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Reconciliation as a critical component of peacebuilding project usually does not get prioritized; to imagine reconciliation in tandem with philanthropy will sound preposterous to many. Let us re-imagine: “money” is the mover and shaker of everything, big and small, of significant and insignificant. Everything is a commodity which necessitates monetary transaction of high-significant or low-significant value. Use of money is a symbolic manifestation of the meaningfulness, commitment and engagement we attribute to any activity we engage in, whether material, emotional or intellectual. Peacebuilding is a lifetime ever-evolving project with many components to ti, some very visible, others are not visible, some demonstrable, others very subtle, but crucial linchpins.

Since World War II multi-lateral international relations emanated from political science dominated the peacebuilding efforts. Eighty years later it is proven to be an unmanageable patchwork in search for a solution.

The grand idea of globalization and the aspirational global peace is facing an increasingly fragmented world at war with each other, either an economic war or an actual one with sophisticated and mutually destructive weapons. The forces for conflict resolution, reconciliation and peacebuilding are feeling a gut punch and the wind taken away from them in the prevailing and evolving geo-political realities. The forces of warmongering have the global megaphone.

“We are from Guatemala, we are on our way to the United States, my friend, myself and my 5-year-old daughter. I am 24 years old and a widow. My husband was killed when my little girl was only 2 years old because he worked for the Guatemalan police. After that, I went to live with my mother and when she died I worked as a maid in the house of some elderly Spanish gentlemen, where my daughter and I lived, until their death, recently. Not having a place to live or a job, my friend told me “let’s go to the United States”, I was afraid because we have no papers and no money. But she told me she would support me.

The ordinary person, the one who is not an expert and has not studied the “sacred texts” of law believes that the essence of the law is justice. Concept that seems self-evident.

Of course, people know that there can be problems. Corrupt judges or politicians can use the law to commit injustice, and use their power for sleazy self-interest. But this only indicates a disease, a pathology of the system.