The figures for Europe in table 5 above clearly highlight the impact of the first and second World Wars. No single conflict in the second half of the 20th century has matched the ferocity and violence of those two wars in terms of the numbers killed. However, if violence is measured by the number of conflicts rather than by the number of casualties, the situation changes. Since 1945, there have been over 150 major armed conflicts in the world. In 1993, there were 42 countries with major conflicts and another 37 that were suffering from some kind of political violence. Of these 79, 65 were in the Third World. This highlights one of the most distressing realities of our time - the fact that these wars have been fought in those countries which could least afford them. These conflicts have had devastating consequences, and not just in terms of direct casualties. The figures provided in the tables on these pages indicate the numbers directly and indirectly affected. But conflicts affect communities in a great many other ways. Scarce resources are pumped into weapons, into attending to the needs of those injured or forced to flee. Resources are diverted from providing much needed services in areas such as nutrition, basic health, education and housing. Wars and conflicts usually involve the younger age ranges, who have most to contribute to society but who are diverted from that contribution. Conflicts leave behind deep scars which can divide and debilitate a country for decades and even longer. The environmental legacy of conflict can also be long-term.

Conflict affects US in so many ways, much of it visible and obvious, much of it hidden but nonetheless real. The UN estimates that over $800 billion (about £600 billion) is spent annually on arms sales, much of it in the Third World. Along with the United States, many European countries are amongst the world's largest arms dealers. The UN contrasts this figure with the additional $30 to $40 billion extra which would need to be spent each year to seriously tackle poverty and its impact globally. Many of the violent conflicts that have occurred in the past few decades have their roots in ethnic conflict. It is now one of the realities of conflict that it is as likely to be the result of internal disagreement within a state as between states. In 1992, the New York Times identified 48 ethnic conflicts (including that in Northern Ireland), located as follows:

nine in Europe;

seven in the Middle East and North Africa;

15 in sub-Saharan Africa;

13 in Asia;

four in Latin America.

Professor John Darby of the University of Ulster considers these figures to be an underestimate, because they exclude conflicts which a broader definition would include. For example, "they exclude racist tensions in Europe, native American discontent in the United States of America; disputes about aboriginal rights in Australia and New Zealand . . . The newspaper's decision to classify conflicts by the nation state in which they were located disguised the complexities trapped within the enormous territories of India, China and Russia, each of which contains a myriad of ethnic tensions."

However, in contrast to this map of conflict, there is also a mosaic of hope for peace. Such hope is not based on wishful thinking but on the hard-won agendas of organisations such as the UN, individual governments and their leaders, peace negotiators and community organisations worldwide. Some of these agendas include:

the fact that world military spending has steadily declined since the mid-1980s yielding a "peace dividend" of an estimated trillion dollars;

despite its many failures and its constant under-funding, the UN has completed many successful, or partly successful, peace-keeping missions - for example, in Cyprus, El Salvador, Rwanda and Haiti;

the growing emergence of community-based peace movements throughout the world, most often focused on specific conflicts - for example, in Brazil, Nicaragua and the United States;

the beginnings of progress in conflicts considered to be firmly entrenched in the recent past - for example, South Africa, the Middle East, the Basque country and Mozambique;

the beginnings of the peace process here in Ireland and between these islands;

the growing strength of the women's movement as well as that of the environmental movement.

At the heart of many of these peace processes is a growing recognition that violence and conflict are mutually destructive - destructive of the perpetrator as well as the victim. There is often a recognition that violence and conflict seldom achieve people's long-term objectives. There is often the beginning of a willingness to talk, to listen and to genuinely hear, and on that basis to negotiate and to compromise. There is also often a growing recognition that compromise doesn't always mean losing out.

"Violence and conflict are destructive of the perpetrator as well as the victim"