International Day of Peace was first established in 1981.  This year, the United Nations has adopted “Invest in Peace” as their motto for the day. I believe there is an associated hashtag for those who wish to use it. Even if I were still in the habit of hash-tagging, which I am not, I would not feel inclined to use this particular line. To me, ‘Invest in Peace’ sounds a bit as if Peace is a stock on the share market. I won’t dwell on what ‘Peace’ might be doing right now if that were the case. What I do find interesting about this call to action, is that it makes us think about what investing in peace might actually entail – beyond any connotations with the world of corporate investment.

There has been much talk in recent months about ‘investing in defence’. Less euphemistically this might be termed ‘investing in war’. Investing or taking actions towards peace seems to get less coverage. It is almost as if the idea of peace is reserved for that one special day a year, when people are encouraged to actively promote and invest in it. On the other 364 days, when the usual working mood takes hold, peace takes a back seat to investing in defence. There are various reasons why this might be. An obvious one is the threat, or presence, of armed aggression. While that is real and present, it does not make looking at pathways to peace any less important. I would argue it makes the need to think about peace – specifically non-violent means to it — all the more pressing and urgent. It may also have something to do with a lack of clarity as to what active work towards peace might look like. Investing in war is comparatively clearcut – it requires some kind of shopping list, and allocation of funds. Peace, on the other hand, is harder to pin down.

The document I linked to above, the 36^th session of the United Nations General Assembly, has this to say:

“…since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed, that a peace based exclusively upon the political and economic arrangements of Governments would not be a peace that could secure the unanimous, lasting and sincere support of the people of the world, and that the peace must therefore be founded, if it is not to fail, upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind.”

This text, like many of these high-level resolutions, takes something of a lofty, ambitious tone. Still, I think the idea is a useful one. The analogy of building mental ‘defences of peace’ suggests that as in war, these need to be multi-layered. It is not enough to rely on some kind of political and economic arrangement – peace needs to be something that is felt and embodied in all of us. This sentiment is echoed here, in a 2014 tribute to International Day of Peace by Greg Simons: “Peace needs to not only be firmly established as being a desirable value and state of being, it must also be something that has an active tangible relationship and emotional bond with mankind” (p. 8). Simons adds a dimension of peace being ‘active’ and ‘tangible’, while re-affirming the sense of something felt; something emotional. Finally, there is the 1981 wording from the United Nations again, that if it is to be a lasting peace, it must be founded upon the ‘intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind’.

How to get there, then? The same document goes on to mention the promotion of peace, “mainly through education in all its aspects”. This leaves a lot to the imagination. One thing that I think is important when it comes to education, is being able to understand each other: our different perspectives, histories and life stories. Here, I think language-learning is particularly important, being at the root of human communication. I consider myself lucky to have been able to study languages and take language classes in various parts of the world, and although I have never really stuck to any particular language or become proficient in any of them beyond the basics, the experience itself has been worth a lot. There is something special about any language class – the way it brings people together, opening a window on one culture through one particular language, while potentially mixing a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures together. This kind of education is, to my mind, at the heart of education for peace.

Something language classes also offer is the potential for random mingling and talking — something that is becoming increasingly hard to find. In education, as in other realms of life, a great deal of our communication is aimed at understanding complex concepts and ideas, or in making sense of abstract problems. While that may be interesting, stimulating, challenging, necessary even – it is possible to get so caught up in this, that the very humans underneath become a distant secondary; a means to an end rather than the end itself. This is something of a shame, I think. Some might say we have the internet for those conversations, where once we had the town square. But the internet and words typed into screens are not the same as real people and real conversations. At least I don’t think so.

As I type these words on my screen on the evening of International Day of Peace 2026, I am aware it is getting rather late in the day. And on that note, I wish anyone reading this a peaceful evening.