G-Lab-2b – Articles and Perspectives

Article written by Ipinoluwa Oluwafowokanmi  “Peace education is not abstract, it is transformational.”  I realized this fact the day we went to a school for our Non-violence Education Campaign. A group of teenagers in the classroom in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria responded to the peace education campaign not with jesting or uninterested attitudes, but with reflection on past behaviours. The…

“Borders, I've never seen them, but I've heard they exist in some people's minds.” This phrase appears around a photograph of my 6-year-old daughter Alba, with her hands open, standing in front of the remains of the Berlin Wall, hanging in my office. It is a simple image, taken on a magical night in Berlin, but one that is full…

Many voices rightly insist on the importance of teaching people to distinguish between reliable sources, recognize the falsity of certain news items, and understand how the media works. And yes, all of that is important. But it is also insufficient. The reality is that, in an environment saturated with misinformation, conspiracy theories, and digitized opinion bubbles, this response seems sensible.…

When we walk through the streets of our cities and towns today, we are sometimes overcome by a feeling, a silent question, sometimes a little bit resigned: Is it still possible to change anything? Can we, as a society, truly transform ourselves, or are we now just "players"  in a system that perpetuates itself? The idea that society can be…

In our series of dialogues "Thinking without Banisters", we take a human and emotional perspective on the multiple crises that mark our present: from rapid ecological deterioration and growing social fragmentation to complex phenomena such as media manipulation and political polarization. We often perceive these circumstances as overwhelming, generating a widespread feeling of powerlessness in the face of a reality…

Change is like the wind, it is not always directly visible, we cannot touch it or hold it in our hands. But we feel it. We hear it. We sense it through its effects and results. Sometimes our university classes, we begin asking our students: How do you perceive change in life? Someone always responds with a simple image: “Like…

Translated from the spanish original written by Leonard Glab Frontera We don't talk enough about peace. Peace is not something that can be achieved or win. It is something that we simply must not lose. Perhaps because we believe it is guaranteed, or because it is invisible. Unfortunately, war has images, noises, screams, numbers, uniforms, heroes and graves. Peace, on…

A clear trend that can currently be observed in Western politics (and the traditional media): real peace cannot be achieved as long as there is a demand for the other party to first accept one's own values and moral principles. So why is it so difficult to openly promote peace today? Or more precisely: why, even though there is constant…

This first phase of the ECOOPx research has been an intense and sometimes as well chaotic, but as well a deeply rewarding process. It started with a simple and powerful question: "How can cooperation emerge in an intercultural crisis and conflict environment?" Now, as we reach the conclusion of phase 1 in our research journey, I want to take a…

Crises, as we usually understand them, are not only objective facts; they are also constructions of different perceptions. For example: Five percent inflation can be interpreted as an economic crisis or as part of a normal economic cycle. A wave of migration can be perceived as a humanitarian challenge or as an uncontrollable threat. So who determines what constitutes a…