Reject violence and war, struggle for peace and harmony

I use the term 'struggle' in the title of this article to mean 'work,' and not 'fight.'

- By Dr. Laksiri Fernando

The advocacy for peace in the world is old as the history of war and violence. But that has failed so far at least to moderate conflicts and war. Today the world has come to a high point after the Second World War as two of the conflicts, between Russia and Ukraine and Ukraine and Palestine, with a great potential of creating a disastrous world war.

There are over 20 countries at present involved in internal or external wars. Wikipedia gives a broad description of the situation and based on the figures of death toll during 2024 those countries can be listed as follows with numbers of mortality.

Ukraine 72,960

Palestine 29.772

Myanmar 19,771

Sudan 15,526

Ethiopia 10,180

Nigeria 9,155

Mexico 8,208

Burkina Faso 7,522

Syria 6,847

Somalia 5,472

Russia 4,737

Mali 4,001

Lebanon 3,813

Congo 3,785

Afghanistan 3,208

Pakistan 2.964

Haiti 2,441

Cameroon 2.186

Yemen 1,794

Colombia 1,708

There is no question that above are the most unfortunate countries that are involved in internal and external wars. However, most or some of the figures are underestimated. For example, the death toll in Palestine cannot be just above Myanmar! Given the circumstances, the death toll among Palestinians can even be higher than Ukraine. Most tragic is the way people, particularly children, are dying because of hunger. When we take all figures together it adds up to 216,050. These are not just figures but human lives. The actual number of deaths due to internal and external wars can be three times the numbers presently counted.

Something terribly wrong in our thinking