Jill Goldson: Give peace a chance!

The trouble can be trying to work out exactly what peace is. Photo / Getty

In case it slipped past you, International Day of Peace was on Monday. Established in 1981 by the United Nations the day is commemorated by education and public awareness on issues related to peace.

The New Zealand Human Rights blog suggested we mark the day in our homes and communities and asked "who will you make peace with?"

With all the political struggle and war, marauding zealots and the counter responses of sophisticated combat, corrupt regimes, greed, and powerless people dying of malnutrition and disease, we are overwhelmed by evidence about what peace is not.

The trouble is trying to work out exactly what peace is. It's strangely complicated. Whilst there is no confusion about what peace isn't it seems that shattering stories piled on top of each other for thousands of years makes up the core curriculum of peace studies.

So when we describe peace it seems like we are actually describing its absence. What we seem to be describing and trying to understand is its dark twin, conflict - how to resolve it, how to bring aid, how to rescue its victims and to scrutinise the absence of justice.
When does peace happen? What does it look like? Is it a bit like defining health as the absence of illness?

In John Lennon's immortalized words: "All we are saying is give peace a chance." So to give peace a chance we need to seek answers for questions about which conditions are linked with peace - is it a static state or is it dynamic? And how can we nurture its presence?

In my counseling and mediation practice I see families bent over with the weight of conflict in their lives: Small, ferocious toxic wars, which often damage children in quiet yet powerful ways.

These children repeat the same thing to me, with a poignant mix of common sense and desperation, "I just want them to stop fighting". One little boy told me his biggest worry in the world was that he could not choose a paint colour for his bedroom at Dad's "because Mum loves blue and Dad loves green".

Such is the power of parental conflict to disable an eight-year-old's ability to make normal choices.

Biology and environment weave together and the impact on the developing brain points to scientific evidence of sabotaging healthy child brain development - courting learning difficulties, impaired stress regulation and the squandering of resilience.

An Australian study at La Trobe University in Victoria suggests one in four children caught up in parental acrimony will go on to develop a formal mental health diagnosis (hardly sowing the seeds of peace for future adult lives).

Take three minutes to watch this extraordinary YouTube clip of a six-year-old exhorting her divorced, arguing parents to be peaceful:

When parents are in deep conflict, their children are very likely to become the object of their most intense dispute and the struggle over the most hallowed thing in their lives. The impasse, which creates hostilities, is typically where two people, or nations, or religions, see the same thing as inestimably precious and contested.

Such is the nature of the intractable dispute: India and Pakistan over Kashmir, Israel and Palestinians over their disputed land. The 2015 Global Peace Index shows that the world is becoming increasingly divided with conflict and growing violence.

As overwhelming as it is, most of us still respond to messages of hope for peace. And sometimes, despite the sharp edges of conflict, the blurred form of peace can in fact be made out. Its presence can be felt.

Research on peace has taught us this important fact: The acknowledgment of an adversary's sacred values has a chance of paving a negotiated way through the conflict. Rather than horse trade over money and rights and time, acknowledging the sacred values of the players can have an impact on restoring peace.

So it is in the case of conflict in the family. The love of the same children of the parents in dispute - via careful mediation - can bring real movement towards agreement and conciliation.

Put simply, there is no legal solution that can come anywhere near the impact of one parent recognizing the relationship between the other parent and that child.

If parents can disarm, then they can think more clearly and their children will have a chance to be helped to manage their parents' separation. On the other hand, enduring conflict between their parents will exact its grim toll.

Children will often struggle long after parents have moved on - and will be primed to develop their own conflict-saturated way of dealing with their own adult disputes.

Our screens are full of the absence of peace. It can be overwhelming. And so can the sense of not knowing what can be done. But if we look with interest at how those in our own local space might be supported to tackle some of their conflict, then we can perhaps see a Petri dish of peace studies.

We know it's not possible to banish all conflict from life. But some domestic policies and practice can create an absence of conflict that is attainable - and which specifically involves our children.

A stone tossed into a pond; a ripple that might give peace a chance. As the six-year-old in the video - wise beyond her years - says: "If everyone is a monster then there will be no people left because the monsters will eat them. I want you, Mum and Dad, to be friends."

And as Mother Teresa put it: "If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."