The Urgent Need for a Department of Peace

Domestic Violence

• In the U.S., youth homicide rates are more than 10 times that of other leading industrialized nations, on par with the rates in developing countries and those experiencing rapid social and economic changes.¹

• In 2004, more than 750,000 young people ages 10 to 24 were treated in emergency departments for injuries sustained due to violence.²

• Persons under the age of 25 accounted for nearly 50 percent of those arrested for murder and 62 percent of those arrested for robbery in 2005.³

• A violent crime occurs every 23.1 seconds in the United States.⁴

• A recent World Health Organization report estimated the cost of interpersonal violence in the U.S. at $300 billion a year, excluding all war related costs. That means we spend billions of dollars simply reacting to violence.

From violence in our homes, to shooting and bullying in our schools, and violence in our communities is clear that violence in America has reached an epidemic proportion, and the current structures in place are not sufficient to meet the needs of our communities for safety, security, and peace.  Many solutions are already working at a smaller scale in cities and states throughout the country.

Current successful programs offer practical ways of improving community/police relations, rehabilitating prisoners, reducing recidivism rates, preventing domestic violence, providing cultural competency education, teaching nonviolent conflict resolution, and preventing school violence. All provide a valuable pool of tried and true methodologies. However, these programs operate on shoe-string budgets and often do not recieve the support necessary to do the important work they are doing to build peace in our communities.

International violence

• Over 4,000 American troops killed in the Iraq War and over 85,000 Iraqi civilians⁵

• The estimated loss of human life in World War Two was over 72 million people, with the United States reaching a death toll of over 400,000.⁶

• In Iraq, we knew how to destroy militarily the structures we opposed, however we did not know how to proactively create harmonious civil society in the aftermath of shock and awe. We have been tragically lacking in war-to-peace transition planning and expertise

• The fiscal year 2006 budget request allocates seven times as many resources for military forces as for all nonmilitary security tools including nonproliferation, diplomacy, economic development, as well as homeland security, put together.⁷

Addressing Causal Issues

• Current policy-making tends toward reactive, not proactive approaches to violence reduction

• Traditional political problem-solving focuses primarily on addressing symptoms of violence, such as imprisonment of offenders and engagement in armed conflict

• Suppression of symptoms should be augmented by stronger preventative measures and treatment of the root causes of violence

• The United States should be as effective in addressing the sources of violence as we are effective in addressing its symptoms

Overview of the Department of Peace

A Department of Peace will:

• Proactively develop policies, strategies and recommendations for expanding our capacity for nonviolent conflict resolution and for addressing the root causes to violence, both internationally and domestically

• Promote, fund and expand programs proven effective at reducing and preventing violence

• Strategically coordinate existing efforts within the federal government relating to conflict resolution

• Through the Secretary of Peace, provide a voice at the cabinet-level for nonviolent approaches to both domestic and international crises and conflicts

• Support our military with new peacebuilding capabilities desperately needed in the war on terror
  
  
• Establish a U.S. Peace Academy, on par with the U.S. military service academies, to train military and civilian peacekeepers, and ensure the development and application of expert nonviolent resources in conflict resolution
  
  

We Need a Department of Peace…

• To reduce domestic and international violence

• To gather and coordinate information and recommendations from America’s peace community

• To teach violence prevention and mediation to America’s school children

• To effectively treat and dismantle gang psychology

• To rehabilitate the prison population

• To build peace-making efforts among conflicting cultures both here and abroad

• To support our military with complementary approaches to ending violence

Proposed Federal Legislation to Establish a U.S. Department of Peace

The Benefits: International

• Advise the President, the Secretaries of Defense and State, and others on root causes of violence, plus practical ways to dismantle violence while still in a formative phase

• Support the military by:
  
  
  • Providing cultural, ethnic and psychologically insightful information, education and technology
  • Offering practical skills (conflict resolution techniques, and the like) for the amelioration of violence among adversarial factions
  • Administer the training and support of civilian peacekeepers to participate in multinational nonviolent peace forces
    

The Benefits: Domestic

• Develop field-tested educational programs promoting conflict-resolution and peer mediation among school-age children

• Provide violence-prevention programs addressing domestic violence, gang violence, drug and alcohol-related violence, and the like

• Provide much-needed assistance for the efforts of city, county, and state governments in coordinating existing programs in their own communities, as well as programs newly developed and provided by the Dept. of Peace

• Provide the President with statistically-verified recommendations on how a specific policy either increases or diminishes the prospect of domestic and international peace

• Provide the President with recommendations regarding the social and financial impact of domestic and international policies

• The Department of Peace will create and administer a U.S. Peace Academy, acting as a sister organization to the U.S. Military Academy

• The Academy will research and teach the most cutting-edge techniques for the amelioration of violence among domestic and international populations

• The Peace Academy will join the Military Academy in providing assistance to the military in international conflict-resolution

• The Peace Academy faculty will be derived from well-established practitioners known for best practices in the field of conflict reduction and resolution