Military spending fuels wars like that in Sudan, forcing populations to flee.Credit: Luis Tato/AFP/Getty
The fall of the regime of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which led to widespread joy and optimismis a rare and welcome development during what has been another devastating year of violence and conflict across the world.
Wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan have made the past year one of the deadliest in recent times, according to the latest armed conflict survey (see go.nature.com/3z565x), produced by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), based in London. Worldwide, nearly 200,000 people were killed between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, an increase of 37% from the previous 12-month period. Mark Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister who is now head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), said last week that NATO must prepare for a “war mentality” and urged Member States to allocate more money to military budgets. By 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military spending had reached a record high of nearly US$2.5 trillion, the ninth consecutive annual increase (see go.nature.com/4gggmuf). In Africa, military spending was a fifth higher than it was in 2022. But are new wars inevitable? Why can’t peace be made more of a priority? These questions need to be asked, and they make a new initiative called Science 4 Peace Africa all the more timely.
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At the general assembly of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) last week in Abuja, Nigeria, Lise Korsten, president of the Nairobi-based AAS, and Sara Clarke-Habibi, specialist in peacebuilding at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in Geneva, Switzerland, presented a way for the African scientific community to work with stakeholders in the pursuit of peace and in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.
Korsten and Clarke-Habibi have set themselves a monumental task and are asking the right questions. Perhaps most importantly, their plan does not assume that wars are inevitable. African leaders and their international partners need to sit down and listen to what they are proposing.
Science 4 Peace Africa aims to identify the main drivers of conflict on the continent and to see how scientific cooperation can respond to them. The approach has two aspects: first, specialists from across disciplines and sectors, including research, policy and humanitarian aid, will map existing peacebuilding initiatives that engage the scientific community and highlight opportunities future. This will then feed into more detailed consultations for each region. The second aspect is capacity building: the initiative will train students and researchers to use peacebuilding tools in education and scholarship. “Research, innovation, and teaching can actually reinforce conflict drivers when not developed in conflict-sensitive ways,” Clarke-Habibi and Korsten write in the project concept note.
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This is important work not only because of the knowledge and skills it will generate, but also because it will give scientists visibility in areas where they may lack influence. Science is often not well represented in diplomacy or peacebuilding, a point also highlighted in a Communications Engineering commentary article published last month (MM Lopez et al. Common. Eng. 3159; 2024). The article’s authors argue that peacebuilding efforts are led by people with backgrounds in social and political sciences, law, diplomacy and humanitarian aid. Those with a background in science, engineering and technology should be among those carrying out strategic planning. Peace itself is fundamental to the SDGs, including SDG 16: peace, justice and strong institutions. “When regions are destabilized, research is often disrupted, resources diverted, partnerships falter, and knowledge exchange and innovation adoption stop,” say Clarke-Habibi and Korsten.
Peacebuilding organizations such as the Pugwash Conferences on Science in World Affairs were established by scientists following previous global conflicts. But they struggle to make themselves heard amid the constant and growing noise of war. The AAS and UNITAR have an innovative plan. It has seed funding from the South African government and now needs support from other donors and policymakers. No law of nature says there must be more conflict and more people must lose their lives.