Mario Luis Fuentes
The unjustified Russian aggression against Ukraine, which in February marks two years since its beginning, as well as the conflict of the State of Israel against the terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip are the most noticeable conflicts in the international arena. However, the world is far from peaceful, and the worst thing is that there are regions that could “burn” even more, and others that could enter into international conflicts or civil wars.
According to the UN, “large-scale” conflicts are now active in Burkina Faso, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar, Nigeria and Syria. In this regard, it must be said that, according to a number of studies, a conflict in the category of war is understood to exist when at least a thousand combatants die in battle or battle. They are classified as military conflicts for territory or for achieving control of the country, when confrontations reach 25 thousand battle deaths per year.
Based on these parameters, it is estimated that the number of deaths in military conflicts will increase by 97% from 2022 and by more than 400% compared to what happened in the 2000s, as documented in a BBC note signed by Ricardo Serna ( https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cprpn7re7dxo ).
There are also other areas that experience conditions of very high levels of gun violence associated with the presence of organized crime and fighting between military and police forces against criminal gangs that result in tens of thousands of deaths annually, as occurs in Mexico. a case where we have more than 30 thousand deaths annually due to violence, and between 2006 and 2024 almost half a million people died due to intentional killings, which, given the scale indicated, would place our country among the bloodiest conflicts on the planet .
As always painful, the worst consequences in societies at war and in areas with high levels of conflict are suffered by girls and boys, as well as the elderly, among other vulnerable groups who experience terrible bouts of suffering, fear; and the processes of grief and prolonged mourning due to the deaths of family members, neighbors and friends.
In the case of Mexico, we are faced with critical situations in which complex processes of violence are taking place against hundreds, perhaps thousands, of girls and boys. The first of these, perhaps the most noticeable, is associated with hundreds.
thousands of people orphaned by deaths caused by organized crime.
In this sense, there are studies that suggest the existence of more than 500,000 girls, boys and adolescents in this situation without any mechanism or institutional arrangement for their care, protection and inclusion in processes that help them heal and overcome the loss. also to prevent them from continuing to be trapped, when necessary, in networks of crime and violence.
Secondly, there are girls and boys who are members of families displaced by violence. Tens of thousands of people forced to flee their hometowns have faced threats, extortion, and outright attacks, in the worst form of new methods of “terrorizing communities” using drones.
Thirdly, we are talking about thousands of girls, and mainly boys, who were forcibly recruited by criminal gangs; but also cases such as those that recently occurred in the municipality of Ayahualtempa, where photographs were taken of armed children instructed to fight criminals.
The “normality of a world at war” is in fact an unacceptable anomaly for a global society with the potential to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality; create a vaccine to combat a new and deadly virus; but it cannot solve the most basic problems of hunger, preventable diseases and build lasting peaceful relations and a new logic of diplomatic relations between countries that lead to peaceful resolution of conflicts.
Despite this, we are at one of the most terrible stages in terms of destructive capacity and the use of force to destroy, subdue, destroy; and provoke fear, despair and lack of future prospects in entire generations who lose everything in a few seconds due to the thrill of bombs and the triggers of assault weapons.
We are faced with an always critical situation in which the danger of the potential use of nuclear weapons remains. The arsenals of the Soviets, Iran, Israel, India, Pakistan, Korea and the United States of America remain enormous and continue to indicate likely enemies and potential targets of mass destruction.
Such a world, by all accounts, is ethically unviable. Because it is subject to the logic of power and in “last resort” scenarios; there is always the possibility of madness and debauchery; possible reign of arrogance and chaos, which in our case and in our context would be very far from what
the primordial chaos that Hesiod spoke of, and it would rather resemble the chaos that the keres, that is, deaths and representatives of human destruction and annihilation, should bring to us.
It’s time to change course and stop the “March of the Madmen”; We face the real possibility of becoming the first generation to definitively say “no” to war; and this began to take the first steps towards the ideal of building an eternal world, put forward several centuries ago by Kant. It depends only on us.
Researcher at PUED-UNAM
Source: Aristegui Noticias

John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.