A World Still Waiting for Peace
On this International Day of Peace, the United Nations will once again call for a silencing of guns. But the truth is that silence is not enough. Peace is not the absence of sound, nor the mere cessation of war. Peace is the presence of justice, the honoring of dignity, the protection of life. And today, in 2025, too many corners of our shared Earth still burn.
The United Nations and the Daily Work of Peace
Every day, far from headlines, the United Nations deploys peacekeepers to buffer fragile ceasefires, negotiators to hold open a door between warring factions, and humanitarian staff to deliver food and medicine into impossible places.
In South Sudan, where climate change has deepened droughts and swollen rivers, UN agencies scramble to feed children while communities displaced by war fight over land that no longer yields enough food.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where armed groups terrorize civilians and the earth itself is mined to exhaustion, the UN struggles to mediate between a resource curse and a humanitarian catastrophe.
It is slow, imperfect, and often deeply frustrating work. But it is the kind of work without which whole regions would collapse into deeper cycles of violence. Peace is not built in grand declarations, but in daily, grinding acts of service and solidarity.
Peacekeeping in Action
South Sudan (UNMISS)
Nearly 17,000 peacekeepers and staff work to protect civilians and support fragile governance.
Humanitarian corridors established to reach more than 2 million internally displaced people.
Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO)
One of the UN’s largest missions, with more than 12,000 personnel.
Protection efforts have reduced civilian casualties in several provinces, even as conflict continues.
Lebanon (UNIFIL)
Over 10,000 troops patrolling the Blue Line, preventing skirmishes from escalating into war.
Mediation between Israel and Lebanon has helped maintain a tense but durable stability.
Gaza & Palestine (UNRWA / OCHA / WHO)
UNRWA provides schooling, food aid, and healthcare for 5.9 million registered Palestinian refugees, including in Gaza.
Despite repeated bombings of its facilities, the UN continues to deliver emergency relief to civilians trapped under siege.
UN Secretary-General and Human Rights Council have repeatedly called for ceasefires and investigations into war crimes.
The Genocides We Cannot Ignore
And yet, for all the tireless efforts, we live in an age of genocides that continue with impunity.
In Gaza, the relentless bombing of civilian neighborhoods, the starvation of entire populations, and the erasure of generations threatens the very existence of a people.
In Sudan, entire villages are burned, women and children slaughtered, and hundreds of thousands displaced by militias waging war on ethnic lines. In South Sudan and Congo, decades of conflict—exacerbated by climate shocks—have already killed millions.
We cannot pretend these are accidents of history or inevitable outcomes of ancient grudges. They are choices—choices to arm militias, to block aid, to look away when bombs fall on hospitals. They are human-made catastrophes, and they can be unmade by human courage.
We’ve seen this before. Hurricane Katrina taught us that human failure magnifies disaster far more than nature does. A storm surge broke levees, but political negligence drowned New Orleans.
Likewise, in Gaza, in Sudan, in Congo, it is not only the chaos of war but the abdication of international will that makes the killing fields possible. The UN can do only so much when member states block resolutions, when powerful nations choose weapons over words.
The same is true of the climate crisis. Twenty years after Katrina, we are still failing to heed its lessons.
Communities of color and low-income neighborhoods—whether in Louisiana, or in the shadow of AI-powered data centers burning fossil fuels—bear the heaviest costs.
Peace is impossible on a planet where floods wash away homelands and fires consume livelihoods.
Peace as Justice
The United Nations’ call for peace this September is not a whisper into the void — it is a challenge to us.
Peace is not merely the absence of fighting; it is the presence of justice.
It means dismantling systems that profit from endless wars. It means recognizing that gerrymandered democracies and silenced journalists are also symptoms of violence, even if they wear suits instead of uniforms. It means confronting the fact that silence in the face of genocide is complicity.
Peace, in other words, demands action.
Action to end the sieges, to deliver aid, to hold perpetrators accountable. Action to stop the bulldozing of science, the shutting down of satellites that track our climate, the erasure of truth-tellers who risk everything to keep data alive. Action to repair — not just weapons and walls-- but trust.
Imagine if the trillions we spend on war were spent instead on rebuilding New Orleans, on protecting Louisiana’s vanishing tribal lands, on renewable energy, on schools and hospitals, on satellites that monitor not just the weapons of war but the gases that heat our atmosphere. Imagine if we measured security not in tanks, but in the survival of a child through the night without hunger or fear.
On this International Day of Peace, we must do more than imagine. We must demand it. The genocides in Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, and Congo must end — not someday, not when the world is “ready,” but now.
We have no peace without justice.
And without justice, silence is just another form of violence.
Author Disclosure: I currently serve as the Climate and Ocean Science advisor to Project Zero, a UN-backed NGO focused on funding projects that restore and protect coral reefs.
Grateful for this today.