Peace education

Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.

In contrast to most, we’ll bring alternatives, solutions, hope and strategies for a better future. Times are dangerous, yes, but that only intensifies the need for constructive thinking and action! Jan Oberg, TFF director April 13, 2026 The new TFF Peace Pulse uses video messages in a new way: Max 3-5-minute-long comments, ideas or perhaps mini-lectures, all about peace – positive peace. We launch them today on April 13, 2026 with a carefully crafted visual aesthetic fitting the content. We hope to publish them regularly from now on. We launch Peace Pulse (PP) – for a number of reasons. The world is in chaos, and there are countless reasons to feel concerned, frustrated, even angry. The atmosphere is saturated with doom and gloom, with negative energy and rear‑mirror thinking, while vision, imagination, alternatives, strategies and genuine future‑mindedness remain in short supply. And without them, we simply can’t save the world. Looking at problems from a hundred angles will...

PART II — Publishing Peace in a System That Prioritises Militarism Jan Oberg, TFF director April 10, 2026 How TFF Maintains a Daily Voice in a Digital World Built for Noise This article is part of the series “TFF at 40″ and it invites you to learn about Four Decades of Publishing Peace. It takes a look at how a small, people‑financed peace foundation has communicated across four generations of technology — from wax stencils and fax machines to mass email and Substack — and why TFF continues to publish every single day in a system that rewards noise, conflict, and militarism. ◆ What it means to publish peace every single day in a digital system built for 24/7 news and other noise, confrontation, and militarism. How TFF’s independence, continuity, and global readership defy algorithms, donor cycles, and Western media censorhip — and why the Majority World keeps listening. When the...

Jan Oberg, TFF director April 10, 2026 How TFF Sent Peace Into the World Before the Internet Existed This article is part of the series “TFF at 40″ and it invites you to learn about Four Decades of Publishing Peace. It takes a look at how a small, people‑financed peace foundation has communicated across four generations of technology — from wax stencils and fax machines to mass email and Substack — and why TFF continues to publish every single day in a system that rewards noise, conflict, and militarism. ◆ Follow me on a journey through forty years of peace publishing — from wax stencils and hand‑cranked duplicators to the fax machine that never slept, and finally to the global reach of online publishing. This is the story of how TFF carried ideas across borders long before the internet made it easy, and why we chose independence over academic profit-making and...

To celebrate TFF’s 40th Anniversary, we have re-published – on TFF Substack – two earlier articles that were published here on The Transnational. They are: TFF at 40 #1 – Peace research at Lund University closed down in 1989: Why and how?And why I lived happily ever after. This is a piece of Nordic academic history deserving to be shared – from 2017. TFF at 40 #2 – TFF’s first few years – from 2017. This is the third ◆ Christina Spännar & Jan Oberg Founders December 31, 2025 One measure of good social science is its ability to anticipate the consequences of policies, trends and events. It is not unlike the work of a good doctor: diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment must be grounded in careful observation. If the diagnosis is flawed, the prognosis falters — and the patient’s chances of recovery diminish. Over the past forty years, TFF’s board, founders,...

“The future belongs to those who imagine it — not those who declare it doomed.” Silence is unusual for us. But even a foundation devoted to peace and ideas needs a pit stop now and then — a moment to refuel, re‑engineer, and prepare for the road ahead. Because the road ahead matters. On January 1, 2026, TFF turns 40. Four decades of independent research, education, and advocacy for the UN Charter norm that “peace shall be established by peaceful means.” And we are not celebrating with nostalgia — we are rebuilding for the future: We are bringing in new Associates, engaging in conferences across continents, and preparing to do what so few dare: offer solutions instead of despair. Because let’s be honest: describing the world as doomed is easy. It is also lazy, unprofessional, and unethical. Imagine a doctor telling a patient: “You’re dying, I can’t see what can...

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TFF board member If we’re being honest, with few exceptions, most of us have stopped counting the days since the genocide in Gaza began. We’ve also lost track of the death toll—especially the number of children. We can offer excuses: being overwhelmed with our personal and professional lives, the sheer intensity and frequency of global crises (Ukraine, trade wars, or the unbearable ease with which Trump is reshaping the world in his own image). But the truth is, sporadic mass protests in some Western cities, citizen petitions, intellectuals’ appeals, and podcast appearances do little to change the reality—or rather, the nightmare—of the people in Palestine. You’ll often read a post saying that eight billion people condemn the genocide that keeps going and going, seemingly with no end in sight. We blame ourselves for our helplessness, our despair, and our rage—at least those of us who refuse to forget the images...

Swanson is the founding director of World Beyond War and a TFF Associate. Fredrik Heffermehl (1938-2023) established the prize, which Lay Down Your Arms awards. This is the public announcement about the November 10, 2024, ceremony in Oslo. You are hereby cordially invited! WHO WILL RECEIVE THE PRIZE IN A PUBLIC CEREMONY ATLITTERATURHUSET IN OSLO, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2024.Participating Jannik Bonnevie (poetry), Xiangtian Liu (grand piano), Marie Flognfeldt Jones (song), Jakob Rekdal Jones (guitar). After lunch, David Swanson will introduce a roundtable on “How can we stop today’s militarization?” with among others Glenn Diesen, Ingeborg Breines, Jan Oberg, Thore Vestby, Mariell Leraand, Ola Friholt, Tomas Magnusson and Ola TunanderFree entry More about Fredrik Heffermehl, his impressive research work and last book, “The Real Nobel Peace Prize” here and here.

, I had the great pleasure of being Ania K’s guest on her YouTube Channel. Here is a link to it – and I want you to use the link to access it on YouTube and not here. The amusing thing is that it’s been viewed by 11,000 people in a few days, and less than a week later, there are 160 comments, 99,99 % positive about the whole thing. I note a frequent comment from Ania’s viewers: Where have you been hiding, Jan? How come I did not hear about him before and that sort of “we never heard about him…” comments. This is striking after having been the co-founder and director of the Transnational Foundation since 1986 – and quite active in doing research, on-the-ground conflict mitigation work and having written thousands of articles, book chapters and comments. But I’ve heard it before and here are some reasons: One,...

TFF Associate and more… Luna Rossa: Sacred Blood, Cycle Wisdom – an art journal and peace offering – publication. Here is the pre-order campaign and free online events on feminine health & power themes with a deep cyclical understanding of how inner and outer peace can combine.. I’m inviting you… We may think we live in modern, advanced times. On many accounts, including the fact that we still solve conflicts through wars on this planet, we are not.  Menstruation is still a taboo in many cultures around the world, being associated with impurity, shame, and guilt for being a woman. Even though access to sanitary products has increased in many countries, education about menstruation as something to be embraced rather than ignored and medicalized is still lacking. The very ability to give life and reproduce the species that menstruation is a sign of becomes a sign of inferiority or, in other...