Is it time to institutionalize peace?

The existence of a ministry of defense in the governmental structure for any contemporary country today is considered an obvious and indisputable matter. We can’t imagine a country in the modern world without the existence of the ministry of defense, where this ministry, represented by the army and the armed forces with it s different formation, is directly responsible for protecting the country when being attacked by another country. Therefore, we can not imagine, in any condition and however the country is peaceful with no problems with the other countries, that it will abandon the formation of the ministry of defense for the above mentioned purposes.
Along that, a new humanitarian and international coalition emerged which seeks to form an independent Department or Ministry of Peace in all the countries, which is concerned with spreading the culture of peace, logic of tolerance and flexible dialogue, understanding others, enhancing and coordinating the cooperation bonds among the different nations and cultures, giving priority to the calm objective rational approaches against the violence, destruction and irrational approaches and adopting the dialogue, openness and cooperation method in stead of the culture of elimination, overruling and fighting which are increasing in our modern world, where we see the wars, disputes and struggles ruining the people and working to destroy man and send him to loss, estrangement and the unknown.
It seems that this call to form a ministry of peace in all the countries has it s justifications and supporters, also there are some objectors of it s existence who might even stultify and mock at the very idea by considering that the existence of the ministry of peace is enough to institute peace and stop wars. But what happened is the opposite; where we see, from a simple historic observation, the following:

1. The formation of the ministries of defense and the race towards arming did not prevent wars and blood shed and did not lead to the spread of peace and security in the world. Where today s world is full of wars and struggles between two nations, between a nation and organizations and even between two organizations.
2. The ministries of defense and their establishments require huge funds which are taken from the countries budgets. These funds could have been used in other developmental and economic purposes which serve the people.
3. The civilization of some countries did not participate in establishing peace in those countries and in general. Where we find that as much as we advance and become civilized, the competition increases and the reasons behind eruption of wars between countries increase.
4. When a country does not have a war, it does not necessarily mean it lives in an absolute peace. Because the required peace which we seek to accomplish starts from the person, his mental stability and dealing with the others, and ends with the situation of the countries and their relation with each other.
5. The peace we seek to reach through the ministry of peace is an approach which spreads the peace culture, language of dialogue and tolerance logic, trying to understand others and respect their opinions and opening concurrence bridges between the different nations and cultures, not just establishing a ministry and an establishment for this purpose.
6. Peace should have concepts and applications placed in certain books taught for the children in the primary schools in order to implant it s concepts with them from the first age groups.
7. The decision to form a peace ministry in any country in the world does not necessarily mean forming a ministry by the same name, where there may be ministries having different names but working for the same purpose. For example, in Nepal there is a ministry for peace and reconstruction and in the Solomon islands there is a ministry called the ministry of national unity, reconstruction and peace. As in Iraq, there is the national dialogue ministry which works to connect between the political blocs and categories and reduce their differences. It is a ministry of state.
8. It think it is now time to form such ministry in all the countries, which could be a center for intellectual meeting among the nations and a source for building relations among the different countries, especially after so many years of wars in which the countries fought tens of wars which left huge casualties of innocent people.
9. In Iraq we have a clear and important project regarding the call to adopt such project. Despite we have a ministry of state called the national dialogue ministry, but we believe that the matter should be different and pass beyond political dialogue to social dialogue among the different components of the people in order to establish peace in the country which was destroyed by dictatorship and wars.

Muhaned H. Alsemawee
Chairman of ministry of peace initiative in Iraq

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