We’ve been writing about peace since Lacuna’s launch more than five years ago, asking what peace means to people in different circumstances and whether organisations who claim to be peace-building are really doing enough.
For International Peace Day 2020, we’ve collected six stories that offer different perspectives on peace and on the best ways to secure it, from individual campaigns to an assessment of the peace building strategies of Nobel Peace Prize-winner the European Union.
Main image by Alice Donovan Rouse.
Friar Lawrence in the Balkans
Preti Taneja tells the story of an extraordinary Kosovo Albanian and Serbian production of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet
What has the EU ever done for us? Peace
Just before the Brexit referendum our editor-in-chief took a look at the EU's history and record of peace, asking whether its Nobel Peace Prize win was warranted
Meet the man inspired by Gandhi to walk around the world
Marking 150 years since the birth of Gandhi, and in tribute to his nonviolent resistance, a man set off to travel country-by-country by foot or bicycle
Why are we giving up on girls’ education in Afghanistan?
In Afghanistan, the education of girls is crucial to peace building. Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch asks, why then, is the number of girls going to school falling?
A century of war and peace in Lebanon
Marina Chamma reports on the history of her home nation, the lives that continue and flourish there, and the optimism that vies with pessimism in the face of repeated violence
Wheel Stop Trident: how cycling against nuclear weapons became part of my activist journey
Inspired by bicycle puns and a conviction that the UK should not have nuclear weapons, a group of friends set up the protest collective Wheel Stop Trident