Watch the recording on YouTubeWritten statement to the session (A/HRC/58/NGO/136)
Purpose
The Institute organized this side event during the fifty-eighth session of the Human Rights Council to examine why the absence of an agreed definition of peace matters for human rights advocacy and for policy, and to present its research on what definitions of peace have in common, with the participation of the United Nations Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity and the Executive Director of the International Peace Bureau.
Background
The Human Rights Council held its fifty-eighth session from 24 February to 4 April 2025. For that session the Institute had submitted a written statement, issued as A/HRC/58/NGO/136 on 20 February 2025, which called for philosophical and scientific rigour in the foundations of peace and human rights. The concept note for the side event started from the same problem: human rights advocacy assumes that securing human rights leads to peace, yet peace researchers have not agreed on what peace is. It cited researchers from Johan Galtung in 1967 to Oliver Richmond in 2023 on the difficulty of defining peace, and the Institute’s 2023 article, “Reframing the Ontology of Peace Studies”, which proposed what the many definitions share. Staff of the International Peace Bureau helped to coordinate the event.
Key discussion points
- Why the lack of an agreed definition of peace matters for human rights advocacy, and for judging whether that advocacy achieves what it intends.
- What definitions of peace have in common, according to the Institute’s 2023 article, and how peace could be studied with both scientific and philosophical methods.
- How peace could be measured with indicators, many of which already appear in the Sustainable Development Goals and the International Bill of Human Rights.
- How peace has developed as a norm of international law, including the duty under the Charter of the United Nations to settle disputes by peaceful means, and how it relates to international solidarity.
- How the member organizations of the International Peace Bureau understand peace in different ways, and what a clearer definition could mean for disarmament and for civil-society advocacy.
At the close of the panel, the moderator presented three proposals: a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Peace; a committee on peace at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), on the model of the UNESCO committee that worked in support of the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and a growing network of researchers on the philosophical and scientific basis for understanding, defining and measuring peace.
Agenda
Monday 24 March 2025 (all times CET; times after the opening are approximate and are taken from the recording)
- 12:00 Opening and introduction of the panellists. Anders Reagan, moderator
- 12:05 Presentation of the Institute’s research on the definition of peace. Anders Reagan
- 12:20 Contribution. Cecilia Bailliet
- 12:30 Contribution. Sean Conner
- 12:45 Proposals and questions from participants
- 13:00 Close
Speakers
- Anders Reagan, Founder and Researcher, Peace and Conflict Science (PACS) Institute, moderator and speaker
- Cecilia Bailliet, United Nations Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity; Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Norway, taking part remotely
- Sean Conner, Executive Director, International Peace Bureau, taking part remotely
Roles are those held at the time of the event.