Hope is a driver for global change along with passion and steady work. As this picture of a house far away that looks unreachable but personal patience, a leadership based on tolerance and allowing enough time for negotiation would turn the impossible into reality, those are the conditions for a peacebuilding process.

Strong efforts on Diplomacy have been done from national leaders and international institutions for ending a conflict that last for years. However, a long lasting peace would only come from the will for a change and the capacity for transforming effectively the structures from both societies. Indeed, there are two countries that become enemies and forced so many people to believe that there are “in war” making people feel “warriors” not just “citizens”.

Eritrean and Ethiopian people start now a process of learning of how to live without fighting, how to build without destroying, and how to communicate without aggression. A hard process maybe more challenging that the process of building peace in itself, but essential to re-build their lives towards a common goal on stability and a future resilient short-term projection.

The focus that current leaders are holding must be accompanied but a renewed visions on reshaping there structures and makes it inclusive and stripped from hate and confrontation. This is the real challenge ahead and it supposes a new culture and new approaches that create the roots for innovative codes of living around cooperation and common goals.

The fact that war is not a “political state” but a “cultural state” should not be underestimated. The feeling of being under threat shapes the mind of the people, creating anger, violence and division. Building around new principles of tolerance and solidarity are the real challenge that local leaders should be faced in the coming years. Transforming the feeling of being “at war” into something external that has had only a negative impact on their lives, coming from political leaders and groups that are pushing for diverse interests than the well-being of their citizens.

The same would happen to Israel-Palestine if there were a resolution of the conflict by enough pressure from the international institutions particularly UN. As their internal structures and Education of their people are guiding them towards war and not just a political unresolved situation. Its very important to work with the population, with the extraordinary power of social media to keep alive the idea of peace and to feed them with the message that “war its not part of them” but of groups of interests.

Israel-Palestine conflict is the next stop for international institutions to work on a Global Diplomacy highway and move forward on a high speed towards peace.

National conflicts are also a matter of global peace and the world will not achieve stability and sense of safety if there is still conflicts that last decades and leaders that continue feeding a message of division.

The challenge to end the war Eritrea/Ethiopia is now replaced by a higher and complex goal of changing current cultural codes, relations and institutions, within the support of the international community. The challenge has just started. Real peace in terms of stability may not be settled if there is not a change of each citizen and a coordinated action within the political sector. Like the little house far away in the middle of the woods, almost impossible to reach, that makes us feel disempowered, although it only exposure our own weakness and incapacity for a focused goal on moving beyond constraints.

Peacebuilding…..now, peacekeeping

*https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/eritrea-and-ethiopia-have-made-peace-how-it-happened-and-what-next/

+Finding solutions within the system: adaptive revolution. https://thesustainabilityreader.com/2017/06/07/finding-solutions-within-the-system-adaptive-revolution/

*Advocacy and Diplomacy: two sides of the same coin.https://thesustainabilityreader.com/2018/05/09/advocacy-and-diplomacy-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/

*Change of the system: a cultural matter https://thesustainabilityreader.com/2018/03/07/change-of-the-system-a-cultural-matter/

*Diplomacy as results-driven strategy https://thesustainabilityreader.com/2017/08/30/diplomacy-as-a-results-driven-strategy/