Remembrance
Day is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth member states since the end of
the First World War to remember the members of their armed forces who died in
the line of duty. It is a day to honour
the war dead and the sacrifices of veterans. But it should also be a time to
fulfil our pledge to “never forget.”
And
that can best be done by working to ensure that the horrors of war are, as
impossible as it seems, erased from the Earth.
Sadly,
the world seems to have done very little on that front in the past few years.
In 2014, in what must be seen like a betrayal of our war dead and every
veteran, the Institute for Economics and Peace reported that the world had been
getting incrementally less peaceful every year since 2008.
That,
sadly, bucks a global trend against conflict that had been taking place since
the end of the Second World War.
And
things have not improved since that study. The organisation’s 2019 Global Peace
Index found that deaths from conflict are up by 140 per cent since 2008.
The
cost of war and conflicts is measured not just in blood, but in a loss of
prosperity that dims the hopes of survivors for a better future. The economic
cost of violence on the global economy in 2018, the institute says, was a
staggering $14.1 trillion.
At
the same time, the United Nations refugee agency reported in June that the
number of people fleeing violence is the highest recorded since the Second
World War.
On
this day, of all days then, we owe it to the war dead and veterans to remember
the hard-won lessons of war.
To
do that we must practice what was learned 75 years ago when American, British
and Canadian troops stormed the Normandy beaches in the largest seaborne
invasion ever undertaken. It showed what can be accomplished when allies work
together, and was a crucial turning point in the Second World War.
Yet
the world has not kept its promise to support the multilateral organisations
set up after the war to keep the peace
Organisations
like the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the International
Criminal Court and even the European Union are under attack by a new generation
of dictators and authoritarian leaders.
““To
live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” “They shall grow not old, as we
that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. / At
the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.” “The
living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.”.”
Telegraph
