A fairer world - The Tasmanian Center for Global Learning
Disabled war veteran, Cambodia. Source: www.saocambodia.org

Did you know?
  • Three decades of recent conflict have left Afghanistan's aid-dependent economy and infrastructure in tatters, and caused more than 250,000 Afghans to be uprooted within their own borders. Many more are refugees... *
  • There were over 23,300 nuclear weapons in the world in 2009 and nearly 8,200 of them were ready to be launched. *
  • Australians have been involved in International conflict since 1899. *



PEACE AND CONFLICT

"War is no solution to a problem. It's useless. Why make things that destroy humanity?"
Charles Mance, Australian soldier who fought in WW1 and died in 2001 aged 100. [The Age, Melbourne, 21/9/2001]

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 over 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.

Looking generally at war and peace

The causes of war

  • Taking prevention more seriously will help to ensure that there are fewer wars and less consequential disasters. There is a clear financial incentive for doing so. The Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict estimates that the cost to the international community of the seven major wars in the 1990s, not including Kosovo, was $199 billion. This was in addition to the costs to the countries actually at war. The Carnegie researchers argued that most of these costs could have been saved if greater attention had been paid to prevention. "Report of the United Nations Secretary-General"

  • Armies and militia have a long history of exploiting natural resources like diamonds, timber and minerals to fund their activities. Major conflicts fuelled by revenues from resource extraction include Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cambodia. In these and other resource-fuelled wars, civilians have been murdered and subjected to human rights abuses.  "Trust.org"

  • Additional sources of information can be found in the Digital Library of the International Relations and Security Network.
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