6. Whatever happened to world peace?

Conflicts rage on around the globe

The demise of the cold war at the end of the 1980s brought hopes of a new era based on the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Hopes were dashed almost immediately, however, as conflicts unfolded in Yugoslavia and the Persian Gulf, and continued in more than 15 African countries.

The dramatic events of September 11, 2001, have triggered an upsurge in international military engagement, destabilized central Asia, and given fresh impetus to a simmering conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

In spite of the decline in tensions between the "super powers," between 30 and 50 armed conflicts are under way at any time. Most of them are taking place within, rather than between, states.

Significantly, the vast majority of the people killed in armed conflicts during the 1990s were not combatants, but civilians. In the former Yugoslavia, the targeting of civilian populations led to the coining of the sordid phrase 'ethnic cleansing'. Even after hostilities have ceased, landmines continue to exact a heavy toll on civilian populations.

Another disturbing aspect of modern warfare is the recruitment of children as fighters. It is estimated that at any time, more than a quarter of a million people under the age of 18 are engaged in armed conflict.

The end of hostilities between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union brought an end to the nuclear stand-off that had prevailed since the 1950s. Nevertheless, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is arguably as severe as it has ever been. The world's nuclear arsenal is currently equivalent to 5,000 megatons of TNT--around 4,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

The post-Rio decade has seen the cold war nuclear deadlock replaced by a fresh and more disparate set of dangers. India and Pakistan each tested nuclear weapons in 1998, thereby signaling that they had joined the ranks of nuclear powers alongside the U.S., Russia, Israel, China, France and Great Britain.

The 10 years since Rio have demonstrated on a colossal scale the suffering that war can inflict on ordinary people. At its worst, warfare unravels decades, or even centuries, of civilization, and reduces prosperous nations to mediaeval living standards. And according to the Rio declaration, warfare "is inherently destructive of sustainable development." It precludes the sustainable management of natural resources, undermines the fight against poverty, prevents foreign investment, destroys infrastructure and prevents planning for future generations. It also strikes those countries that are least able to recover. In the last 10 years, 15 of the world's 20 least developed nations were blighted by violent unrest.

The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has repeatedly stressed the case for preventing wars before they are allowed to start. He wrote recently: "Even the costliest policy of prevention is far cheaper, in lives and in resources, than the least expensive intervention."

One glimmer of hope is the redefinition of security in terms of people rather than the state, most recently by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which was convened in 2000 in response to the catastrophes that unfolded in Rwanda and Kosovo.

The Johannesburg summit is being staged at a time when the global regimes governing trade, development assistance, natural resources management and international relations are in a state of flux. A rare opportunity exists to integrate human security as their common objective.