On the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, there were 58,000 British casualties, one-third of whom were killed.  After four and a half months of fighting the Allies had advanced less than 12 kilometres at a cost of 420,000 British, 200,000 French and 500,000 German casualties.*

Today most of the victims of war are civilians and many of them are women and children.*  Iraq Body Count estimates that in the order of 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in Iraq since the invasion of that country in 2001.*  Landmines maim or kill between 15,000 and 20,000 civilians every year*, and in the past decade, hundreds of thousands of children have fought and died in armed conflicts around the world.*

War is neither necessary nor inevitable. In 1948, Costa Rica abolished its armed forces and became an oasis of peace and prosperity in what was then one of the most war-torn regions on Earth. Dialogue and negotiation offer a practical and achievable alternative to armed conflict. Redirecting the world’s trillion-dollar military expenditure to peaceful purposes would help to create the prosperity and stability on which peace depends. But for this to happen we need to abolish the “us and them” divisions that create conflict between human beings and ultimately lead to war.

This section contains information and links on The human cost of war, The economic cost of war, Nuclear proliferation, The arms trade and Peace initiatives and conflict resolution.