Give ‘science for peace’ a chance

The fall of the regime of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, which brought widespread joy and optimism, was a rare and welcome development in what has mostly been another devastating year of violence and conflict around 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 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024, a 37% rise from the previous 12-month period. Mark Rutte, the former Netherlands prime minister, now head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), said last week that NATO must prepare for a “wartime mindset”, and urged member states to allocate more money to military budgets. In 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, world military spending had risen to an all-time high of nearly US$2.5 trillion, the ninth consecutive annual increase (see go.nature.com/4gggmuf). In Africa, military spending was one-fifth higher than it was in 2022. But are more wars inevitable? Why can’t peace be 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 last week’s African Academy of Sciences (AAS) general assembly in Abuja, Nigeria, Lise Korsten, president of the AAS, which is headquartered in Nairobi, and Sara Clarke-Habibi, a peace-building specialist at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in Geneva, Switzerland, outlined a way for the African scientific community to work with stakeholders in the pursuit of peace and in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Korsten and Clarke-Habibi have set themselves a monumental task, and they are asking the right questions. Perhaps most importantly, their plan does not assume that wars are inevitable. Africa’s leaders and their international partners need to sit up and listen to what they are proposing.

Science 4 Peace Africa aims to establish the main drivers of conflict in the continent and see how science cooperation can address them. The approach has two aspects: first, specialists across disciplines and sectors, including research, policy and humanitarian relief, will map existing peace-building initiatives that involve the scientific community and highlight future opportunities. This will then feed into more-detailed consultations for each region. The second aspect is capacity-building: the initiative will train students and researchers in using peace-building tools in education and scholarship. “Research, innovation and teaching can actually reinforce conflict drivers when not developed in a conflict-sensitive way,” Clarke-Habibi and Korsten write in the project’s concept note.

A fresh start for the African Academy of Sciences

This is important work not just for the knowledge and skills it will generate, but also because it will give scientists visibility in fields in which they can lack influence. Science is often not well represented in diplomacy or peace-building, a point also made in a Communications Engineering comment article published last month (M. M. López et al. Commun. Eng. 3, 159; 2024). The authors of the article say that peace-building efforts are led by people with backgrounds in social and political sciences, law, diplomacy and humanitarian relief. Those with backgrounds in science, engineering and technology need to be among those doing strategic planning. Peace itself is foundational to the SDGs, not least SDG 16: peace, justice and strong institutions. “When regions are destabilized, research is often interrupted, resources diverted, partnerships falter and knowledge exchange and innovation uptake come to a halt,” say Clarke-Habibi and Korsten.

Peace-building organizations such as the Pugwash Conferences on Science in World Affairs were established by scientists in the wake of previous global conflicts. But, they are finding it tough to be heard amid the constant and rising drumbeat of war. The AAS and UNITAR have an innovative plan. It has seed funding from South Africa’s government, and now needs support from other funders and policymakers. There is no law of nature that says that there must be more conflicts and that more people must lose their lives.