10, 11. (a) What did the UN proclaim in 1986, and what was the response? (b) How many “religious families” assembled at Assisi, Italy, to pray for peace, and does God answer such prayers? Explain.

¹⁰ In an effort to bolster the hopes of mankind, the United Nations proclaimed 1986 to be an “International Year of Peace,” with the theme “To Safeguard Peace and the Future of Humanity.” Warring nations were called upon to lay down their weapons, at least for one year. What was their response? According to a report by the International Peace Research Institute, as many as five million people were killed as a result of wars during 1986 alone! Though some special coins and commemorative stamps were issued, most of the nations did little about pursuing the ideal of peace in that year.

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The “Peace” Paradox

Though 1986 was proclaimed by the UN to be the International Year of Peace, the suicidal armaments race escalated. World Military and Social Expenditures 1986 supplies these sobering details:

In 1986 global military expenditures reached $900 thousand million.

One hour’s global military expenditure would have sufficed to immunize the 3.5 million that died annually from preventable infectious disease.

Worldwide, one person in five lived in gnawing poverty. All these starving people could have been fed for one year at the cost of what the world spent for armaments in two days.

The explosive energy in the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons was 160,000,000 times greater than that of the Chernobyl explosion.

A nuclear bomb could have been delivered having an explosive power more than 500 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Nuclear arsenals contained the equivalent of more than one million Hiroshimas. They represented 2,700 times the explosive energy released in World War II, when 38 million people died.

Wars had become more frequent and more deadly. War deaths totaled 4.4 million in the 18th century, 8.3 million in the 19th century, 98.8 million in the first 86 years of the 20th century. Since the 18th century, war deaths have increased more than six times faster than the world’s population. There were ten times as many deaths per war in the 20th century as in the 19th.