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Plato and contemporary thinkers including American philosopher Martha Nussbaum have emphasized the need for political consciousness among the youth. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education by Nussbaum expressed that

It would be catastrophic to become a nation of technically competent people who have lost the ability to think critically, to examine themselves, and to respect the humanity and diversity of others.

It would be catastrophic to become a nation of technically competent people who have lost the ability to think critically, to examine themselves, and to respect the humanity and diversity of others.

Ideologically, it has been proven that advancement in technology can shift social ethos if we use it intelligently and then technology can lead to activism.

Digital activism can be defined as the use of electronic communication devices, for example, social media, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, e-mail, e-blogging, micro-blogging and podcast for different forms of activism. It enables citizens to express ideology and spread information to a large audience regarding human rights. In this context, researchers have explored the level of digital activism among pupil teachers and found very little awareness regarding the same. Findings also reveal that the level of digital activism does not have any significant effect on attitude toward human rights and peace. Although findings reveal that attitude toward peace and human rights is positively correlated with each other. Therefore, on the basis of the findings, an intervention program for digital activism has been suggested at the end of this chapter that can foster digital activism among them.

This article discusses the work of the Global Peace Index and how peace itself can be characterized in order to analyze its relationship with society. This article explores the various notions and definitions of peace which exist, such as the differences between “Positive Peace” and “Negative Peace.” Peace cannot simply be thought of as “the absence of violence,” there are many complex aspects to take into consideration and which influence the creation of peaceful societies, including political stability, economics, types of government, and business environments, to name but a few.

Efficiency of peace-building relies on a vision of the future, partly at least. But nobody can provide a forecast free from prejudice and attitudes deeply rooted in the past. As a result, many so-called long-term “forecasts” are actually “geopolitical fantasies.” The chapter tackles forecasts of the possible fate of the United States, the European Union, Russia, and China in the twenty-first century, a general issue of war and peace in both the remote and foreseeable futures, and prospects of peace-building.

Since more than one decade, the German armed forces are undergoing massive modifications in structure, size and mission, which can be traced back to the transformation of the international security environment and globalisation effects after the end of the Cold War (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1999). As the threat scenarios changed from mutual deterrence to a multitude of risks and dangers, including violent internal conflict, international terrorism and global ecological crisis, the threat perceptions within wider society underwent simultaneous changes. Today, ‘security’ and ‘insecurity’ are terms with totally different connotation than only 20 years ago. Clearly, these alterations also initiated a new era of civil–military relations in Germany after 1990. Besides the rather obvious transnational effects described by the changing security context as well as the trend towards globalisation and to new security regimes, perpetual societal changes within West European societies evenly took place during the last thirty years. These societies are therefore becoming ‘post-traditional societies’ (Giddens, 1994)¹ or – as far as the armed forces are concerned – ‘post-military’ societies (Shaw, 2000). This study aims at examining the current state of civil–military relations and deals with the question of the existence of a civil–military gap in Germany. Therefore, empirical data stemming from an international project will be examined. After a sketch of the patterns of civil–military relations in Germany, a brief description of the methodology of the German part within the Civil–Military-Gap-project is given. Afterwards, some key findings of the project data, concerning a set of questions relating to security, war and peace issues, are presented and discussed.

The Sustainable Development Goals promoted by United Nations (UN) advocate that education is a fundamental right for human beings, and free universal primary education should be accessible to all regardless of gender or country of origin. Education on human rights aims to provide information on fundamental rights, equality and being non-discriminatory in nature by having its universal appeal. Learners should be exposed to human rights education and to relate it to their cultural context and build on real-life experience. Students should be encouraged to foster participation in creating a learning environment free from fear and upholds empowerment and human rights values. Universities and faculty members play a vital role in imparting education that helps build a strong foundation of society where people are respected and treated equally and gets equal opportunity for upward social mobility while protecting the dignity of such rights. This book addresses the role of education to uplift people out of poverty and oppression by imparting social justice education at the institution and the community level. Chapters are dedicated to human rights education which talks about fostering a sense of awareness among learners about the dignity of human life through various interventional programs. Such rights are discussed with respect to migrant workers, foster youth and prisoners in different countries and how students from all levels can benefit from such education.

In this article the basic value orientations of future officers and civilian students are compared. It is found that the variance between the 13 countries included in the survey is mostly larger than the one between civilian and military students when it comes to the basic value dimensions such as tradition vs. modernity, left vs. right, cosmopolitan vs. localistic, materialistic vs. post-materialistic and civilian vs. military values. Thus, the military are not consistently in all countries more religious, more right oriented and more materialistic than their civil fellow students, even if there exists a tendency for such a trend.

My framework is based upon a grounded analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) of a review of the existing social science and education literature regarding globalization and peace from approximately 1960 to the present. My review consisted of identifying emergent themes in the literature and from these identifying conceptual categories and the relationships among them that could explain some of the ways in which globalization, peace, and educational processes are linked. I approached the literature as a “cache of documents” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), that is, as bodies of literature reflecting certain sensibilities regarding globalization and peace. My framework is based upon an analysis of how these sensibilities have influenced the reproduction of inequalities through the education sector as a socialization and policy context.

This study will look at the relationship between norms on gender equality on the one hand and the level of gender equality in the political and socioeconomic sphere, the presence or absence of armed conflict, and general peacefulness on the other.

Data on gender equality norms from the World Values Surveys, political and socioeconomic gender equality from the Global Gender Gap Index, armed conflict from the Uppsala Conflict Data Base, and general peacefulness from the Global Peace Index are analyzed in a bivariate correlation.

The results show a significant association between norms on and attitudes toward gender equality and levels of political and socioeconomic gender equality, absence or presence of armed conflict, and level of general peacefulness.

There is no data base on norms on and attitudes toward the use of violence which is why only levels of violence are included in the study.

The study shows that governments, aid agencies, NGOs and others working on conflict prevention and peace building need to focus on improving gender equality in order to achieve a sustainable decrease in conflict levels and an improvement in general levels of peacefulness.

This study is original in that it looks at norms on gender equality on the individual level on the one hand and actual levels of both gender equality and violence in the society, including armed conflict on the other.

A growing number of human rights NGOs have placed international volunteers in conflict zones from Guatemala and Colombia to Palestine and Iraq. This study samples from contemporary high-risk transnational activists and highlights the variation in biographical steps taken toward the shared outcome of participation in human rights work (HRW). Data was collected through 6 weeks of participant observation in Israel-Palestine, 21 in-depth interviews, and 28 shorter focused interviews with human rights workers (N=49). Oversampling from the International Solidarity Movement reveals how the unique constraints and opportunities presented by a particular conflict zone and NGO culture impacts self-selection into HRW. Grounded theory and Boolean methodology aided in identifying four main pathways (the nonviolent activist, peace church, anarchist, and solidarity pathways) to HRW as well as biographical patterns and complexities that have been underemphasized in the existing literature. These include the salience of transformative events and attitude changes in the process of constructing a cosmopolitan identity and committing to high-risk transnational activism.