Live from God's Peace - Care for Just Peace
A Memorandum of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (2007)
Introduction
(1) Peace is not something that can be taken for granted. Preserving, promoting, and renewing peace is an ongoing challenge. (1) After the end of the Cold War and the militarily charged confrontation between the East and West blocks, a perspective for understanding and cooperation opened up. The big global summits in the 1990s attest to the comprehensive efforts made towards common normative and political principles in a variety of policy areas. The link between peace and justice, unbreakable according to Christian ethics and expressed in the term "just peace", has been and will continue to be discussed in many forums and formulated in policy. It is on this concept that the hope of a lasting peace on earth is based.
(2) At the same time however, new threats to peace and front lines have emerged since 1989/90: while a new world order is emerging, states are collapsing. Global networks are being built; yet the vulnerability of people, states, and societies has increased. Power configurations at the international level are shifting, and military capability is again growing in importance, yet the military is proving to be powerless in the face of the political challenges of sustainable peacekeeping.
(3) Increased global interdependencies increase mutual dependencies - albeit asymmetrically. Political leadership requires greater coordination and caution. Straightforward presentations of the feasibility of peace policy turn out to be unrealistic. They clash with the uniqueness of each individual conflict situation and must also contend with the unforeseeable consequences of interventions. On the other hand, failure to render assistance also has consequences, which for example affect affluent countries in the form of migration from the impoverished areas and new armed conflicts.
(4) Never before have physical distances been shrunk so much by communications media and technologies; yet new violent conflicts along cultural and religious lines are emerging. In this complex situation, the network of United Nations institutions (as well as of other international organizations and civil society initiatives) is of tremendous importance. Their potential is weakened, however, by a way of thinking and resultant policy decisions that are based on individual interests.
(5) This Memorandum presupposes that in such a closely interconnected world, cooperative action between states and societies has become indispensable. Chapter One outlines current threats to peace. These are the background against which, in Chapter Two, the contribution of Christians and Churches to world peace, founded in the scriptures, is set out. That includes the mission of proclamation as well as education and instruction, protection and guidance of conscience, work for reconciliation and development of the concept of just peace.
(6) In the economically fissured and politically and culturally diverse global society, approaching a lasting peace system requires more than ever legal instruments and principles that are oriented towards the notion of a just peace. Chapter Three examines the requirements of a global peace system as a legal system on the basis of the concept of just peace. These include ethics for the legal use of force in the international sphere, which also delineates the boundaries for the use of military force. Insofar as the Christian Church accepts the view of a peace system as a legal system, it makes itself an advocate of just peace.
(7) Chapter Four addresses specific areas relevant to peace policy, as indicated by the presentation of the threats to peace (Chapter 1) and the peace and law ethics requirements (Chapters 2 and 3). This chapter addresses the challenges of strengthening universal multilateral institutions and - connected with this - the perception of Europe's responsibilities for peace policy. The specific steps on the road to just peace are oriented towards the dignity of human beings and the actual living conditions of individuals. Institutions and courses of action must be assessed by whether, in the sense of the concept of "human security," they improve the security (2) of people from violence, poverty, and lack of freedom, promote opportunities for personal development, recognize cultural diversity, and thereby contribute to social relationships that promote peace worldwide. These challenges are aimed at preventing violence and linked with a long-term view of peace policy, and thus serve the ends of just peace.
Footnotes:
(1) The preservation, promotion and renewal of peace is the title (Frieden wahren, fördern und erneuern, Gütersloh 1981) of the Evangelical Church in Germany's (EKD) only peace ethics statement of principle to date explicitly characterized as a "memorandum on peace".
(2) In ecumenical contexts, such as in recent documents of the Conference of European Churches (CEC), it is emphasized that from the Christian point of view comprehensive and absolute security can never be achieved, as human life is always associated with vulnerability. Peace and freedom from violence must therefore also always be in jeopardy. This does not however contradict the concept of "human security", but merely adds a different, additional perspective.