Skip to content

Peace

Making peace

Peace does not come about by itself. It is negotiated, mediated and looked after day by day, by governments as much as by people in their neighbourhood

Key points at a glance

  • Making peace means preventing violence, dealing with conflicts without violence and rebuilding trust and institutions after the fighting.
  • It takes several levels at once: governments, leading figures in society, civil society and every individual in their own surroundings.
  • The peace researcher Dieter Senghaas names six conditions for lasting peace in a society, from the state's monopoly on force to a constructive culture of conflict.
  • After fighting ends, the United Nations has accompanied countries since 2005 with its own Peacebuilding Commission.

In numbers

1980

Make peace without weapons (Frieden schaffen ohne Waffen)

motto of the first Peace Decade

1998

Platform for Civil Conflict Transformation

founded as a network

2017

German government guidelines

preventing crises, resolving conflicts, building peace

The levels of a peace processSource: German Federal Foreign Office, fact sheet on the basics of mediation, 2016

Who acts there

Track 1
political and military leadership of a country
Track 1.5
influential representatives of politics and society
Track 2
religious dignitaries, intellectuals, regional power brokers
Track 3
leading figures in civil society

How talks take place

Track 1
official negotiations
Track 1.5
informal and private, often as preparation
Track 2
dialogue between leading figures in society
Track 3
dialogue and encounters on the ground
Largest donors to the UN Peacebuilding Fund, commitments 2020 to 2026Source: United Nations, Peacebuilding Fund, as of October 1, 2026, in million US dollars
  • Germany237 m
  • Netherlands171 m
  • Sweden118 m
  • Canada87 m
  • Norway72 m
  • Denmark62 m
Basic idea
civil conflict transformation on the ground
Political framework
German government guidelines of 2017
Slogan
Make peace without weapons (Frieden schaffen ohne Waffen), from 1980
Levels
personal, social, national, international

How can you make peace?

Peace comes about on several levels at once. Between states it is made through diplomacy, treaties and mediation, within societies through institutions that people trust, and on a small scale through people who settle disputes other than with violence.

Peace research speaks of civil conflict transformation. This means work that takes place first and foremost at the grassroots of a society: people analyse conflicts, bring the parties together, develop non-violent solutions and prevent violence.

None of these levels is enough on its own. A peace treaty holds less well if the people who are meant to carry it go on mistrusting one another, and good relations on the ground offer little protection if states are shooting at each other.

Where does the slogan Make peace without weapons come from?

The slogan Make peace without weapons (Frieden schaffen ohne Waffen) became the motto of the first Peace Decade (Friedensdekade) of the Protestant churches in the GDR, which took place from 9 to 19 November 1980. From then on the Federation of Protestant Churches organised the Peace Decade every November, with services and events.

On 25 January 1982 Robert Havemann and Rainer Eppelmann took up the words in the Berlin Appeal, which bore the title Make peace without weapons. The slogan also became well known in the West German peace movement of the 1980s.

The slogan is still argued about today. Some see it as a goal against which politics must be measured, others consider it incompatible with the duty to defend oneself. This page describes its origin and takes no position in this dispute.

What is civil conflict transformation?

Civil conflict transformation covers all ways of dealing with conflicts without violence. These include dialogue programmes between hostile groups, mediation in local disputes, accompanying people who are under threat, peace education and coming to terms with past violence.

In Germany the Platform for Civil Conflict Transformation (Plattform Zivile Konfliktbearbeitung) has connected the organisations working in this field since 1998. Since 1999 the Civil Peace Service (Ziviler Friedensdienst) has sent out experts who work with local partners on such projects.

What is special about this approach is that the solution does not come from outside. Experts and mediators help the parties themselves to find a solution, which they then also carry.

What does the German government do?

In 2017, under the lead of the Federal Foreign Office, the German government published the guidelines Preventing Crises, Resolving Conflicts, Building Peace. They replace the 2004 Action Plan on Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Resolution and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding.

The guidelines renew the commitment to an overall political approach with which Germany wants to shape peace. Their title names the three tasks: preventing crises before they turn violent, resolving conflicts when they arise, and building peace when the violence ends.

How well this succeeds is debated in research. When the guidelines were published, the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) wrote that there was a lot to do. As with any plan, what counts for the guidelines is what follows from them in practice.

What can you yourself do for peace?

Making peace begins in your own surroundings. A method such as Nonviolent Communication helps you raise conflicts without attacking the other person. Mediation helps when two sides can no longer get any further on their own.

If you want to do more, you can volunteer: as a peer mediator at a school, in an encounter project, in a peace initiative or in work with refugees. Many of the organisations listed on the page about peace organisations are looking for support.

On W3ltfrieden you can start a peace mission or support an existing one. No bot decides for you: the Peace Mission Bot asks you five questions and makes suggestions, and you make the decision.

What conditions does lasting peace need?

The Bremen peace researcher Dieter Senghaas spent many years studying how peace between Western societies developed historically. From his findings he built a model known as the civilizational hexagon, a six-sided figure. It describes six building blocks of a stable, peaceful society.

The six building blocks are: the monopoly on force lies with the state, not with tribal leaders or warlords. State action is bound by law. People depend on one another and are able to control spontaneous emotional impulses. They can have a say in politics and society. There is social justice. And the community rests on a culture of dealing with conflict constructively.

Senghaas warns against reducing the model to individual values. The building blocks belong together: a monopoly on force that is not bound by law does not protect people from the state itself, and participation loses trust when many feel treated unfairly. According to the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, the hexagon is gaining importance in civic education in particular, and many school textbooks for social studies and ethics use it.

Who mediates between the parties to a conflict?

According to an overview by the German Federal Foreign Office, peace processes take place on different levels of society, known in the field as tracks. Track 1 is the political and military leadership of a country. Track 2 consists of leading figures in society such as religious dignitaries, intellectuals or regional power brokers, and Track 3 mainly of people who hold responsibility in civil society.

In practice an intermediate level has proven useful, Track 1.5. Here influential representatives of political and social institutions meet informally and away from the public. Such talks often prepare official negotiations, work out options and help the parties to the conflict understand each other better.

Outsiders who help can take very different roles: offering good offices, meaning a venue and contacts, shuttling between the sides, facilitating dialogue or mediating in the narrower sense. Since March 2015 the Federal Foreign Office has bundled this work in a directorate for crisis prevention, stabilisation and post-conflict reconstruction. In its view, a sustainable peace process needs all levels to work together.

What happens when the fighting ends?

A ceasefire ends the fighting, but not yet its causes. The period that follows is called peacebuilding in the field. It means rebuilding institutions that people trust, helping former fighters return to civilian life and coming to terms with what happened.

For this purpose the United Nations created its own Peacebuilding Commission on December 20, 2005, through resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council. Its mandate is to bring all relevant actors together, propose strategies for recovery after conflict and make sure that international attention lasts longer than the headlines.

In addition, a UN office manages the Peacebuilding Fund on behalf of the Secretary-General. It finances joint projects of the UN with governments, administrations and civil society organisations. According to the UN, Germany made the largest commitments of all donors from 2020 to 2026, around 237 million US dollars.

Civil Peace Service on civil conflict transformation, translated

Here people analyse conflicts, bring the parties together, develop non-violent solutions and prevent violence.

Sources

What is peace?

Four levels of peace

  1. PersonalRaising a dispute without attacking, for example with Nonviolent Communication or mediation.
  2. CommunitySchools, clubs and neighbourhoods in which conflicts have a procedure, for example through peer mediation.
  3. SocietyInstitutions that people trust, and civil conflict transformation between groups.
  4. InternationalDiplomacy, treaties, mediation and programmes such as the Civil Peace Service.

Common questions answered briefly

Is Make peace without weapons in the Bible?

Not word for word. The slogan became known in 1980 as the motto of the first Peace Decade in the GDR. It does draw on biblical images, above all the prophets Isaiah and Micah, in whose words weapons are reforged into tools for farming.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says according to Matthew 5:9: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” This means people who actively make peace, not only those who keep it. The German Hoffnung für alle translation therefore speaks of those who make peace.

What does Swords into plowshares mean?

The image comes from the Bible. In the King James Version the prophet Micah says: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks.” A passage in Isaiah reads almost the same. It describes a time when nobody needs weapons anymore and they are reforged into tools for farming.

On December 4, 1959, the Soviet Union gave the United Nations a bronze sculpture by Evgeniy Vuchetich showing a man hammering a sword into a plowshare. It stands at UN Headquarters in New York. How the motif became a symbol of the churches in the GDR is described on the page about the peace movement.

What does the United Nations do for peace?

The United Nations works in several ways. The Security Council can mandate peacekeeping operations in which soldiers, police and civilian experts from many countries monitor ceasefires or protect the population. In May 2026, according to the UN, eleven such operations were running, including in Cyprus, Lebanon and South Sudan.

In addition there are envoys who mediate between parties to a conflict, and the Peacebuilding Commission, which accompanies countries after the fighting has ended.

What role does law play for peace?

A large one. In Dieter Senghaas's model, binding state action to law is one of the six building blocks of lasting peace. Where courts decide independently, people do not have to enforce their rights themselves.

Between states, treaties and international law take on this task. They do not replace the will of those involved to keep the peace, but they give it a reliable framework that the weaker side can also invoke.

More on peace

From the idea to a mission of your own

Peace comes about where people shape it: in a neighbourhood, a school, a club. On W3ltfrieden you will find peace missions that you can start or support.

Find your peace mission