【明報專訊】At a time when war rages on in Syria and many parts of the world, join hands on the International Day of Peace (國際和平日) to get the message of peace across.

◆Basic facts

Date: 21 September

First celebrated: 1981

Proclaimed by: United Nations General Assembly (聯合國大會)

Aim: To commemorate and strengthen the ideals of peace

◆War and Peace

You can hardly find a segment of the human history that is not stained by war. The earliest recorded evidence of war belongs to the Mesolithic cemetery Site 117, located in present-day Sudan (蘇丹), which is thought to be approximately 14,000 years old.

There are many different types of war depending on how they are categorised. According to the types of weapons used, wars can be divided into conventional, nuclear, biological and chemical warfare. A civil war (內戰) is fought within a country. Wars fought between states can be subdivided into wars of aggression and wars of defence etc.

Why do wars happen?

Since time immemorial humankind has engaged in warfare under all sorts of pretexts (藉口). There have been wars fought on religious grounds such as the Crusades in the Middle Age and the present-day wars with the Islamic State, wars resulted from sovereignty disputes such as the Falkland war (福克蘭戰爭), wars brought on by claims to thrones such as the Hundred Year's War between England and France, wars guided by nationalism or even jingoism (the belief that one's country is better than others), and wars triggered by ideological differences such as the many wars between capitalist and communist states among many others.

Despite these pretexts, the real motives of war are often more straightforward. Throughout history most wars have been waged by dictatorial rulers seeking to expand their own influence. Wars also happen when countries compete for resources, an example being Iraq's invasion of Kuwait (科威特) in 1990, which was seen as an attempt to gain control of the latter's oil reserves.

How can wars be prevented?

Since most wars were waged by dictators, there is a theory that wars would be kept to a minimum if every government in the world was democratically elected. The rationale is that people are generally averse to (抗拒的) war and able to prevent the government from triggering war if they have a say. Indeed, Thorbjorn Jagland, former Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said that ''Democracies may go to war against dictatorships, and have certainly waged colonial wars, but there is, apparently, not a single example of a democracy having gone to war against another democracy'' when explaining why the Nobel Peace Prize went to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) in 2010.

Some believe that inter-governmental organisations like the United Nations (聯合國) and European Union (歐盟) are the answer to preventing wars. The Security Council of the UN (聯合國安理會), for example, is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. It has the power to establish peacekeeping operations, impose international sanctions (國際制裁), and authorise military action. However, the Security Council's permanent members - Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, and the United States can veto (否決) any such actions.

International Day of Peace

In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly declared the International Day of Peace. The date initially chosen was the regular opening day of the annual sessions of the General Assembly, the third Tuesday of September. In 2001, the International Day of Peace began to be observed on 21 September each year.