AN OPEN LETTER
FOR All The Children including The Child In You:
No More War
About this page: The content attempts to further illustrate the interconnected issues of violent conflict, militarism, consumerism, and neoliberalism to be causing much of human suffering today. It highlights the forced displacement of children and the devastating economic and emotional toll of war in affected regions. The trauma experienced by displaced children isn’t just individual; it’s generational. A future shaped by war, poverty, and exile perpetuates cycles of suffering, resentment, and instability. Many of these children, if they survive, will grow up in societies that either marginalise them or recruit them into further cycles of violence.
Furthermore, it examines the harmful impacts of consumerist and neoliberal policies on people, society, and the environment, drawing our attention to the commodification of nearly every aspect of life, including human relationships, which increasingly resemble commercial transactions. Prominent voices, such as George Monbiot, emphasise the urgency of recognising these connections and advocate for a collective movement toward peace and social justice, urgently calling for fundamental systemic change. —*AIME*
I
Culture of Peace : What is it? | Racism No Way: Anti-racism education for Australian schools
“As defined by the United Nations, Culture of Peace is a set of values, attitudes, modes of behaviour and ways of life (…) to solve problems through dialogue (…).”
Today’s Armed Conflicts | Geneva Academy: Academy Of International Humanitarian Law And Human Rights
“Our Rule of Law in Armed Conflict Online Portal (RULAC) classifies all situations of armed violence that amount to an armed conflict under international humanitarian law.
“Today, it monitors more than 110 armed conflicts and provides information about parties, the latest developments, and applicable international law. Some of these conflicts make the headlines, others do not. Some of them started recently, while others have lasted for more than 50 years.”
Highest number of countries engaged in conflict since World War II | Visions Of Humanity
“The global economic impact of violence in 2023 was $19.1 trillion (…). Expenditure on peacebuilding and peacekeeping totalled $49.6 billion, representing less than 0.6% of total military spending.”
Forced migration or displacement | Migration Data Portal
“Key Trends: Forced displacement due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order.
“The total number of people forcibly displaced – both within countries and across borders – as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order almost doubled over the past decade.
“While there were 59.5million forcibly displaced people as of the end of 2014 (UNHCR, 2015), the figure was 117.3 million by the end of 2023 (UNHCR, 2024). (…)
“UNHCR operational data estimates that forced displacement had likely already exceeded 120 million by the end of April 2024. The drastic increase of total forced displacement — both within countries and across borders.”
“An estimated forty per cent of all forcibly displaced people at the end of 2023 were children.”
—Migration Data Portal
50 million*** of forcibly displaced people today are children. These traumatised and brutalised human beings—many with missing limbs and nowhere to call home—are only those who escaped violent deaths and somehow survived the injuries inflicted by the violence of weapons wielded by men in wars waged by men.
War, dispossession, mutilation, and poverty–this sort of human suffering–is this what’s necessary to sustain the consumerist economies of Western liberal democracies? The direct consequences of these wars rarely reach those who benefit from them. The true human cost—the suffering of uncountable millions—is externalised, kept out of sight and out of mind, if not dehumanised.
***Australia’s population: 26 million (2022)
Gerome Villarete
12 Nov 2024, updated 18 Feb 2025
Art Saves Lives
MUSIC. ART. LIFE. 