Reading time: about 10 minutes · Soft Sunday – In Love
It’s easy to think that the world is only getting darker. The news feed is built to capture our attention, and nothing captures attention like danger. But if we look beyond the headlines and take a longer perspective, a different picture emerges: a world that – despite everything, despite setbacks, despite wars that are still going on – is slowly moving toward more peace, more cooperation, and more humanity than ever before in human history.
This article is about just that. About why peace is so much more than the absence of war. About the people who have dedicated their lives to the cause of peace. About the Nobel Peace Prize and why it still matters. And above all: about why peace is not something that is only created in negotiation rooms in Geneva or Oslo, but something that starts at your own kitchen table, in your choices, in your diet, in your travels and in how you meet the people around you.
Love over fear. That's where it all begins.
Why peace is more important than we think
Peace is not just no guns. Researchers distinguish between negative peace – the absence of violence – and positive peace: the presence of justice, trust, functioning institutions and relationships where people can flourish. It is the positive peace that builds societies.
When there is peace, something almost magical happens. Children go to school instead of fleeing. Fields are cultivated instead of being mined. Trade, culture, research and friendship flow across borders. Economists have calculated that violence and conflict cost the world thousands of billions of dollars every year – resources that in peacetime could go to healthcare, education, clean energy and all the things that make life richer.
But peace is also something internal. Those who carry worry, bitterness or fear have difficulty creating peace around them. Those who cultivate inner peace, forgiveness and gratitude spread it further – to their family, workplace, society and, by extension, the world. The two are connected. World peace is the sum of the inner states and daily choices of billions of people.
It's actually going in the right direction.
Here's what rarely makes headlines: over centuries and decades, humanity has become dramatically more peaceful.
Violence has decreased historically. Researchers like Steven Pinker have shown that the risk of dying a violent death is lower today than at almost any other time in history. Medieval Europe had murder rates tens of times higher than today. Wars between great powers—which characterized almost every generation for centuries—have not been fought directly between nuclear powers since 1945.
Nuclear weapons have become fewer. At the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, there were over 60,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Today, the number is down to about one-sixth of that, thanks to disarmament agreements like START and a global shift in norms. There is a long way to go, but the direction is clear.
Peace agreements work – more often than we think. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 ended decades of bloody violence in Northern Ireland; today a generation is growing up in Belfast that never experienced ”the Troubles”. The peace agreement in Colombia in 2016 ended the world’s longest-running civil war at the time, and President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for it. Ethiopia and Eritrea made peace in 2018 after twenty years of frozen war – families separated for decades could suddenly call each other again. And as recently as June 2026, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the US and Iran in Switzerland, with a ceasefire and opening up trade routes – fragile, yes, but another example of how even the most difficult conflicts eventually find their way to the negotiating table rather than the battlefield.
Europe itself is a peace project. It’s easy to forget, but the EU was born from the ruins of two world wars with a single purpose: to make war between France and Germany ”not just unthinkable but materially impossible.” It succeeded so well that the EU received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. Countries that have been at war with each other for a thousand years now share a currency, borders, and students.
Democracy and cooperation have spread. A hundred years ago, democracies were a handful. Today, nearly half the world's population lives in some form of democracy, and democracies almost never go to war with each other. The United Nations, for all its flaws, has given the world a place where 193 countries talk instead of shoot—and peacekeeping forces have helped dozens of conflicts cool down.
Setbacks exist, absolutely. Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan remind us that peace is never a given. But the setbacks are deviations from a trend – not the trend itself. It is worth holding on to.
The peacemakers – the people who showed the way
Behind every step towards peace are flesh and blood people who refused to accept that violence was inevitable. Here are some of them who changed the world:
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) showed that an empire could be defeated without a single gun. His satyagraha – ”the power of truth” – was based on non-violence, civil disobedience and an unwavering faith in the humanity of the adversary. The Salt March of 1930, in which he walked 380 miles to defy the British salt tax, became a symbol that inspired freedom movements around the world. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times but never received it – something the Nobel Committee later openly regretted.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) brought Gandhian methods to the United States and led the civil rights movement with the dream of a society where people were judged by their character, not the color of their skin. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the youngest recipient to that time. His message – that darkness can never drive out darkness, only light can do that – is perhaps more relevant than ever.
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) spent 27 years in prison and came out without bitterness. Instead of revenge, he chose reconciliation, and together with FW de Klerk he dismantled apartheid without the civil war the whole world feared. They shared the 1993 Peace Prize. Mandela embodied the Ubuntu philosophy: I am, because we are – the idea that my humanity is intertwined with yours. Fellow human being, not anti-human.
Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961), the Swede who became UN Secretary-General and died in office during peacekeeping in Congo. He received the Peace Prize posthumously in 1961 – the only time this has happened. His diary Road signs shows a man for whom external peace work and internal spiritual search were the same journey. ”The longest journey is the journey inward,” he wrote.
Alva Myrdal (1902–1986), another Swede, devoted decades to disarmament negotiations and received the Peace Prize in 1982 for her tireless work against nuclear weapons. She showed that stubbornness at the negotiating table can be as courageous as anything else.
Mother Teresa (1910–1997) received the award in 1979 for his work among Calcutta's poorest, with the words that peace begins with a smile.
Desmond Tutu (1931–2021) led South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and taught the world that reconciliation requires truth, not forgetting.
Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) In 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the prize – for tree planting, because she understood that the environment, poverty and peace are linked.
Leymah Gbowee organized Liberian women – Christians and Muslims together – who used peaceful sit-ins to force an end to a civil war, and received the prize in 2011.
Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban for wanting to go to school – and responded by becoming the world’s leading voice for girls’ education. At the age of 17, she became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate in history in 2014. Her words are: one child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.
And the list continues to grow.
In 2024 the prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese atomic bomb survivors who for almost 80 years have testified to why nuclear weapons must never be used again.
In 2025, it was awarded to the Venezuelan democracy fighter Maria Corina Machado.
The torch of peace continues to travel, generation after generation.
The Nobel Peace Prize – the Dynamite King's Gift to Peace
The irony is well known: Alfred Nobel, the man who invented dynamite and built a fortune on explosives, bequeathed his wealth to prizes that would celebrate the best of humanity. The Peace Prize – the only one of the prizes awarded in Oslo, not Stockholm – has been awarded since 1901 to the person who ”has done the most or best work for the fraternity of nations.”.
Legend has it that Nobel was shaken when a French newspaper accidentally published his obituary prematurely, with the headline ”The merchant of death is dead.” He saw how posterity would remember him – and chose to write about his legacy. True or not: the story carries a beautiful truth. It is never too late to change direction. Not for a person, not for a world.
Over the years, the award has gone to the Red Cross (three times), the UN refugee agency, Doctors Without Borders, the campaign against landmines, ICAN’s work against nuclear weapons – and to individual brave people. Every December, the ceremony in Oslo reminds us that the world actually chooses to celebrate peacemakers, not warriors. It says something about who we want to be.
Peace starts with you – in small and big ways
And then the most important thing. It's easy to feel powerless in the face of world politics. But peace isn't just built from above – it's built from below, by billions of small choices. Here are some of them:
Start inside. Gandhi is said to have said that we must be the change we want to see in the world. Inner peace – through stillness, nature, meditation, gratitude, a morning with a cup of coffee in silence – is not an escape from the world. It is the basis for being able to face it with love instead of fear. A person in inner balance does not start arguments, does not spread hatred, does not escalate conflicts.
Your words. Every day we choose between words that build bridges and words that build walls. In the comments section, at the dinner table, in the traffic jam. To listen fully, to ask questions instead of judging, to apologize first – that is peacemaking in miniature. Forgiveness is perhaps the most radical peace tool we possess, and it costs nothing but pride.
Your choices in democracy. Vote. Always. Democracies do not war against each other, and every vote for dialogue, cooperation and openness is a vote for peace. Get involved locally – in the association, the school, the village council. Peace in the big picture starts with functioning communities in the small.
Your diet. What we put on our plates is one of our most powerful daily choices. A more plant-based diet reduces the pressure on the Earth’s resources – land, water, climate – and resource scarcity is one of the most common causes of conflict. Climate scientists warn that drought and crop failures are driving future wars; every meal grown instead of requiring huge areas of fodder is a small contribution to a more peaceful planet. What’s more: cooking together, inviting someone to your table, is ancient peace diplomacy. Few things unite people like a shared meal.
Your travels. To travel with open eyes is to disarm one's prejudices. Anyone who has sat at a kitchen table in another country, shared bread with strangers and discovered that people everywhere want the same thing – security for their children, meaning in everyday life, someone to love – can never again see ”the others” as enemies. Tourism, exchange studies, twin cities, even language apps: every genuine encounter across a border is a thread in the fabric of peace. Travel slowly, travel curiously, travel with respect.
Your consumption. Money is a ballot. Choosing fair conditions, local craftsmanship, sustainable materials and companies that treat people well is voting for the world we want. To mend, re-sew, care for and reuse instead of throwing away is also a kind of peace work – a no to the race for the earth's resources.
Your creation. Creativity is peace's opposite of destruction. Every time we create something – a garden, a garment, a text, a meal, a song – we exercise the same muscles that peace needs: patience, care, the ability to see something grow. The joy of creation is truly a force for peace.
Your presence. Finally, the easiest and hardest thing: to really see the people around you. The neighbor. The cashier. The newcomer. Ubuntu again: I am, because we are.Every time we choose to see a fellow human being instead of an enemy, we plant peace.
There is hope – and you are.
History shows that peace never came by itself. It has always been brought about by people who refused to give up: a lawyer on a train in South Africa, a pastor in Montgomery, a prisoner on Robben Island, a girl in the Swat Valley, women in white on a soccer field in Monrovia. None of them knew they would succeed. They started anyway.
The world is not finished. But it is moving – slowly, in flux, with setbacks and breakthroughs – towards something better. Fewer people die in war today than in almost all of human history. More children are in school, more countries are talking to each other, more people than ever are convinced that conflicts should be resolved with words.
And that movement consists of us. Of every breakfast we share, every forgiveness we give, every vote we cast, every journey we take with an open heart, every seed we sow in the garden and in each other.
Peace is not a distant dream that others will negotiate for us. Peace is a habit. A daily practice. A choice we make over and over again, in small and big ways.
Start today. Start small. Start with you.
Create Love.