September 21, corresponding to the 30th of Shahrivar in the Persian calendar, is designated by the United Nations as the International Day of Peace. This day is meant to symbolize a halt to violence, promote reconciliation, and remind humanity of the necessity of sustainable peace in the world. But in a world where daily news of war, massacres, and displacement dominates the headlines, can we truly speak of peace? The reality is that this day arrives while war, poverty, displacement, and dictatorship leave deep scars on humanity.
The war between Russia and Ukraine, which began in February 2022, has not only caused thousands of deaths and millions of refugees but has also disrupted global food and energy security. This conflict is a clear example of great-power rivalry and geopolitical games, with ordinary people being the main victims.
In the Middle East, Gaza has been devastated, with tens of thousands of children, women, men, and elderly killed, thousands more injured, and over two million displaced and left homeless. This blatant genocide by the Israeli state continues before the eyes of the world. Yemen, after years of war and blockade, faces one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. Thousands of civilians, especially children, have been victims of bombings and famine. In Syria, although the war may appear to be over, its devastating consequences remain: the destruction of infrastructure, mass killings, and the displacement of millions. Meanwhile, the Turkish army continues to suppress the just struggles of the Kurdish people across three of the four parts of Kurdistan. In Africa, war, famine, disease, and displacement continue to plague the continent. Today, as a result of war, violence, poverty, and insecurity, more than 65 million people have been uprooted from their homes.
The bitter irony is that those who speak of peace at the United Nations are the very architects of war, displacement, and global poverty. They preach peace while filling their arsenals daily with weapons of mass destruction. They manage their economic crises by fueling the arms race. They survive in the shadow of war or the fear of it.
Although the United Nations is theoretically responsible for maintaining peace and international security, in practice its actions are shaped by the veto power of five major states the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K., and France. This unequal structure has prevented the UN from acting effectively in major crises such as the war in Ukraine or the genocide in Gaza.
The majority of those gathered at the UN, where the so-called “peace bell” rings, are in fact the organizers of heavily armed armies, the producers and stockpilers of weapons of mass destruction, the builders of prisons, torture chambers, and gallows. They trample on basic human rights, exploit children, dominate wealth and power mafias, and are the primary perpetrators of social harm. They sustain a system that consumes the labor and lives of billions, carving its path through fire and blood at the expense of security and the very right to life. Their greed spares neither human beings nor the environment.
In such conditions, humanity faces only two paths. Either it submits to the destiny imposed by these forces a path that will ultimately lead to the destruction of civilization, culture, and all human achievements, or at best, drag humanity back to the barbarism of millennia past. Or, society can push through this difficult passage toward a world free of war and violence, filled with freedom, equality, and prosperity a socialist world. A world in which all forms of economic, gender, racial, and national discrimination, the root causes of wars and violence, are abolished. A society where the broadest individual and political freedoms exist, where superstition and cultural backwardness are consigned to history, and where “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
But such a society will not be born spontaneously. The inner contradictions and crises of the current system exploitation, war, and poverty will not by themselves destroy it. This transformative change requires awareness, organization, and leadership. It demands the purposeful struggle of workers those who have no stake in the continuation of the current order alongside the collective action of all people whose lives are being pushed toward ruin by this system. Real peace cannot be expected from the warmongers. We must join forces, relying on our own strength, to build true and lasting peace.
