of family violence are community concerns, not private matters that should be ignored.

Effective responses may include:

• Survivor-centered services
• Safe housing
• Accessible health and mental-health services
• Legal assistance
• Economic support
• Prevention education
• Programs addressing harmful behavior
• Policies in schools, workplaces, health systems, and community organizations
• Coordination among community services

Prevention efforts should examine the conditions that allow violence to continue, including unequal power, social norms that tolerate abuse, economic dependence, isolation, and gaps in institutional response.

Use language such as survivor, person experiencing violence, or another term preferred by the individual rather than defining people solely by what happened to them.

Living Peaceably Across Differences

Community members can strengthen relationships by learning about one another, participating in shared projects, addressing stereotypes, and creating opportunities for meaningful interaction.

Do not assume that immigrant or refugee residents need to be “integrated” into a community that belongs to someone else. They are community members whose participation, knowledge, languages, businesses, families, and organizations contribute to local life.

Useful practices include:

• Providing language access
• Supporting community-led organizations
• Creating accessible public meetings
• Learning about barriers identified by residents themselves
• Addressing discrimination and xenophobia
• Building relationships rather than approaching people only when an institution needs their participation

Reconciliation

Reconciliation may be part of peace-building after serious conflict or harm, but it should not be reduced to a choice between revenge and forgiveness.

People may seek justice, accountability, safety, restitution, acknowledgment, policy change, reconciliation, forgiveness, or some combination of these.

Forgiveness is a personal choice and should not be expected as evidence of peacefulness.

Reconciliation processes should be voluntary, attentive to power differences, and connected with concrete accountability and repair.

Advancing Peace in Community Building

Working with Neighbors

Neighborhood peace-building can begin with opportunities for residents to identify shared concerns and work together on practical issues.

Activities may include:

• Community conversations
• Interfaith or interbelief programs
• Arts and cultural activities
• Community meals
• Neighborhood improvement projects
• Youth programs
• Conflict-resolution workshops
• Community safety planning
• Public education about discrimination or violence

These activities work best when they respond to priorities identified by residents rather than assuming that social contact alone will resolve conflict.

Interfaith and Interbelief Collaboration

Religious and spiritual communities can play important roles in peace-building, mutual aid, advocacy, public education, and community relationships.

Include people who are not religious when the activity concerns the broader community. Interfaith work should not imply that every resident belongs to a faith tradition.

Religious leaders and organizations can be especially important partners in responding to religious discrimination, antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Sikh hate, anti-Christian violence, and other forms of religiously motivated hostility.

Avoid treating an entire religion as responsible for violence committed by individuals or extremist organizations claiming religious justification.

Working with Schools

Schools can promote peace by creating environments in which students are safe, respected, included, and able to participate.

Strategies may include:

• Bullying and harassment prevention
• Social-emotional learning
• Conflict-resolution skills
• Restorative practices
• Student leadership
• Anti-discrimination policies
• Accessible mental-health support
• Family and community partnerships
• Safe and supportive disciplinary practices

Avoid labeling students as “bullies” and “victims” when discussing behavior. Describe the behavior and identify what support, accountability, or protection is needed.

Restorative Practices in Schools

Restorative practices can provide alternatives or complements to exclusionary discipline in some circumstances.

They may involve facilitated conversations, circles, conferences, agreements for repair, and other approaches focused on harm, responsibility, relationships, and reintegration.

Restorative processes should not be treated as universally effective or appropriate for every incident.

Important considerations include:

• Voluntary participation where direct dialogue is involved
• Safety
• Power differences
• The seriousness of the harm
• Facilitator training
• Disability and language access
• Meaningful accountability
• Follow-up

A restorative process should never pressure a student who experienced harm to forgive, reconcile, or participate in direct contact.

Youth as Leaders

Young people are not simply populations to protect or prevent from causing problems. They are community members with knowledge, creativity, relationships, and leadership capacity.

Involve young people early when developing peace-building initiatives that affect them.

Ask what concerns they identify, what approaches they consider credible, and what roles they want to play.

Organizations and Businesses

Organizations and businesses can support peace through their employment practices, services, purchasing, community relationships, environmental practices, accessibility, public positions, and internal policies.

Questions to consider include:

• Does the organization have policies addressing discrimination, harassment, and workplace violence?
• Are employees experiencing domestic violence able to access appropriate support?
• Are services accessible to people with disabilities and people who use languages other than English?
• Does the organization contribute to community safety and well-being?
• Does it engage communities affected by its operations?
• Are environmental and labor impacts considered?

Social responsibility should be evaluated by actual organizational practices, not only public statements.

Community Civic Leadership

Peace-building is most sustainable when it is supported throughout community institutions rather than assigned to a single program.

Partnerships may include residents, local government, schools, health systems, businesses, community organizations, cultural and faith organizations, youth, researchers, public-safety agencies, and others.

Community members should help shape priorities and decisions from the beginning.

Community Safety

Community safety involves more than law enforcement.

Violence prevention may include:

• Safe and affordable housing
• Youth opportunities
• Street lighting and safe public spaces
• Accessible behavioral-health services
• Domestic and sexual violence prevention
• Community-based outreach
• Violence interruption
• Conflict mediation
• Employment and education opportunities
• Fair and accountable policing
• Support for people returning from incarceration

Use local data and resident experience to understand where and why violence occurs rather than relying on assumptions about particular neighborhoods or populations.

Restorative Justice

Restorative justice focuses on harm, responsibility, needs, relationships, and possible repair.

It may be used in schools, justice settings, workplaces, or communities.

Restorative justice is not simply “healing instead of punishment,” nor is forgiveness required. Depending on the situation, accountability may include restitution, behavioral change, community obligations, restrictions, or other consequences.

People harmed should have meaningful choices about whether and how they participate.

Preventing Mass Violence

Definitions of mass violence vary among researchers and agencies. Because definitions and statistics change, avoid using a single annual count as an evergreen measure of the problem.

Community prevention should focus on identifiable behaviors, threats, circumstances, and opportunities for intervention rather than profiling people by identity or diagnosis.

Strategies can include:

• Behavioral threat-assessment and management
• Clear procedures for reporting concerning behavior
• Domestic violence prevention
• Suicide prevention and crisis services
• Safe firearm storage and other evidence-informed means of reducing access to lethal means during periods of heightened risk
• Community violence intervention
• School and workplace safety planning
• Accessible mental-health and substance-use services
• Appropriate information-sharing consistent with privacy and civil rights

Mental Health and Violence

Mental-health conditions should not be treated as shorthand for dangerousness.

Most people with mental-health conditions are not violent, and people experiencing mental illness are also vulnerable to victimization.

Violence prevention should focus on relevant behaviors and circumstances, such as explicit threats, escalating violent behavior, previous violence, domestic abuse, severe crisis, access to lethal means, and other evidence identified through appropriate assessment.

Communities should expand access to voluntary, culturally responsive, and accessible mental-health care because people deserve support, not because mental illness should be equated with violence.

Extremist Violence and Hate

Extremist violence can emerge from different political, ideological, religious, racial, or other movements.

Avoid attributing the actions of violent extremists to an entire religion, ethnicity, nationality, political community, or other population.

Communities can strengthen resilience by:

• Responding quickly to hate crimes and threats
• Supporting targeted communities
• Challenging misinformation
• Protecting civil liberties
• Building relationships before crises occur
• Providing credible pathways for reporting threats
• Avoiding discriminatory profiling

Firearm Injury and Violence Prevention

Firearm injury is a public-health and community-safety concern that includes homicide, suicide, domestic violence, unintentional injury, and mass violence.

Communities may consider evidence-informed strategies appropriate to their legal and local context, including:

• Safe storage
• Suicide-prevention interventions
• Domestic-violence risk reduction
• Community violence intervention
• Public education
• Improved injury and violence data
• Policies designed to reduce firearm access when a person poses an imminent risk

Because firearm laws and evidence continue to change, time-sensitive policy recommendations and statistics should be reviewed regularly rather than presented as permanently current.

Group and Gang-Related Violence

Some communities experience violence involving gangs, street groups, or other networks.

Avoid assuming that racial, ethnic, neighborhood, clothing, or cultural identity indicates gang involvement.

Assessment should focus on actual behavior and local conditions.

Prevention strategies may include:

• Youth development and recreation
• Mentoring
• Education and employment opportunities
• Family support
• Community-based outreach
• Conflict mediation
• Support for people who want to leave gangs or violent groups
• Trauma-informed services
• Neighborhood improvements
• Focused responses to people and situations associated with serious violence rather than broad enforcement against entire communities

Schools should avoid punishment based only on clothing, symbols, association, or assumptions about identity.

Peace Commissions and Similar Bodies

Some communities create peace commissions, human-rights commissions, violence-prevention councils, interfaith councils, or similar bodies.

These groups may:

• Coordinate responses to violence and hate incidents
• Convene community dialogue
• Support public education
• Strengthen relationships among communities
• Advise local government
• Connect residents with resources
• Monitor community concerns

Their effectiveness depends on clear authority, meaningful community participation, resources, transparency, and follow-through.

Relationships with Other Communities

Sister-city programs, international exchanges, collaborative education, cultural partnerships, and digital communication can help communities build relationships across national boundaries.

International partnerships should be reciprocal rather than treating one community primarily as a recipient of expertise or assistance from another.

Preventing War and Political Violence

Preventing war and large-scale political violence requires work at many levels.

Useful approaches can include:

• Diplomacy
• Mediation
• Conflict prevention
• Protection of civilians
• Human rights monitoring
• Accountable governance
• Economic and social development
• Support for civil society
• Peace education
• Nonviolent civic action
• International cooperation
• Arms control and risk reduction

No single approach works in every conflict. Community builders should be cautious about claims that either military or nonmilitary approaches alone can resolve complex conflicts.

Conflict Resolution and Prevention

Negotiation, mediation, diplomacy, community dialogue, and other conflict-resolution processes can help prevent disputes from becoming violent.

Effective processes should address the causes of the conflict, not simply ask opposing groups to communicate more politely.

Issues may include governance, security, political exclusion, discrimination, land, resources, economic conditions, historical harm, or competing national interests.

Strengthening Civil Society

Civil society organizations can support peace through advocacy, public education, service delivery, human-rights protection, community organizing, research, conflict mediation, and accountability.

Strong civil society also requires protection for civic participation, journalism, peaceful assembly, community organizations, and human-rights advocates.

Nonviolent Action

Nonviolent organizing has played an important role in many movements for political and social change.

Strategies may include:

• Public demonstrations
• Strikes
• Boycotts
• Community organizing
• Civil resistance
• Negotiation
• Unarmed civilian protection
• Public education

Historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are frequently associated with traditions of nonviolent action, but peace-building should also recognize the work of many local organizers, women, young people, Indigenous leaders, labor organizers, human-rights advocates, and others whose contributions may receive less public attention.

Educating for Peace

Peace education can help people develop skills in:

• Conflict resolution
• Media and information literacy
• Civic participation
• Human rights
• Intercultural communication
• Nonviolent action
• Ethical decision-making
• Collaborative problem-solving

Programs should encourage critical thinking rather than requiring agreement with a particular political or religious perspective.

Investing in the Conditions for Peace

Governments and communities make choices about how resources are distributed among defense, public safety, diplomacy, education, housing, health, infrastructure, climate resilience, international assistance, and other priorities.

Rather than relying on budget figures that quickly become outdated, communities should examine current spending and ask whether resources are aligned with their goals for safety, prevention, human development, and peace.

Climate Change and Future Conflict

Climate change may intensify risks involving displacement, food and water insecurity, disaster, infrastructure loss, health effects, and economic disruption.

These pressures do not inevitably result in violence.

Peace-building strategies can include:

• Climate adaptation
• Disaster preparedness
• Equitable resource management
• Protection of displaced people
• Regional cooperation
• Inclusive planning
• Environmental justice

Challenges and Questions for Reflection

Peace-building can be difficult when communities face fear, discrimination, misinformation, unequal power, unresolved harm, resource shortages, or political polarization.

Instead of treating “fear,” “ignorance,” “hatred,” or “greed” simply as personal moral failures, examine the conditions that reinforce them.

Ask:

• What information are people receiving?
• What experiences or histories shape their concerns?
• Who benefits from division?
• Are some groups being dehumanized or scapegoated?
• Are resources or political power distributed inequitably?
• What institutions reinforce or reduce conflict?
• What opportunities exist for constructive cooperation?

Reflection Questions

Look at the organizations, institutions, and community processes in which you participate.

Consider:

• Who is affected by the decisions?
• Who participates in making them?
• Who has the most authority?
• Who may be missing?
• Are participation and communication accessible?
• Are outcomes equitable?
• Are people safer because of the work?
• Does the work address both immediate conflict and its underlying conditions?
• Are people who experience harm able to influence the response?
• How will the community know whether progress has occurred?

How Can Challenges Be Addressed?

Effective peace-building often involves:

• Bringing people together when doing so is safe and useful
• Protecting people who may be targeted or harmed
• Addressing discriminatory or violent behavior directly
• Expanding meaningful participation
• Building partnerships across sectors
• Supporting community-led solutions
• Changing policies or institutions that contribute to harm
• Providing adequate resources for long-term work
• Connecting local concerns with broader regional, national, or international conditions when relevant

In Summary

Peace is more than the absence of war, visible conflict, or crime. It involves safety, dignity, rights, justice, participation, accountability, and the ability to resolve differences without violence or dehumanization.

Personal compassion, reflection, and nonviolence can contribute to peace, but community peace also depends on institutions, policies, resources, and social conditions.

Effective peace-building begins by understanding the community. Use both data and residents' experiences to identify harms, assets, priorities, and barriers.

People directly affected by violence, discrimination, conflict, or exclusion should have meaningful roles in developing responses.

Peace-building should not stereotype communities or assume that immigration, mental illness, religion, race, disability, poverty, or youth automatically creates risk. Focus on specific behaviors, conditions, institutions, and evidence.

Reconciliation, restorative justice, interfaith dialogue, community conversations, youth leadership, violence prevention, and other approaches can all contribute to peace when they are used appropriately. None should be treated as a universal solution.

Accountability remains essential. Peace should not require people experiencing harm to remain silent, forgive, reconcile, or accept unsafe conditions.

Communities can also reduce violence by investing in the conditions that support well-being: safe housing, education, health care, meaningful work, accessible public spaces, youth opportunities, responsive institutions, environmental stability, and fair participation in decisions.

Finally, peace-building is ongoing. Communities change, new conflicts arise, and strategies need to be evaluated and adapted.

The goal is not to create a community without disagreement. It is to build communities capable of addressing disagreement fairly, protecting people from harm, correcting injustice, and working across differences without resorting to violence or dehumanization.

Contributor
Terry Greene

Editors
Bill Berkowitz
Barbara Kerr