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Peace, justice, and strong institutions create a world in which neighbours can live in harmony, countries can work together to solve problems and everyone can do the things that they love in an environment that keeps them safe. But there aren’t many countries that benefit from peace, justice, and strong institutions all the time. In fact, there are around 27 ongoing wars in the world right now.
So what can we do to help?
To achieve world peace, we need to get rid of war and violence by addressing sources of conflict (such as poverty), promoting institutions like the UN that can help resolve conflict between countries and removing weapons and armaments. Justice can be achieved by making sure that the judiciary system is available to everyone and people in the justice system are diverse. Institutions can be held to account by equipping people to speak up against them and providing punishments for institutions that do not behave as they should.
There are lots of ways that anyone, including you, can work to achieve peace, justice and strong institutions. For example, you could: start or join a Model UN Club or use your right to freedom of information to check any information that you think might be suspicious.
Everyone can take action to make real change. What will you do?
There are lots of charities that need your help to achieve peace, justice, and strong institutions.
See how you can support them in their amazing work.
Have you ever been in a situation where someone has punished you unfairly? This happens so easily – sometimes someone doesn’t have all the information they need and they are too quick to judge. This is an injustice – when something just isn’t fair.
The world is full of all kinds of injustices. They can be as small as a thief not going to jail for stealing from an elderly lady while she was shopping or as large as the president of a country stealing from the people of the entire country.
Now, think of the last time you had a squabble with your sibling or with a friend. That conflict probably came from an injustice, right? One of you probably felt that something unfair was said or done and that resulted in a fight. Often, injustices go hand-in-hand with conflict. They could even cause a war to break out.
When you have a fight with someone, it sometimes helps if someone else comes and helps to make peace. This person is called a mediator. Usually, peace will come when there is justice and things are made fair again. It’s no different in the rest of the world.
Peace is when there is no war and violence and people feel safe. A peaceful society cannot exist without justice. Justice is when people are treated fairly by the law and those who impose the law – like judges and police officers.
Strong institutions like the police, courts and the government make sure that justice happens and create a world in which neighbours can live in harmony, countries can work together to solve problems and everyone can do the things that they love in an environment that keeps them safe.
There aren’t many countries that benefit from Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions all the time. So, today’s world has many examples of places where there is war instead of peace, injustice instead of justice and weakened, ineffective institutions instead of strong ones.
There are around 27 ongoing wars around the world right now.
Wars can start for lots of different reasons. People fight over:
For example, World War II, the biggest war in history, began when German troops invaded Poland and tried to claim the Polish land as their own. When this happened, the UK and France declared war on Germany.
War has devastating effects. Soldiers and people living may be seriously injured and they might even die. Some people might be forced to leave their country so they can get away from danger. These people are known as refugees.
Justice is the fair treatment of people by the law and those who impose the law. The law is there to protect people’s rights and freedom, and everyone is entitled to justice. But sometimes this doesn’t happen.
Some of the reasons why justice might not happen include:
When babies are born, it is up to their parents to register them with their government. This makes them visible to their government so that their government can play a role in protecting and upholding their human rights.
Not everyone is able to register their children at birth. At the moment, in many countries, it costs money to register children and parents may have to travel a long way to the registry office. Around one-quarter of children (166 million children) under the age of 5 have never been registered, making them ‘legally invisible’.
Children who are not registered and do not have a legal identity meaning they cannot always access important services such as healthcare, education and social justice.
When people go to court, they have the choice to represent themselves or to hire a lawyer. Lawyers make it more likely for people to win in court. This is because lawyers know how to challenge evidence and understand the complexities of the law. The problem is that lawyers are also very expensive and not everyone can pay for a lawyer. This often means that wealthier people can access a lawyer, or a better lawyer, and so they are more likely to win their case than someone who is poor.
The criminal justice system isn’t always fair. Sometimes, it discriminates against some groups of people based on their race, religion, gender or sexuality.
For example, in the USA, black people are nearly six times more likely to be imprisoned than white people.
One example that attracted a lot of attention was the case of a man called George Floyd. George Floyd was a 46-year-old black man. He was arrested in May 2020 after a shopkeeper phoned the police because George had used fake money to pay. A white police officer called Derek Chauvin arrested George in a violent and brutal way. Derek knelt on George’s neck. Eventually George died. Derek behaved in an unnecessarily aggressive way because George was black.
Institutions are organisations that are started for a religious, educational, professional or social purpose. The criminal justice system and government are examples of institutions. So is the United Nations and the World Bank. Some institutions are not strong or fair, so they cannot do what they are supposed to do. Click on the list of reasons why institutions might not be strong or fair below to learn more. You might also like to watch the video below to understand more about institutions and how they work.
Sometimes institutions do not have enough resources to do their job properly. This often happens in countries that cannot afford to pay to run parts of their institutions, such as the police. For example, India has four times fewer policemen and policewomen than Russia – so the police in India are less able to catch criminals.
Many institutions can do their job well because people agree to follow the rules that they make or to believe in what they say. But sometimes, not everyone agrees. For example, some people have started to trust what they read in newspapers or see on the TV less than they did before because they find it hard to know which stories are true and which are not. This means that these types of media have less influence than before.
Some countries have limited safety or stability, so it becomes difficult for institutions to do their job well. For example, if there is a war, everything from courts to universities, to football teams might stop working.
When the people who work for institutions do a bad job, it weakens the institution.
This can happen when people aren’t well trained and they don’t know how to do their job properly. For example, if the teachers working in a school are not well trained, the school can’t teach its students well.
This also happens when people in an institution make selfish decisions that are good for themselves but bad for others. This is called corruption.
Corruption is especially common in countries that are still developing because their institutions aren’t strong enough to prevent it. When government officials are corrupt, they steal money from that country’s people by doing things dishonestly. For example, they might take the money that they were supposed to use to build a hospital and instead use it to pay for their holiday. This keeps the countries in a cycle of poverty.
Another example of corruption might be if someone is caught driving above the speed limit and offers a policeman some money to not give them a speeding ticket. This is called bribery. Bribery is a type of corruption.
Watch this video if you want to learn more about corruption.
As you will now know, corruption can happen all over the world, but it happens most in countries that are still developing because their institutions are generally less strong.
This map shows how much corruption there is in each country. Each country has been given a corruption number from 0-100, with 0 being the most corrupt and 100 being the least corrupt. The number was allocated by expert assessments and surveys in each country. The key at the bottom can help you interpret the map. The countries in purple are considered very corrupt, whereas those in orange are not very corrupt at all.
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People everywhere have been trying hard to work together to make our world a safe and happy place to live.
