If you like to be informed of what's happening minute by minute you have to get on twitter, and be careful. To get it, in fact, you have to be within it, or have an account, to participate, to write, to read, to reply to comments, follow others, to...

In a country like Colombia, good news is often overlooked because the bleak news overwhelms the mass media. It is however one of the countries with the largest number of peace initiatives in the world according to Bruno Moro, UN coordinator in Colombia....

The events that have been taking place in North Africa since December have had a huge impact, not only on the populations within the affected countries, but also in the western world, with its relatively settled democratic systems. I am very aware...

We often complain about how the government exists on another plane of reality, and as a product of this fiction the laws they create do not help to ensure its citizens’ wellbeing. However, and this must be emphasized- sometimes they surprise...

In June 2010 the British Prime Minister, David Cameron admitted that the massacre known as Bloody Sunday which took place on 30th January 1972 in Northern Ireland "was neither justified nor justifiable" and declared that he was "deeply...

Serbian president Boris Tadic said sorry for the massacre committed in the city of Vokovar in which 200 Croat civilians and prisoners died at the hands of the Serbian army. Alongside the Croat president, Ivo Josipovic, Tadic laid the wreath on the...

It is part of the human condition to be limited, we are limited by our origin, because we begin to exist at a given moment, and are not in fact necessary, we could have not existed, as point IV of the Letter of Peace points out, had history been any...

Several weeks ago, the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia published an interview with Enrique Vila Torres containing the following sentence: "I am a bastard, I assure you that my luck is immense." It is difficult to deny that at the very least...

The Prime Minister of Japan, Naoto Kan, apologized for the great damage and suffering caused by his country during the Japanese military expansion in the Second World War. "We feel a deep remorse," Kan said in a speech to 6,000 people at...

The drama of the displaced people in Columbia

When people think of Columbia, they tend to think of violence, war, drug trafficking, guerrilla groups, illegal armed forces, pain and death. But behind all this there is a story that...

In recent months we have witnessed different governments asking for forgiveness.

Last March Mauricio Funes, the highest representative of El Salvador apologised for the assassination of the Archbishop of El Salvador Mons. Oscar Romero...

Over the past few months the film City of Life and Death has been showing at cinemas in Barcelona. The film recounts the cruel invasion of the Chinese capital, Nanjing, by Japan in 1937. The film exposes the conditions that Japanese troops subjected...

Since November 2006 personnel from the 5th division of the Chilean Army have been deactivating antipersonnel mines and landmines found in different areas of Tierra del Fuego as a consequence of the conflict that took place between Argentina and Chile...

This year football fans will once again have the opportunity to follow the progress of the World Cup. In this championship 32 teams from the world’s five continents come together for a month to play against each other in matches that are eagerly...

It appears to be very difficult to bring about reconciliation in the Balkans; however, in the past few days some progress has been made. A part of this progress is a document approved by the Serbian parliament at the end of March to condemn the Srebrenica...

The beginning of the 1980’s marked the start of a civil war in El Salvador that would go on until 1992, when a peace treaty was signed between the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN) and the Republican Government of El...

When he was released from prison on 11th February 1991, after being incarcerated for nearly 30 years for political reasons, Nelson Mandela repeated the famous statement he first made at his trial in 1964: " I have fought against white domination,...

On August 20th, The Republic of Costa Rica congress passed a law to permit the Justice Ministry to be renamed the Ministry of Justice and Peace. This reform was ratified by Oscar Arias Sánchez, who has been twice elected president of this country. ...

Whilst I was writing this edition of Focus, the magnificent symphonic and choral setting of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Happiness by Ludwig van Beethoven happened to be playing on the radio. “The German language...

On September 8th, UNESCO declared Ecuador to be free from illiteracy, given that approximately 96 out of 100 Ecuadorians can read and write. This massive shift forwards in education has been taken in under seven years, as a result of an initiative...

“They say Burundi is the heart of Africa, but it’s not easy to find it on a map. Of all the 63 states that make up the diverse mosaic of the African continent, Burundi is one of the smallest. It has been classed as one of the world’s...

From the very beginning of their existence as a species, human beings have needed to group together. First subsistence and parenthood made togetherness necessary, and subsequently there have been a variety of social reasons....

In 2007, in Bali, the international community promised to initiate negotiations on meaningful actions against climate change. The process is set to culminate in an ambitious plan at the end of 2009 and the Copenhagen conference is the starting...

When we take a close look at the Israel/ Palestine conflict we feel almost impotent as we are faced with so many years of war and suffering. We can see how a cycle of violence has emerged that produces nothing more than...

All actions that aim to improve people’s quality of life are commendable. A whole range of needs must be met in order to make someone who has recently arrived in a new country feel welcome: health, education, work,...

The roots of this act lie in a procession that was held in 2002 to mark the finale of the interreligious gathering “Oceans of Peace”, which was promoted by the Lisbon and San Egidio local authorities and the...

Many may see feudalism as a thing of the past: a government model that was typical in the middle ages but nonexistent in the modern world. However, until recently there was a feudal governmental regime within the borders...

Bhutan is a very small country located in southern Asia, in the western part of the Himalayan mountain range in between India and China (the Tibetan region), and, according to www.losviajeros.com,...

One of the most commonly experienced and most difficult negative emotions to overcome is resentment. Those who have harmed us in the past still owe us something even if a long time has gone by since then. It doesn’t...

“It is so wonderful to see different kinds of people and organizations fighting for peace, building peace, repeating over and over again that peace is possible”.
Monsignor Jaime...

In an ever more globalized world, societies face new challenges, like how different cultures can live together, social cohesion and coexistence, solidarity, etc. In Spain you can feel the challenge of intercultural existence...

If we take a look at the development of history over the centuries, we realize that religions, different beliefs and the imposition of certain ideologies, etc. have repeatedly been the source of conflict in different societies....

In rich countries we are used to hearing that water is a limited resource that must not be wasted. For some years now the water crisis has helped us think about how we use it. However, even when it doesn’t rain for...

A few days ago the ex-president of the Generalitat (the Catalan Government), Jordi Pujol, spoke out in recognition of the past responsibility for damages caused in Catalonia during the civil war, because “the Republic...

In the first speech given by a foreign head of state before the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), on the 18th March, the German chancellor Angela Merkel said thank you in Hebrew for this honour.

She then added, in German, that she was grateful...

A decade has had to pass for Northern Ireland to obtain the level of stability necessary for the joint protestant and catholic government to be able to glimpse the “end” that Tony Blair was referring to for...

On February 12th, the newly elected prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, stood before the public and said sorry in the name of the Australian government to the country’s aborigines “for the misdeeds done to them in the past”....

Point IX of the Letter of Peace reminds us that “It is clear that it is impossible to build worldwide peace while in society itself, and even within the family, there is disdain toward more...