An Island of Peace Requires a Culture of Peace

An Island of Peace Requires a Culture of Peace

13 January 2026

In higher circles, there appears to be growing reflection on positioning Curaçao as an international platform for peace and peace negotiations. This idea recently gained additional weight when the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs suggested that the ABC islands could play a role in potential negotiations concerning Venezuela (Curaçao Chronicle, 2025). It is an ambition that appeals to the imagination. At the same time, it raises a fundamental question: can a society that struggles internally with division and unresolved injustice credibly present itself as an island of peace?

The conviction that peace does not begin at the negotiating table but within society itself has long guided my thinking. Around 2010, my late aunt, Annie Kamperveen, walked into my university office. She was already advanced in age, but resolute. Her message was simple and powerful: Curaçao should celebrate Peace One Day, the initiative established by UNESCO to mark peace worldwide each year on 21 September. The initiative faded after a few years on the island, yet the moment itself was meaningful. It underscored that peace is not solely the domain of states, but must be locally sustained, rooted in civil society (Goede, n.d.).

On Curaçao, UNESCO is primarily associated with the World Heritage List and with debates on education and mother tongue instruction. Less widely known is that peace lies at the very core of UNESCO’s mandate. This is clearly expressed in its foundational statement: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed” (UNESCO, n.d.).

My own engagement with UNESCO deepened in 2008, when I was involved in the evaluation of twenty-five years of associated membership (Goede, 2008). In 2010, I travelled with the then Minister of Education to UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris for the plenary session. There, a final and successful lobbying effort resulted in the establishment of two prestigious UNESCO Chairs in Curaçao. Although little structural follow-up was given to these chairs after a few years of activity, the experience offered valuable insight into UNESCO’s philosophy of peace and the importance of institutional anchoring (UNESCO Nederland, n.d.).

My reflection on war and peace, however, reaches further back, to my student years in the late 1980s. Those were turbulent times. I studied polemology during a period marked by mass protests against nuclear missiles and by debates over renaming the discipline Peace Studies. Peace was not an abstract ideal; it was a concrete political and societal challenge.

In more recent years, peace-oriented thinking on Curaçao has taken on new forms. An additional dimension has been added to the annual celebration of Liberation Day on 5 May. A committee chaired by former politician and former Minister of Education Omayra Leeflang organizes peace tables, where dialogue on peace takes place in the spirit of UNESCO. At the well-maintained Plasa di Pas (Peace Square), an annual public lecture on peace is also held. I had the honor of delivering this lecture in 2023 (Goede, 2023).

I concluded then that such gatherings in public space connect people, strengthen social cohesion, and thereby promote peace. They are moments for remembrance, for forgiveness, for healing, and for continuing to build together.

That insight is more urgent today than ever. Forgiveness and healing are not abstract moral concepts. They are directly connected to Curaçao’s history of slavery, whose legacy continues to shape social inequalities, institutional mistrust, and collective self-perception. At the same time, they relate to more recent experiences, including political persecution and forms of social exclusion that have occurred since 2010 and have left deep scars on the fabric of society. Without acknowledgement of these injustices and without space for restoration, sustainable peace remains unattainable.

Following the signing of the Onderlinge Regeling, many have come to recognise the need for a shared vision to further develop our peaceful society and to contribute credibly to peace in the region. That vision exists in Vision Curaçao 2030, our interpretation of Society 5.0: a human-centred society in which technology—including artificial intelligence—serves people, rather than the other way around (Goede, 2023).

Each of us represents a piece of Curaçao’s puzzle of success. The island can only move forward if we are willing to place our pieces on the table and connect them carefully and justly. This requires a willingness to come together, to communicate, and to build bridges.

My point is simple yet fundamental: anyone who wishes to position Curaçao as a platform for world peace must first invest in internal peace. Internal peace requires acknowledging historical and recent injustices, restoring damaged trust, and institutionally embedding inclusion, cohesion, and social justice. Only then can Curaçao truly become a credible island of peace—rather than a façade.

Miguel Goede

References (APA)

Curaçao Chronicle. (2025). Dutch foreign minister says ABC islands could host Venezuela negotiations.https://www.curacaochronicle.com/post/local/dutch-foreign-minister-says-abc-islands-could-host-venezuela-negotiations

Goede, M. (2008). UNESCO evaluation [Document].https://www.academia.edu/78123687/UNESCOevaluation25Nov2008_1_0doc

Goede, M. (n.d.). Hoe het maatschappelijk middenveld verbindt: tante Annie.https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hoe-het-maatschappelijk-middenveld-verbindt-tante-annie-goede/

Goede, M. (2023). Libertat pa krea pas: konekta de puzzel, in elkaar zetten.https://werkgroepcaraibischeletteren.nl/libertat-pa-krea-pas-konekta-de-puzzel-in-elkaar-zetten/

UNESCO. (n.d.). Constitution of UNESCO. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO Nederland. (n.d.). UNESCO Chair Caribbean Small Island Development.https://unesco.nl/unesco-leerstoel/unesco-chair-caribbean-small-island-development