TALKING POINTS: Does Peace Have a Chance?

What is Peacebuilding?

• Peacebuilding is a whole system approach to making, keeping and sustaining peace. It includes building governance structures that protect peace through justice and human rights protections. Peacebuilding requires careful and participatory planning by various groups, within government and the community. It is a long-term commitment to a process through which peace can be sustained.

Iraq Peacebuilding Links

The Alliance for Peacebuilding's Definition

Budget Priorities

The Unified Security Budget prepared by Foreign Policy in Focus details some of the spending priorities that are affecting peacebuilding:

• An increase of $600 million for the F-22, a fighter jet of questionable capability, could allow the U.S. to triple the amount it plans to spend on canceling the debt that is crippling development in the world’s poorest countries. The U.S. could also increase by 50% U.S. contributions to international peacekeeping operations.

• Instead of funding the development of offensive space weapons, which threatens to create a whole new arms race, the U.S. could provide the $800 million needed to double the originally requested annual budget for the State Department’s Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization. This corps of civilian experts in post-conflict rebuilding, envisioned for Iraq and other locations such as Haiti and Sudan, has been unfunded since 2003, when it was proposed.

• The President's proposed budget would devote 90% of our foreign and security policy resources to military force build-up instead of nonviolent conflict resolution. Only 4% would go to measures designed to prevent conflict.

• The President's FY2008 budget would reduce spending on Cooperative Threat Reduction, vital to securing and dismantling international stockpiles of nuclear material and delivery sytems to keep them away from terrorists.

• The FY2008 budget would triple spending on new designs for nuclear weapons, calling into question the U.S. commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

• The State Department was reduced to accepting a five million dollar donation of private money to pay for the removal of two bombs-worth of highly enriched uranium from Serbia.

How can we reform these policy priorities from offensive conflict to peacebuilding and non-violence?

Who is working on peacebuilding, and what are they doing?

The UN Peacebuilding Commission works to bring resources together that are at the disposal of the international community to advise and propose integrated strategies for post-conflict recovery, focusing attention on reconstruction, institution-building and sustainable development, in countries emerging from conflict.

Peacebuilders have been working in conflict zones through the Alliance for Peacebuilding, including one who is preparing young Army officers for peace and stability operations, working with Muslims and Hindus in a New Jersey neighborhood towards "Winning the Peace".

A group called LAONF in Iraq publishes an internet campaign and works in the Universities in Baghdad and Najaf for all Iraqis to commit to nonviolence. They commit to nonviolence as the best way to create an independent, democratic, peaceful, strong and wealthy Iraq.

The Peace Alliance is working on a campaign to establish a U.S. Department of Peace. The campaign seeks to establish a body at the federal level that will seek out practical, nonviolent solutions to the problems of domestic and international conflict. The Department of Peace would work domestically to teach school children about conflict resolution, work on rehabilitating our prison population, bridge cultural divides in our communities and support the work of local, county and state governments in this regard. The Department would also support the military with complimentary approaches to peacebuilding and create a U.S. Peace Academy. The Deparment would also build on peace-making capabilities internationally.

The American Friends Service Committee is working on a Wage Peace Campaign to end the war in Iraq. The AFSC support grassroots movements and organizing to end violence and seek a peaceful and just resolution to conflict.