We live in a fractured society - or do we?

MAKE YOUR PEACE: Press Release

Peace Direct supports the work of local people building peace in conflict areas – including in the UK. We commissioned a survey (ICM online Omnibus Survey of 1,040 adults, fieldwork conducted 22-25 August) of how adults in the UK experience conflict in their lives to give us some background information to shape our Make Your Peace campaign.

Everyone experiences conflict in their lives – everyone looks back and wishes they had handled conflict differently. If Valentine’s Day makes it easy to say ‘I love you’ , Make Your Peace Day (21st September, UN International Day of Peace) makes it easy to say ‘I’m sorry, let’s make up’, using inspiration from frontline peacebuilders who are literally risking their lives in conflicts such as Somalia and Sri Lanka.

So where is the conflict for people in the UK? If you listen to the rhetoric about ‘our broken society’ you might locate it in day to day incivility, from neighbours, on the road and so forth.

But when asked who they had had a conflict with in the last twelve months, people are at least as likely to mention private sector suppliers such as insurance companies and banks, (10%) and shops (6%), as neighbours (8%) and motorists (6%).

This contrasts with the situation in conflict areas, where tensions between neighbouring groups, or between returning refugees and those occupying their homes, need to be dealt with swiftly if they are not to reignite violence.

Here in the UK, most of the conflict is much closer to home – with partners and other relatives. Nearly half the sample had had a ‘falling out’ with a family member, and 16% with a friend of colleague.

Men and women experience similar levels of conflict, but women are more likely to be stressed by it, with two thirds of women having been seriously stressed by conflict in the last year, compared with under half of men. And the difference is greatest when it comes to friends – women are five times as likely as men to have been seriously stressed by a friendship.

There’s good news for older people – conflict with partners peaks between 25 and 34, and experience of conflict generally declines steady with age, with each cohort experiencing less conflict than the next youngest. Don’t live in Scotland though – 60% of Scots had experienced conflict, compared to less than half of people in Wales and the South West.

Who do people go to for help with conflict? Not surprisingly, women score highly here, with women most likely to turn to friends (32%), and men to their partners (26%). This reflects Peace Direct’s experience with peacebuilders in conflict areas – although most of the formal political power is held by men, women like Asha Hagi MP in Somalia, Dekha Abdi in Kenya, Ashima Kaul in Kashmir and Dishani Jawayeera in Sri Lanka, have the power to bring people together and make peace.

All in all, the survey paints a positive picture of the UK – less than 1 in 5 people said they found it hard to resolve conflicts in their personal lives. Yet even here, almost 90% of people agreed that ‘Society should put more effort into resolving conflicts between people to stop things getting out of hand.’

How much greater is the need in areas of violent conflict, where often a quick intervention, costing a couple of hundred pounds, can save lives. In Make Your Peace, Peace Direct is offering people in the UK a toolkit to resolve their own personal conflicts, and an opportunity to give directly to peacebuilders in conflict areas, where conflict is literally a matter of life and death.