The world is facing a humanitarian crisis like it has never faced before.
All forms of inequality, conflict and injustice are occurring at magnitudes one could have never imagined in the past. This crisis has seen many vulnerable people forcibly displaced from their homes and facing unimaginable risks.
One would have thought that by cultivating the values of education, development, ingenuity and technology, the world would have transcended the scourge of death, pain and disease. Unfortunately there are more questions today than answers.
The African Peace Journal will focus on bringing together different voices to the “kitchen table”, to weed out different issues and find lasting, sustainable solutions.
In 2015, The Journal will be a meeting place, a global town hall or “Ubuntu Room”, for peoples and communities of different backgrounds, contexts and experiences.
Our hope is that through these open dialogues we will develop a better understanding of the issues we face and then apply this new knowledge to construct better methodologies in order to meet the goals of a future we all dearly want and need.
Rutendo Urenje, Managing Editor
African Peace Journal
Chemin Marc-Emery 25 | Case Postale 7 | 1239 Collex
Geneva, Switzerland
The global crisis of people forcibly displaced by conflict or persecution is expressed in many ways — in faceless numbers, always millions more than in the previous year; in the images of desperate people crowded onto rickety boats; in the pictures of endless tents on a barren, dusty field. Around the world, at least 50 million people either have been displaced inside their countries or have fled to foreign lands.
As in the poetry of the Somali-British poet Warsan Shire, it is a cry of desperation:
“You have to understand, no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.”
— Lost Voices of the World’s Refugees
— New York Times Editorial Board, June 13th, 2015
In 2015, the African Peace Journal will focus on the plight of African land and boat refugees. As our Managing Editor, Rutendo Urenje, explains in Rutendo’s Corner:
How do we as Africans reduce our vulnerability and manage the risk we may find ourselves in? I am looking forward to a year of practical and sustainable solutions that reach and change our Africa.
— Rutendo, African Peace Journal, July 7th, 2015
We look forward to your joining us in reading and telling stories of refugees in Africa and we welcome your suggestions for the practical risk-management of refugees in Africa.
We are all in this together.
Karim Ajania
Founder and Editor-in-Chief
African Peace Journal