Peace and Conflict Essay
Peace and Conflict Essay
Human beings are pacifists by nature. They tend to avoid situations that can result in conflicts. Most people desire to live in a tranquil environment devoid of wars and conflicts. However, since they live in a world where resources are scarce, disagreements on the use of the resources is a common occurrence among the individuals and states. Given that conflicts are bound to disrupt the peaceful coexistence and harmony among regions, groups and nations, it becomes important to explore effective ways of solving such conflicts in such a manner that peace is not jeopardized. In absence of peaceful methods of conflict resolution, there is a risk of such conflicts escalating into bloody wars. This paper therefore seeks to examine root causes of conflicts and how such conflicts can be solved through peaceful means.
Peace and Conflict Essay
A conflict refers to a disagreement or confrontation between groups of people over an object of common interest between them (Jehn &Mannix, 238-251). Given that each person aims to further his interests using the object under contention, a conflict of interest becomes inevitable as no party in the conflict is willing to give in to the other party’s demands or wishes. This eventually results to a standoff among the parties involved in the conflict. To break such a standoff, the parties in the conflict can result to embracing a multitude of ways of conflict resolutions. It is important to note that some of the tools of conflict resolution at their disposal advocate for use of violence. For instance, the waging of war by a country against another country leads to escalation of violence and absence of peace between the two fighting camps.
Peace and Conflict Essay
One of the most lethal enemies of peace is conflicts. Given that peace and conflict cannot coexist, the conflict has to be resolved for peace to be attained. Any conflict may be caused by a multitude of factors and as a result, most of the conflicts in the world cannot be attributed to a single cause. One of the major causes of conflict in the world emanated from political, social and economic inequalities among the people. Due to limited number of resources, not everyone is able to gain resources that he or she needs. This makes those who have the resources to be in conflict with those who do not have. The battle for the scarce resources eventually leads to people entering into conflict.
Historical injustices committed by one group against another are a major cause of conflicts. Historical injustices may take the form of one group taking the property of another group at some time in the past. In bid to recover what they believe was rightfully theirs, those demanding for justice finds themselves in confrontation with those who are alleged to have annexed the property or territory. If left unchecked, issues of historical injustice have the potential of not only mutating into a serious conflict but also escalating to a full scale war (Themner & Wallensteen, 565-575).
Another cause of conflict among the people emanates from high levels of poverty. This causes a lot of scramble over the limited opportunities. In some cases, the conflict may take religion or ethnic dimensions whereby some group may accuse the other of being given the limited resources or opportunities on the basis of their religious or tribal affiliations. A conflict of this nature has serious consequences if measures are not put in place of solving it and addressing the underlying issues causing it. It may result into bloodshed and ethnic cleansing. A perfect case study of how poverty led to conflict is the Second World War. There was widespread poverty in Germany at that time. The Germans felt that the Jews were being accorded more job opportunities in the corporate and government sector. This created resentment among the Germ people as they felt that they were being sidelined and left to fend for themselves unlike the Jews.
Peace and Conflict Essay
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