A couple of weeks ago I attended Arts Bonanza, an event held by Peace360º, a Student Interest Group at NYU Abu Dhabi whose mission it is to foster dialogue about peace. The event featured an array of performances intended to make the audience reflect upon the issue of peace. At the end of the event, I was inspired to become an active agent of peace myself. However, as I thought more and more about how to accomplish this, I realized that the mainstream approaches to peace can ultimately do little to attain their goal.

Just think about it. How many civil wars or international conflicts in the last century have ended because people with peace signs painted on their foreheads took to the streets to preach understanding and respect? You can come up with a couple of examples, at most. Conversely, think of the conflicts that have ended due to military supremacy of one of the belligerent parties, international pressure and sanctions, massive state reformation, etc. The examples range from the Dayton Accords, which brought the Bosnian civil war to an end in the early 1990s, and the 2009 military annihilation of the Tamil Tigers separatist movement in Sri Lanka to the negotiation that ensured the demobilization of the FMLN liberation army in El Salvador from 1990 to 1992. In summary, if planned and executed appropriately, political strategies can end conflicts. Thus, if we want to approach peace, we have to be more pragmatic than idealistic.

I have to look no further than my own country for an example. Colombia is a country at war. The internal conflict emerged from the remnants of a nationwide struggle for power between members of the two traditional political parties in the late ‘40s and ‘50s. This civil war can be defined in its simplest form as a confrontation between leftist guerrilla groups and the state. During the last five decades, the number of violent actors has increased to include paramilitary groups (demobilized as of 2006) and drug cartels. The conflict has taken the lives of over 200,000 people, and tens of thousands still live with physical or psychological scars as a result of landmines and kidnappings, according to a study published this year by the National Centre for Historical Memory. The conflict has also witnessed the failure of three different peace negotiations at different points in time. Since last year, the government has engaged in a new attempt to negotiate a peace treaty with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the largest and longest-standing guerrilla group. However, the negotiations are going through a crisis and many predict its failure. Why? It is not because Colombians do not want peace; in fact, peace is an ideal for the large majority of Colombians. Instead, it fails because of the poorly conceived strategies used by major stakeholders in the negotiations.

For example, the Colombian government has failed to secure a lobby for peace that could potentially endorse reforms in Congress and evoke a favorable outlook from public opinion. It has marketed peace negotiations as a presidential platform instead of a top state priority, thus reducing their importance in the political agenda. All of this is due to poor leadership from the president and his cabinet. They are not acting as if they are committed to striking a peace agreement. They have failed to convince people of the benefits of peace, and they have not gone beyond the usual idealistic discourse of why we should strive for such a goal.

On the other hand, the Colombian populace has not pressured the state to re-draft the social contract. Such negligence perpetuates the reign of the elite and ensures that new policies only favor the interest of a few. Because of this, the chances of generating an inclusive state project are slim. This improbability in turn acts as fuel for more conflict. Finally, the FARC has failed to understand the limitations of their bargaining power, not recognizing that they lack widespread sympathy among the people. Also, they have been unrealistic about their demands and do not realize that the Colombia of our days is not the same country that gave birth to their movement in the ‘60s. In summary, the stakeholders have gone into the game without any idea of how to make the best out of it.

Conflicts are full of complexities that the standard discourse on peace fails to grasp. Peace does not mean simply respect and understanding, it means government and civil action to facilitate channels for political participation. It means adequate economic development policies that ensure opportunities for increased social welfare. It means recognizing the historical debt of the privileged few to the oppressed majority. It means reconstructing the social fabric and sewing up healthy social relationships. By no means is it in easy task.

Discussions about peace have to stop concentrating on abstract concepts and values and rather focus on concrete strategies. The discourse on peace is too concerned with white doves in the sky instead of facts on the ground. The idealistic portrayal of peace offered by mass media and popular culture is utterly misleading. It has made us believe peace is too much about warmth of heart instead of tangible settlements between the conflicting parties. It leads us to forget the complexity of conflicts by arguing that we should just understand and respect each other. It leads us to believe that peace is the absence of conflict, when peace is a struggle in itself.