In society, the global culture most often mentions of war and not peace. Throughout books, entertainment, or video games, people usually learn of violent acts rather than peace maintaining. Building peace is hard to achieve due to the deep roots of how violence occurs. Besides the physical appearance of a direct violence, there are underlying causes such as structural violence that are driven by cultural violence. According to the Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice in the 21st Century, the conditions for peace are:
- Citizens of the world understanding global problems
- If all the citizens can deeply understand global issues, they would most likely know the consequences and the severity of the issues at hand. By knowing the reasons and causes of the issues, people would most likely be motivated to maintain peace.
- Having the skills to resolve conflicts non-violently
- By solving an issue, there should not be any non violent acts. By having violence involved, it would defeat the purpose of maintaining peace and increases the hostility of the opponents.
- Knowing and living by international standards of human rights, gender and racial equality.
- One of the types of violence mentioned is structural and cultural violence. Racism is a structural violence that is caused by a cultural belief of believing that inequality is something that is natural or even desirable, along with the attitude of believing in superiority and inferiority. By having such tensions, it would be harder to have peace, which is why why this is a condition needed.
- Appreciating cultural diversity
- If on does not appreciate religious diversity, then cultural tensions between tribes or groups may happen more often.
- Respecting the integrity of the Earth
- Environmental issues should be taken more care for, otherwise future disputes over solving environmental problems would be harder to solve.
- Creating a stable economic conditions
- Quite often, money is the reason why violence occurs. For example, due to the Treaty of Versaille asking for Germany to repay after WWI, it drove the country into deep debt and broke. The poor economic condition caused Germany to be more radical and extreme, creating a less peaceful environment, and led to a chain of events that caused WWII. Because of people's priority over the economy, countries prioritize their own economy, rather than solving external affairs or risk its own money over internal issues.