War and all other forms of violence take a disproportionate toll on children, who are unable to defend themselves from military action, urban warfare, or domestic violence. Children are helpless to being displaced by conflict, and, in many cases, are even forced to serve as child soldiers in conflicts which are certainly not of their own making. The GNRC addresses violence through preventative peace-buliding initiatives as well as through direct attempts to transform urban and domestic violence.

Transforming urban and domestic violence

Violence within communities and families has complex roots in poverty, political oppression, gender inequality, lack of educational opportunities, limited access to health care, and in some cases, aspects of culture which tend to sanction violence as a means to settling interpersonal disputes.

GNRC members see children not only as in urgent need of protection against these forms of violence that are so close to home, but also as essential actors in transforming their own families, communities and nations away from a culture of violence to a culture of peace. GNRC initiatives seek to empower children and adults to address the root socioeconomic, cultural, and spiritual causes of violence in their local communities. Emphasis is on working together across religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic class lines to identify new ways of solving conflicts.

For instance, in GNRC Latin America and the Caribbean, members of different urban gangs are being brought together to discuss new ways to solve conflicts, and children are organizing their parents to boycott toy stores that sell war toys and violent video games.  

More information on the GNRC’s efforts to confront violence and build peace is available from the “Regional Networks” menu above.