Take Action - Department of Peace

Benefits of a Department of Peace

International, the Department of Peace will:

-Advise the President, Secretaries of Defense and State, and others on root causes of violence.
-Support the military by providing cultural, ethnic and psychological insightful information, education and technology.  Offer practical skills (conflict resolution and the like) and administer training and support of civilian peacekeepers to participate in multinational nonviolent peace forces.

Domestic, the Department of Peace will:

-Develop field-tested educational programs promoting conflict-resolution and peer mediation among school-age children.
-Provide violence-prevention programs addressing domestic violence, gang violence, drug and alcohol-related violence.
- Provide much-needed assistance for the efforts of city, county and state governments in coordinating existing programs in their own communities as well as programs newly developed and provided by the Department of Peace.

A U.S. Peace Academy

-The Department of Peace will create and administer a U.S. Peace Academy acting as a sister organization to the U.S. Military Academy.
-The Academy will research and teach the most cutting-edge techniques for the amelioration of violence among domestic and international populations.
-The Peace Academy will provide assistance to the military in international conflict-resolution.

The Urgent Need for a Department of Peace

International Violence:

- During the course of the 20th century, more than 100,000,000 people perished in wars.
- Since the Iraq war began in 2003, there have been more than 4,000 American deaths, 30,700 American wounded, and well over 1,000,000 Iraqi deaths.

Domestic Violence

- In the U.S., youth homicide rates are more than 10 times that of other
   leading industrialized nations.
- Domestic violence is the single greatest cause of injury to women.
- Criminal and domestic violence places intense financial pressure on
  city, county and state budgets.
- One in three school students say they have been in a physical fight in the past year, and one in eight of those students required medical attention for their injuries.
- Of children in sixth through tenth grade, more than 3.2 million - nearly one in six - are victims of bullying each year, while 3.7 million bully other children.
- Seventeen percent of high school girls have been abused physically; twelve percent of high school girls have been abused sexually.