Recently, Pope Francis made a pertinent impassioned plea for an end to the conflict in Israel and Palestine “where war is devastating the lives of those peoples” in his Christmas message. He urged people to pray and work for peace in conflict situations worldwide.
He took particular aim at the weapons industry, which he said was fuelling the conflicts around the globe with scarcely anyone paying attention. Pope Francis frequently blasted the weapons industry as “merchants of death” and said that wars today, in Ukraine, in particular, are being used to try out new weapons or use up old stockpiles.
He called for peace between Israel and Palestinians, and for the conflict to be resolved “through sincere and persevering dialogue between the parties, sustained by strong political will and the support of the international community.” World peace is exactly what we should also wish for as we enter 2024.
Billions of dollars are spent every year in producing arms and ammunition to kill people. But there is no effort to ensure there is life. Reckless arms trading devastates lives. Weapons and ammunition are produced and sold in shockingly large quantities. Twelve billion bullets are produced every year. That is almost enough to kill everyone in the world twice. Every day, thousands of people are killed, injured and forced to flee their homes because of gun violence and armed conflict.
Civilians typically bear the brunt of modern conflict. Weapons such as artillery, mortars, guided bombs and missiles destroy hospitals, homes, markets and transport systems, pushing survivors into poverty. People’s lives are destroyed. This is the cost of an unregulated arms trade industry
With the instances quoted above question arises how can we do it? Like war between Israel and Hamas, the front line players and their protagonists are two different entities. Between the two the propagators are economically, politically and militarily more powerful than the frontline. They have a hidden agenda. In mediaeval times, the wars were fought for reasons like acquiring power, conquering land, obsession of charming ladies (these points are not relevant today) and on religious grounds. Now we are facing two major wars going on in the world today for two different reasons: one, the war between Russia and Ukraine for acquiring land and political power and the other the Israel and Hamas war is being fought primarily on religious ground. And the players are the big powers with a parochial mindset.
Now the issue comes how do we achieve world peace? Achieving peace is achieving universal brotherhood irrespective of caste, creed, place, colour and most significant is religion!! It can be achieved only by tolerance and acceptance; acceptance of humanity, expression of love, embracement of mankind and broad vision. In achieving this religious leaders, more than the politicians, can play a major part.
Besides religious unity the world body like the UN should have more independence in its functioning with selection of proper persons from four corners of the world and all-round development of mankind and eradication of property. The common phrase “Vacant mind is Devil’s workshop” may be rephrased as ‘Vacant mind and Empty stomach is Devil’s Workshop”.
The world spent an estimated $112 billion on arms imports between 2018 and 2022, even as 9,000 people die each day from hunger driven primarily by conflict. In contrast, a research paper published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international body that works to build better policies for better lives, shows that investments in peace and conflict prevention are steadily decreasing.
As we can see, a huge amount of money is being spent on killing and maiming people, but very little on alleviating people’s lives from poverty and despair. Over two million deaths and $4.3 trillion in economic losses have occurred in the last 50 years due to extreme weather events caused by man-made global warming. But our priority is death and not life.
Can it be reversed? People spend the money to earn money and at present the easy way to earn money is by investing in the industry which helps kill human beings and destroy the universe! Can the same people be shown the way to enable them to earn money by creating development instead of destruction?
Instead of expected reduction of violence due to the fear of lethality of the present day, the incidences of violence is on the rise with the concomitant increase in untold human sufferings. Impacts of today’s conflicts are no longer localised. These have global impact.
Although every year we hope for a positive change, that wish doesn’t come true. It is hoped that at least in 2024, the world leaders understand the folly of mindless violence and give peace a chance. The amount of hate being fuelled in us by political and military leaders will burn down the entire earth one day. Is anyone listening?
