Thousands of kilometers away, bombs and shrapnel fall. Missiles criss-cross the air, weaving webs of smoke and death. In the streets, the stones of destroyed buildings are stained with the blood of hundreds of people. News reports exacerbate the massacres and television channels compete to show crude images, to safeguard the audience that will allow more advertisements to finance the large salaries of their figures. The picture is sad. What is reported in the news is happening in Asia Minor but also in Europe. Someone might say that it is good that the war is far away. But they forget that in the rest of the world, we live through other kinds of wars. Because if every war is the height of violence, there is another kind of violence that constitutes a covert war. It is the war of the powerful who exploit, who destroy the environment, and divide up countries for economic gain. It is the violence of the system that can be seen in the various aspects of social life, which affects everyone.
What to do, how to live, what could prevent the world from sinking further into a web of violence and suffering? For many, the alternative is to immerse themselves in work and hopefully work much harder to earn the money to pay off debts; because for some, there is nothing to be done, there are only the urgencies. For others, the alternative is to look for more guns to defend themselves or to attack. Others, numbed by the media, do not even realise what is happening. The world thus faces the destruction of the human being. In other words, there will continue to be people, and beings, but without humanity, because the system seeks to dehumanise.
So, the only valid alternative is to resist and fight to humanise. And that means raising awareness of what it means to be human, that is, to be in solidarity, to be aware of what is happening, to be someone who advocates other ways of life, in which the causes of suffering are eliminated so that humanity can flourish and peace can be a constant, not an exception.
In this sense, there is an instance that allows us to show the world that it is possible to live in a different way, because on the occasion of the celebration of the International Day of Nonviolence that was held on October 2, the Third World March for Peace and Nonviolence was officially presented, which will leave Costa Rica on October 2, 2024 and will circumvent the earth for many days, to end in the same country in January 2025. This March is promoted by the organisation World without Wars and Nonviolence, which has been a non-profit organisation for more than 20 years and does not receive any kind of subsidy from governments. It has “special consultative” status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations.
A World March which, right now, will show that the path of understanding and humanisation is more valid than the language of war and violence. Even more so now, when many fear that peace will be lost in many territories and that the words of many are always messages of threat and others only manage to hide out of fear.
So let us all march for world peace and nonviolence!
Audio dedicado exclusivamente para personas con discapacidad visual
Ricardo Rojas. Member of Convergencia de las Culturas-Chile
