Flora Teckie
As we mark the International Day of Peace on September 21, it is timely to reflect on how global peace and collective security may be achieved.
More than a century ago, Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith wrote: “The well-being of mankind its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established”. Thus, unless unity is attained – a unity that embraces and honours the full diversity of humankind – true peace and security will remain out of reach.
Peace is more than just an end to war and elimination of violence. Banning nuclear weapons, prohibiting the use of poison gases and germ warfare will not remove the root causes of war.
In the Bahá’í view, there is need for change in individual attitudes, and the creation of a universal framework to uphold peace.
Peace, according to the Baháí Writings “stems from an inner state supported by a spiritual or moral attitude, and it is chiefly in evoking this attitude that the possibility of enduring solutions can be found”.
There is a need to accept that we are one human species. Although we differ from one another physically and emotionally, and have different talents and capacities, we all belong to one human family.
The acceptance of the oneness of humanity is the most important prerequisite for achieving global peace. According to the Universal House of Justice, the governing council of the Baháí international community, “World order can be founded only on an unshakeable consciousness of the oneness of mankind, a spiritual truth which all the human sciences confirm. .... Recognition of this truth requires abandonment of prejudice – prejudice of every kind-race, class, colour, creed, nation, sex, degree of material civilization, everything which enables people to consider themselves superior to others”.
The principle of the oneness of humanity, according to the Bahá’í Writings, “is applicable not only to the individual, but concerns itself primarily with the nature of those essential relationships that must bind all the states and nations as members of one human family... It implies an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced”.
The question we probably all have is: how to change the world with its patterns of conflict to a world in which harmony and cooperation will prevail. While recognition of the oneness of humanity, and the abandonment of all types of prejudice by individuals is the first requirement, in addition the Baháí Faith envisions a system of collective security within a framework of a global federation.
It foresees the creation of a global commonwealth of nations to uphold world peace, in which all races, creeds and classes are united and the autonomy of its state members and the personal freedom and initiative of the individuals are safeguarded.
In 1985, the Universal House of Justice addressed a message to the peoples of the world, entitled “The Promise of World Peace”. The document analysed the reasons that world peace had for so long been considered unattainable – citing seven major barriers and outlining new approaches for the demolition of those barriers.
This message was presented to world leaders and countless others during the International Year of Peace. The letter is available on www.bahai.org.
Any new thinking on how to achieve global peace and collective security must begin with the belief in the oneness of humanity. It will also be necessary to have international institutions to regulate international affairs towards building of a peaceful global order.
Pretoria News