Innsbruck (OTS) – The year 2023 was marked by bloody wars – from Ukraine to the Gaza Strip. And there is no peace in sight in either the Middle East or Eastern Europe. There is still hope if you put people at the center.
It was a great promise: the world would become a better and better place – perhaps with some detours and uncertainties, but certainly in the long term. In Europe, war and poverty seemed a long way off. Despite all the prophecies of doom, a European project emerged from the rubble of the Second World War that guaranteed people peace, prosperity, growth and stability. After the end of the Soviet Union, the end of history was even proclaimed; the global triumph of the liberal Western democracies seemed unstoppable. The bloody battle of ideologies seemed to have been fought and overcome.
But things turned out differently, completely differently. The year that was coming to an end was marked by bloody wars, and there was little room for diplomacy. And what is particularly frightening: Caught in a spiral of hatred and retaliation, dehumanization made its way, humanism and religious principles were buried.
Since Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th, in which around 1,200 people were brutally killed and 240 were kidnapped as hostages, a war has been raging in the sealed-off Gaza Strip in which the principles of human rights are no longer observed on both sides. And there is little hope that the carnage will end any time soon. What remains is scorched earth and a landscape of rubble in which misery and hopelessness give birth to new terror.
And bloody conflicts are not only raging at the gates of Europe. The Russian attack on Ukraine brought the war back to Europe, set in motion a gigantic arms spiral and shattered old habits. And above all: the peace that was believed to be secure is in danger. There is no relaxation in sight in Ukraine either. Just yesterday the entire country was again hit by Russian air strikes. On the front in eastern Ukraine, both sides are engaged in a war of attrition. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have already been killed or wounded. Nobody wants to think about negotiations at the moment. Peace is not in sight.
And beyond the bloody wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, the expulsion of the Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh or the situation of the Kurds received little attention. Given all the bad news, the future threatens to become darker. The fact that international politics in 2023 was characterized by wars is also a political failure. But there is hope. It may not lie on a large scale, but in many, many actions of people who do not allow themselves to be incited and exploited – who do not allow their humanity to be taken away from them.
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