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, binding, international peace treaty. 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. Securing such a treaty lays the foundation for generating a historical paradigm shift in how we deal with social conflicts, large and small—rejecting violence and embracing nonviolence.
Part 2ThreeIntermediate, Collateral, and Long-term Goals
To create buy-in and support within the global community for the treaty. This is necessary activity for actually securing the treaty,
To ensure that the peace secured 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.
To achieve Part1 and Part 2 objectives, PEP will use varied educational and promotional means to spread knowledge about human social behaviors that must not only change, but also must be perpetually attended to if violence as a means of resolving conflicts is to be abandoned. This significant educational component will spread knowledge about the causes of war and the means to prevent both international and civil wars. PEP will reach out to unite many hundreds of projects and organizations across the globe that are already working to move the global community in directions needed to achieve the desired paradigm-shift.
Three stages of Part 1: Prepare the ground – Set up the campaign structure, and use a variety of sources, including digital media, to announce across the globe that a campaign to secure a global binding-peace-treaty has been initiated. Make clear that all Earth citizens are invited to join the effort, regardless of their politics, philosophy, religion, nationality, sexual identity, or race. The only requirement is that they support the goal of securing a binding global peace treaty for the prevention of international wars and doing so using only nonviolent strategy and tactics. Plant the seed – a) Do research to determine the major obstacles the campaign faces and the best steps to overcome the obstacles, b) Raise funds for and assist in coordinating the necessary work to overcome the identified barriers, c) Disseminate the results of the research and work progress as widely as possible to peace organizations, academic institutions, various media, and the public at large as part of educating the public about the campaign and gathering further recruits in support of it, and d) at the appropriate time, take the progress achieved to UN Women, to engage UN Women’s experience and resources in the extensive work needed to secure a treaty. Cultivate the concept - Spread the concept to all nations using all available media and promotional strategies, importantly including the support of powerful global influencers from many fields, emphasizing how each individual nation would immediately and specifically benefit from the treaty, how their people would benefit, and how their nation’s future would benefit. As part of reaching individual nations, PEP will seek out young women (ages roughly 25 to 35) willing to serve some time as a PEP ambassador for a given nation, to explain the project to her nation’s leaders and citizens and to recruit PEP supporters. Share in the harvest – participate, where appropriate, in the treaty negotiation and ratification processes.
Focus of Part 2: 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 and attention to which each one is key to maintaining peace. [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 listed 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 the 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 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. The movement’s leaders especially must be continually guided by the shared vision of the ultimate prize lest they become distracted by and spend resources on other worthy causes. 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.