The Peacecamp Project: 

C.O.N.T.E.X.T

The quest for deep-seated and sustainable peace has been a very difficult one, unless we would limit our aspiration to only the absence of war, the absence of a shooting war where guns would be silent, a ceasefire situation. 

In conditions where armed combatants roam the streets in tense refrains between situations of combat, where bombs fall in horribly erratic frequency and houses are strafed intermittently, the absence of peace is obvious,  But the absence of such situations does not define peace, either.  

Peace is not at all just the absence of war.

Social strife can be very quiet, but not any less tense and violent.  In conditions where a great many people are forced to live in dire poverty and their basic rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are routinely violated without even the pretenses of due process, they are incessantly being pushed to feel a need to defend themselves -- to defend their survival and sense of dignity, to stop the enemy's assaults on these, to retaliate and turn the tables on their perceived adversaries. 

Social strife is often the offspring of social injustice often resulting in mass poverty. 

As more people sink deeper into poverty, they lose all opportunity for peaceful living and they are pushed to adopt the approach of fighting their way to deliverance from injustice and further suffering.

In the Philippines, social strife has been constant since the beginning of colonialism and the injust-  ices it has wrought. Poverty has been widespread

and worsening. Discrimination has reared its ugly head between large sections of the population that have been at odds economically, politically, culturally and along many other lines of division. 

As points of conflict proliferated and worsened , the people have not had much opportunity to learn well the non-violent ways of conflict prevention and  resolution, where all involved in the conflict could conduct fair and earnest dialogues that address the concerns of all sides.  

Mutual acceptability and fairness of the arrangements being adopted is not often the target of settlement; rather, the priority aspiration is to prevail in a contest of physical mutual annihilation, or short of it, of barefaced bullying.

Peace has obviously become a requisite for human development to be achieved. The cycles of attacks and counterattacks have to be ended if our society, or Humanity, is to survive. All these simultaneous factors have to be effectively addressed. 

The citizenry has to be adequately educated on the principles of peace, of preventing points of conflict from growing to irreparably damaging proportions, of cooling down the flames of mutual annihilation and antagonism. 

And such effective education has to be started during the citizens' formative stage, in their childhoood, in their youth. Before childish immaturity promoted mainly by the example of the adults becomes permanent in their hearts and minds, and in their habits.