From Reaction to Prevention: A Call for the Peace
Movement to Transform into a Global Health Movement and prioritize achieving
the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Inspired by Disrupt Science: The Future Matters (Mihai
Nadin, 2023)
“Reaction to breakdowns is more expensive, by many
orders of magnitude, than prevention… The living is by necessity anticipatory.” — Mihai Nadin
For decades, the global peace movement has mobilized
after violence erupts—calling for ceasefires, organizing protests, and
responding to refugee crises. Yet wars, genocides, and political violence
continue, often increasing in scale and frequency, but fortunately with fewer
casualties.
In 2024, there were 61 active state-based conflicts,
the highest since 1946.
Since 2010, the number of such conflicts has nearly doubled,
and battle-related deaths have increased fivefold, even with temporary
fluctuations.
In 2023, the total was 59 conflicts—also at
historically high levels.
Organized violence in 2024 claimed nearly 160,000
lives, making it the fifth-deadliest year since 1989. In 2023, conflict-related deaths reached
approximately 122,000, driven by fights in Ukraine, Gaza, and Ethiopia’s Tigray
region.
Civilians are increasingly targeted: in 2024, 13,900
civilians were killed in one-sided or targeted attacks, a 31% increase from the
year prior. In Gaza and Lebanon, 94% of
the 26,000 casualties in 2024 were civilians or unidentified.
In urban conflicts, roughly 50–66% of casualties are
civilians, depending on how “unknowns” are treated.
Historical patterns & genocides.
Compared to the 20th century, conflict deaths dropped
post–World War II, with spikes in the 1970s/80s (up to 300,000 annually); since
then levels stayed lower—aside from recent surges in regions like Ukraine,
Ethiopia, and the Middle East.
The Human Security Report 2005 noted a 40% decline in
armed conflicts since the early 1990s and an 80% reduction in genocides between
1998 and 2001—but high-intensity conflicts persist.
The Darfur genocide (2003–2005) resulted in an
estimated 200,000 to 300,000 deaths, primarily civilians.
The Sudan genocide amid civil war (2023–present) and the
Masalit massacres reflect ongoing genocidal violence, with tens of thousands
killed—Masalit fatalities in particular range from 10,000 to 136,000.
Summary Table
|
Period / Region
|
Conflicts (State-Based)
|
Total Deaths
|
Civilian Deaths & Notes
|
|
2000 early 2000s
|
Decline noted
|
Lower than prior decades
|
Genocides decreased by ~80% by 2001
|
|
2010 vs. now
|
Nearly doubled
|
Deaths ~50%
|
Civilians increasingly targeted
|
|
2023
|
59 conflicts
|
~122,000 deaths
|
High civilian toll in Ukraine, Gaza
|
|
2024
|
Historic peak: 61 conflicts
|
~160,000 deaths
|
13,900 civilian-targeted deaths (+31%)
|
|
Darfur (2003-05)
|
Genocidal event
|
200,000- 300,000 deaths
|
Majority were civilians
|
|
Sudan (2023-present)
|
Genocidal campaigns
|
10,000-136,000 civilians
|
Ethnic targeting Masalit massacres
|
Because peace efforts have been largely
reactive—addressing the symptoms of conflict, not its causes conflicts are
surging both in frequency and complexity, with state involvement and non-state
actors overlapping and rising.
Total fatalities remain alarmingly high, especially
among civilians; the risk from organized violence is climbing rather than
declining. Thus, preventive strategies
and protection—especially safeguarding civilians and healthcare services—must
be a top priority given the rising trend of deliberate targeting. Especially given the record numbers of attacks
on medical infrastructure and personnel.
The ideal path is prevention as the peace actually intended
by the Peace movement. Peace lovers can be forgiven for this reactionary
thinking. But not if such thinking
persists. Drawing from Nadin’s anticipatory systems theory, there
must be a strategic and tactical pivot: The peace movement transforming into a
global health movement—focused not on the absence of war, but prioritizing
progress in health (mind, body, spirit, family, community, environment,
government, economics...).
Like disease, violence has causes—poverty, exclusion,
misinformation, trauma, resource scarcity, flawed beliefs and dysfunctional governance
and economic systems. These causes are identifiable, measurable, and
preventable.
War, like cancer, is often predictable and
increasingly aggressive. The longer we wait to act, the more expensive, deadly,
and widespread it becomes.
Reframing Peace as Global Health:
|
Traditional Peace Movement
|
Peace as Global Health Movement
|
|
Ceasefires after war
|
Prevention before war
|
|
|
|
|
Protest against violence
|
Investment in equity & nutrition
|
|
|
|
|
Humanitarian aid post-crisis
|
Early education, mental health, and social
resilience
|
|
|
|
|
Diplomacy & treaties
|
Just governance, truth-telling, inclusive economies
|
Remember that the single greatest human achievement accomplished
in just 10 years was the global eradication of Smallpox. This global infectious disease had killed over
300 million people in just 70 years of the last century. That was more human deaths lost in that whole
century from wars, revolutions, genocides and murders combined. And even now 11,000 to 13,000 children under
the age of five die each DAY from easily preventable malnutrition and related
infectious diseases. This death toll is about 3 times the pace of death in Hitler’s
concentration camps - and does not include current daily child deaths from wars,
genocides, pandemics, or natural disasters.
And they are not news. Yet these preventable deaths are a primary driver
of conflicts. The loss of a child, even a
parent’s fear of losing one - from any cause -is greatest terror of all human experiences.
Yet they are ignored by most progressive
organizations and their greater movements.
This calls on peace organizations, foundations,
governments, and other progressive movements to champion global health by adopting
an anticipatory framework using data and lived experience to identify and
intervene before conflict ignites.
Making wise investments in the social determinants of
peace like primary health care, food security, basic education, climate
resilience/restoration, and justice -
Framing the ambiguous word of peace which can mean
many different outcomes for different entities into the language of public
health: Prevention, early intervention, systems care, and holistic well-being.
Ideally, progressive movements would align and develop
a unified strategy to prioritize a holistic and comprehensive effort to fund
the UN 17 SDGs to best achieve the 169 subgoals within them, by educating the
public that the peace most progressives image must be far more than a historic
slogan. Health is ambiguous. It is a measurable, proactive process, and
achievable - just like disease prevention when minimal resources are committed.
Just as medicine evolved from crisis
response to preventive health, the peace movement must evolve and adapt from its
reactionary or preemptive efforts of protests to prevention. From managing symptoms to strengthening all of
life’s vital systems.
“At stake is the future of humankind and even of life
on planet Earth.” — Mihai Nadin
Stop treating peace as the absence of war, - or trying
to redefine Peace, an ambiguous word even before our polarized era, accelerating
Truth decay, and agreeing on anything locally, nationally, or globally. Start referencing
peace as the bearing of health, justice, and foresight to all threats to human
freedom and security.
The challenge of overcoming the prevailing global and
political mindset of “peace through strength” will be easier, cheaper, faster,
and more effective than any a new effort to redefine peace. Humankind’s well-being through prevention—
via global health, compassion, and systemic solutions is possible by a united
progressive movement of movements.
Resources.
BOOK: Disrupt Science: The Future Matters by Mihai Nadin
(published November 19, 2023)
Mihai Nadin argues that our current scientific
paradigm is too focused on reductionism—breaking things down into parts—and
reactive responses like treating disease only after it appears. That way of
thinking, while powerful in engineering and data-driven tech like AI, often
overlooks the complexity and adaptive nature of life itself.
Life—from bacteria to humans—is inherently
anticipatory: organisms act in ways that prepare for future changes rather than
merely reacting. This anticipatory intelligence is non‑deterministic and
emergent, shaped by memory, creativity, and awareness of consequences.
Humanity’s future depends on embracing this complexity instead of relentlessly
pursuing progress at any cost.
Nadin calls for a “Second Revolution in Science”: a
shift that completes what he terms the Cartesian Revolution by integrating
meaning, ethics, and anticipation back into scientific inquiry. Instead of
building ever more powerful machines and accumulating data for its own sake,
science must rediscover how to interpret data through purpose—and prevent
breakdowns before they happen. This is especially urgent in light of global
crises like pandemics and climate challenges.
His core ideas: “Reaction to breakdowns is more expensive, by many
orders of magnitude, than prevention… The living is by necessity
anticipatory.”
“Anticipatory actions are expressed through non‑deterministic
processes that unfold in concert with reactions. They engage the wholeness of
life, including its interactions with the environment.”
“The moment of truth can no longer be postponed. At
stake is the future of humankind you and even of life on planet Earth.”
“A ‘Second Revolution in Science’ could unleash
humanity’s remaking, free of surrendering to want… Science has the opportunity
not only to measure everything—life included—and accumulate data and process it
for its own sake, but also to realize its meaning.”
The peace movement must shift from reaction to
prevention. Why wait for disasters when
anticipating them would be smarter and cheaper?
Embrace complexity and meaning: Move from typical progressive
simplicity to objective science to understand reality to achieve real and sustainable progress.
Ethics and foresight underscores the fundamental
flaws within the Peace movement’s reliance on the ambiguous word of Peace. Without a clear and deep reflection of the causes of violence
and other even greater threats to human freedom and security, current conditions will only worsen.
The context of Disrupt Science nails the peace
movements’ shortcomings in their failure to anticipate and effectively address the
root causes of war, genocide, and systemic violence. Combined with the greater lethality
of infectious diseases related to poverty (clean water, sanitation, adequate
nutrition, access to basic health services and education make the need for
championing health instead of peace even more relevant.
Mihai Nadin’s central argument is that life is
inherently anticipatory. He provides a
powerful critique of how modern systems (including science, politics, and
social movements) repeatedly react to crises instead of preventing them with direct
implications for the global peace movement.
Traditional peace advocacy over the decades grows after
violence erupts. Demands for ceasefire calls and caring for refugees’ spike,
with a focus on diplomacy or protests while largely ignoring the need to dismantle
the systemic and structural drivers of violence (like the powerless United
Nations to stop wars and genocides or effectively address inequality, resource
plundering, border disputes, or identity manipulation. Promoting “peace” primarily as the absence of
war, rather than the presence of justice, foresight regarding the value of
healthy literate people, and sustainable security and environmental systems.
Nadin’s anticipatory framework challenges this
reactive model when he writes, “Reaction to breakdowns is more expensive, by
many orders of magnitude, than prevention.”
Wars and genocides are not spontaneous. They are predictable given the flawed global governance
and economic systems, or the ignored warning signs like exclusion, propaganda, wealth
hoarding, ecological collapse, authoritarianism, and historic grievances.
Preventable conditions relying on science, not hope. This is
what Nadin’s science of anticipation calls for.
Early detection of systemic stress—political, environmental, social,
psychological. Intervention before
escalation, like adequate food supply, clean water, sanitation, access to primary
health services, living wage jobs giving citizens and families basic dignity. Similar to how a vaccine prevents disease, a
focus on public, economic, and environmental health prevents wars, genocides,
and corruption. This new health movement requires a holistic
and comprehensive approach that was intended in 1948 with the approval of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that must now be accomplished by achieving
the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
A global advocacy effort uniting the three basic progressive movements
(Peace, Environment, & economic/social Justice) and the tens of thousands
of organizations within each prioritizing advocacy for funding all 17 goals simultaneously.
By integrating ethics, history, cost savings, compassion, and creativity into advocacy
for one global policy for human health and a sustainable environment.
A united movement that invests in early childhood
development, food security, climate resilience, media literacy, inclusive
governance, and justice that embraces our global complexity and interdependence.
Not just “peace talks” and clever slogans with regular sound bites about wars costs in blood and coin.
Nadin asserts “The living is by necessity
anticipatory.” And if the peace
movements treated societies like living systems, they’d see the peace they have
always dreamed of, preventing violence before it appears, while saving more
lives and dollars than the disarmament and the banning of weapons they have wasted
so much time primarily focused on.
Nadin’s call for a “Second Revolution in Science” that
includes meaning and ethics, means the priority of health trumps the call for peace. This is the revolution the progressive movements
must urgently align on. The Peace movement must adapt and go from: “Stop
this war!” To “Prevent the next one by
confronting its roots now.” From: “Negotiate
a ceasefire.” To: “Transform the systems that make violence inevitable.”
This moment of Truth
can no longer be postponed. At stake is the future of humankind and perhaps most
life on Earth.
Environmental health linked to Human health and security
are also benefited by achieving the UN 17 Sustainable Development goals.
2. AN EMERGENT PLANETARY HEALTH LAW ERIC C IP*
Abstract: The health of the planet and its life forms are under threat from anthropogenic climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, and the extreme weather events, heatwaves and wildfires that accompany them. The burgeoning field of planetary health studies the interplay between humanity and the Earth’s biosphere and ecosystems on which human health depends. Scholarship on law from a planetary health vantage point remains scarce. This article fills this gap by delineating the conceptual building blocks of a planetary health law, which, in its latent form, is dispersed across various hard and soft sources of international environmental law and global health law that converge on the right to a healthy environment, and, to a lesser extent, rights of nature emerging in various domestic jurisdictions. It elucidates how the fragmented regimes of international environmental and global health law could be developed in more coherent ways, driven by an overarching concern for the integrity of the planetary foundations of life.
INTRODUCTION: For millennia, during the
geological epoch known as the Holocene, humanity thrived on the Earth’s clean
air, freshwater, and generally stable climate and temperatures. Since the dawn of what is being increasingly
referred to as the Anthropocene epoch around the time of the Industrial
Revolution, the manifold planetary crises of climate change, widespread air and
water pollution, biodiversity loss, and the reconfiguration of the
biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus have been culminating
into an existential threat to the well-being of children now living. Major
achievements in global health since the end of World War II could
easily be reversed as rainfall patterns change, temperatures rise and
extreme weather events happen more frequently. Countless people have succumbed to rapid
changes in precipitation and temperature, for example.
The growing science of planetary health studies how
political, economic and social forces across human societies shape the
biophysical dimensions of Earth, which in turn determine population health and
the enjoyment of human rights. From the vantage point of planetary
health, humans are part and parcel of the planet’s life systems, not separate
from them, and the flourishing of humanity within safe ‘planetary
boundaries’ should take precedence over short-term economic and political
considerations. Underlying the perspective of planetary health is the principle
that humans ought to ‘conserve, sustain, and make resilient the planetary and
human systems on which health depends by giving priority to the wellbeing of
all’. Studies of law from a planetary health point of view remain surprisingly
rare and underdeveloped. This article fills a gap in the literatures on both
planetary health and law by setting out a conceptual account of planetary health
law, which fosters the reinterpretation of existing, albeit fragmented and
under-coordinated, norms in a more coherent way. When this is impossible, it can
help understanding of how the existing regimes of international environmental
and global health law, understood broadly as encompassing both ‘hard law’ and
‘soft law’, should be integrated in a way that is driven by an
overarching concern for rights, be they the rights of humans or the rights of nature.
* Professor, Centre for Medical Ethics and Law, The
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People’s Republic of
China, ericcip@hku.hk. This study was partly supported by the Outstanding Young Researcher
Award of The University of Hong Kong. The author is grateful to anonymous peer reviewers for
their helpful comments and the International & Comparative Law Quarterly editors
for their editorial work. All errors remain my own. 1 D Schimel, Climate and Ecosystems (Princeton
University Press 2013) 51. 2 S Whitmee et al, ‘Safeguarding Human Health in the
Anthropocene Epoch: Report of the Rockefeller–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health’ (2015)
386(10007) Lancet 1973, 1974. 3 See PJ Crutzen and EF Stoermer, ‘The “Anthropocene” (2000)’
in S Benner et al (eds), Paul J. Crutzen and the Anthropocene: A New Epoch in Earth’s
History (Springer 2021) 19. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge
University Press on behalf of British Institute of International and Comparative Law. This is an Open
Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction,
provided the original article is properly cited. [ICLQ vol 72, October 2023 pp 1047–1067]
doi:10.1017/S0020589323000325
3. The summary of a 1980 U.S. bipartisan Presidential
Commission on World Hunger put global development in the context of US
national security. It specifically
warned ...“The most potentially explosive force in the world today is the
frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living. The
anger, despair, and often hatred that result represent real and persistent
threats to international order… Neither the cost to national security of
allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be derived by a genuine effort
to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured in any precise,
mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding the chaos that
will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world begin to develop
a common institutional framework for meeting such other critical global
threats… [measurable] or not... this combination of problems now threatens the
national security of all countries just as surely as advancing armies or
nuclear arsenals.”
They concluded “promoting economic development in general,
and overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S.
national security than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the
advent of nuclear weapons, most Americans have been conditioned to equate
national security with the strength of strategic military forces. [WE] consider
this prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed might represents
merely the physical aspect of national security. Military force is ultimately
useless in the absence of the global security that only coordinated
international progress toward social justice can bring.”
We are now
experiencing consequences of ignoring those warnings. Specifically increases in “diseases”,
“international terrorism”, “war”, “environmental problems” and “other human
rights problems” (refugees, genocide, human trafficking…). Combined, we see these global forces today
continuing to fuel the authoritarian populist movements around the world. Governments' “self-interests” can no longer
be more important than humanity's potential to thrive and survive in the face
of these accelerating threats.