For those of us dedicated to moving human society to a state of enduring peace, while simultaneously laying the foundation for an eventual global paradigm shift that rejects violence as the means to resolve social conflicts of all kinds, the vision for this Women’s Global Binding-Peace-Treaty Campaign is of two parts:
Part 1The Organizing Goal - The campaign focuses on a singular goal: securing a global, international peace treaty that stipulates in advance the consequences that will be suffered by political and military leaders of any nation that breaks the peace. The goal is to prevent war, not punish aggressors after the fact. All activities designed and acted on must be crafted to further the achievement of that singular goal. This is the heart of Project Enduring Peace.
Part 2ThreeIntermediate, Collateral, and Long-term Goals
To create buy-in and support within the global community for the treaty using all educational and promotional tools available. This activity will be required to get necessary parties to the peace table.
To ensure that the peace secured through negotiations is maintained beyond signing of the treaty,
To build on achievement of the treaty by introducing the vision of a long-term campaign to foster a global paradigm shift in attitude that rejects violence and embraces nonviolence with respect to all kinds of social conflicts, including those that lead to civil wars.
Seeking Allies The PEP campaign will reach out to individuals and groups that address aspects of social behavior recognized by students of war as being root causes of wars. They are many and highly diverse. PEP will stress how each one is key to maintaining peace...and how each one will benefit from human and financial resources liberated by a treaty that puts an end to wars between nations. They will be encouraged to have their members sign PEP's petition to be sent to relevant entities capable of putting the wheels in motion for a new peace treaty effort, urging those entities to take the necessary action to facilitate negotiations.
A series of essays, called “Cornerstones of Enduring Peace”, explain how and why so many diverse issues are necessary conditions for ending international and civil wars. See the dropdown list entitled "Summary of the Nine Cornerstones" which lists and gives links to the various essays.
Below are examples of efforts critical to securing and maintaining peace; globally, hundreds of organizations and projects focus on one or more of them.
Empowering women,
Working to eliminate poverty,
Focusing on providing meaningful work and a meaningful future for young men who can otherwise create difficulties within our societies,
Educating about the power and use of nonviolent forms of conflict resolution rather than using aggression,
Aggressively shifting human and financial resources now consumed by the military industrial corporate complex to projects that will mitigate the harms of climate change,
Shifting our economies to sustainable ones that are in harmony with ecological resources, and
Fostering the spread and maintenance of liberal democracy, with its focus on individual human rights and freedoms, as opposed to illiberal democracy, which among other things, has no power to contain warmongers.
PEP itself does not directly engage in these worthy but divergent activities of peace-fostering, peace-sustaining efforts that are carried out by other organizations or projects. Rather, PEP spreads knowledge of the importance of those efforts toward securing enduring peace, and may recruit thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations engaging in those efforts to support, at some level, PEP’s singular goal: to secure a global, binding-peace-treaty. [Find here the names of hundreds of organizations working on one or more of the issues key to maintaining peace. See the dropdown list on the top menu bar entitled “Related Projects”. [https://www.afww.org]
There lies in wait a massive global force of citizens already dedicated to changing and/or eliminating the many facets of behavior that foster war, a global army ready to be united to achieve what until now has been unachievable: an international peace treaty that has teeth.
A Word About PEP’s Goal and the Danger of Distraction
Notable successful nonviolent social change movements share some fundamentals. One is that the movement had a clear, measurable, achievable goal.
Gandhi’s goal was to free India from British rule. The end point of the movement was clearly understood, and success would be obvious. Success was manifest in the 1947 Indian Independence Act.
From Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, a long list of women sought to secure the vote for all women in the United States. Again, a singular, clear, and measurable goal. It resulted in the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Followers of Martin Luther King Jr. were seeking to secure critical civil rights for African Americans. Success was embodied in the Civil Rights Act. of 1964.
A critical benefit of having a clear and measurable goal shared by all nations is that over the time it takes a large social change movement to succeed—they never succeed overnight—supporters and leaders are able to measure progress being made, and the thoughts of leaders are consistently kept focused on the prize.
History teaches that if the goal of a social change movement is vague or progress toward it is difficult if not impossible to measure, momentum is easily lost. The movement falters, splinters, or dies out. Given vague or difficult-to-measure goals, progress is hard to perceive or tout to gain supporters, or for supporters, hard to feel. Without a feeling of progress enthusiasm dies. Without a shared orienting and measurable goal, planning and strategizing by leaders can too easily drift to collateral issues, undercutting momentum toward the actual goal. Examples of such vague or difficult to measure goals would be a movement to end poverty, or a movement to promote the use of nonviolence. Even a movement to empower women. However worthy they may be, such goals don’t offer a strong backbone for a major social change movement. Distraction. Loss of focus. These are a danger to be avoided. PEP provides a clear, uniting goal; securing a global binding-peace-treaty. Progressive steps to achieving success are measurable. And achievement will be a major step on the pathway leading to a global paradigm shift that rejects violence as an option for resolving all nature of social conflicts. It would also become the foundation upon which we can construct a peace system for planet Earth.