One of the greatest challenges facing our time, is the urgent need to create a culture of peace: not just the absence of war and conflict, but an enduring social change agenda that centres equality and respect for all.
We have not yet known peace.
What we have, even at the best of times, is simply the absence of war. The absence of conflict.
But never peace.
We are a society defined by globalisation – built on the back of ongoing colonisation, the forceful and hostile takeovers of lands from indigenous peoples right across the world. The forceful and hostile removal of people from their homes and from their lands to lands far removed from songlines, from bloodlines, from home. And it is from these violences that we have created our legal systems, our justice systems, our ways of governing, and informed our beliefs and our values on who is deserving and who is not.
These systems, these beliefs have contributed to the ongoing oppression and violence experienced by First Nations people, by women and children, people living with disability, folk from diverse, migrant and refugee communities.
These systems, these beliefs have led armies to invade lands far from home; have justified and excused the bombs and bullets and the invasions. They have led to discourse that describes the murder of civilians as ‘casualties’: as though the loss of life was by chance or accident, rather than a deliberate tactic of war.
But even in the absence of war or conflict or genocide, it remains that we live in a world without peace. We live in a socio-economic landscape that upholds extremist male violence, rigid gender stereotypes and prioritises global market economies over people and lands.
It is a world where presidents with sexual violence rap sheets, get re-elected, where women’s bodily autonomy does not exist, even when we’re dead: the rapid repellation of women’s reproductive rights and access to abortions has occurred in countries not at war.
It is a world where our closest allies have laws that make it legal for adult men to marry girl children, and where our political leaders shake hands with Jeffery Epstein’s closest associates and do trade deals with countries who sniper children.
We are witnessing, seemingly overnight, an unprecedented escalation in violence right across the world – no country, nor its people immune.
These violences are happening here on our own doorstep, in our own backyards and in our homes.
The recent racist fueled marches that swept across the streets of Melbourne’s CBD and led to a violent attack on Camp Sovereignty, the fatal attack on two young children making their way home from the bus, the 50 women who have been murdered since January 2025 – should give us all pause to reflect on how we, as a society continue to condone violence.
The killing of women globally has more than doubled in 2023, than the previous year. Every 10 minutes a woman is murdered. We know that these figures have continued to escalate with Sudan and Palestine reporting extensive ongoing conflict and genocide.[1]
Sexual violence is also on the rise, both here at home and globally. In 2023, UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence soared by 50 per cent: 95 percent of the victims were women and girls, close to have half were perpetrated against children: 98 percent of committed against girl children.
In 2024 Australia recorded an 11% increase in the number of sexual assaults recorded by police. This is the 12th year of increased reporting of sexual assaults and the highest ever in the 31-year history of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
These are the reported cases. We know that for every recorded case, many more go unrecognised, unrecorded and unreported.
And as we see the bombs drop, entire cities wiped off the map; as we see and hear of harrowing stories of violence coming out of Sudan, and as we receive what seems like almost daily headlines of yet another woman murdered in her home by a person she once trusted, it can be overwhelmingly difficult to maintain hope for a future that is free from violence, where people can live to see gender and social equality.
And yet, it is possible.
Because we are surviving. The change-makers, the peace-makers, the humanitarian workers, the social workers, the social justice protesters, the everyday person making a stand against violence. We outnumber those who seek to do us harm.
And we refuse to go away, refuse to be silenced and refuse to give up hope. Wars, conflicts, oppression and genocide have never managed to silence us.
And while we grapple with meeting the very real and present needs of those most vulnerable in our communities to prevent harm, a harm inflicted more often than not, by the very system in which we operate, we resist.
We fight back.
Not with swords, or bullets or bombs, but instead with determination and a commitment to non-violence, to be the change we seek to see in the world.
Each and every day, we, the change-makers, the peace-makers, the humanitarian workers, the social workers, the social justice protesters and the everyday person making a stand against violence continue to resist and through non-violent action make lasting change. We’ve done it before, we will do it again. And again, and again.
Before 1975, family violence in Australia was not a crime. Similarly, until the 1990s married men were allowed to rape their wives in this country; immune from criminal charges, unless she could prove it was ‘aggravated’. When is rape not a violence?
The much-needed legal reforms that exist today, that recognise family violence and raping your wife as a crime, did not happen in a vacuum and importantly it did not come from the behest of the government: it came from the people. And importantly, it came from the non-violent resistance of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Family and sexual violence services exist in this country because of these trailblazing women. Women and community health centres exist because of these trailblazing women.
And to this day, our feminist principles guide our non-violent resistance and inform our advocacy and dissent.
And while our specialists services work tirelessly to meet the ever-increasing demand, we know that our work is far from over.
Reforms can only take us so far when the system itself is built on oppressive, colonial practices. Each and every year, we face funding cuts, we face legislative reforms that seek to pull back on hard won rights: most notably we see the trickle-down effects of global politics in our states and territories as the race to the bottom of reproductive rights takes wind. We are dismayed at South Australia’s recent consideration of repelling reproductive rights for women to access abortions. It follows fast in the footsteps of hospitals right across Victoria and New South Wales. How long until our dead bodies are also forced to grow the next generation of children? In solidarity with Adriana Smith and her family, we make a stand that no woman should be forcibly kept on life support to maintain a pregnancy. No one should be forced to keep a pregnancy against their will.
Our governments cannot end violence against women in a generation, when that violence is written into its own legislation.
Violence begets violence.
The only way to end violence is through non-violence.
It will take the dismantling oppressive, patriarchal systems, and it will take time.
But time starts today. As it did yesterday and as it will tomorrow.
It’s time to raise our voice, this International Day of Non-Violence. It is time we stand with the peace-makers, the humanitarian workers, the social workers.
It is time to stand with the social justice protestors, with the everyday person making a stand against violence.
It is time to stand with the victim survivors. It is time for us to stand up for those who can no longer stand for themselves – whose lives have been forcibly cut short through violence.
We are stronger together and collectively we can be the change the world needs.
Let us lead with kindness and love – that is the greatest power of all.
[1] UN Women 2024. Global Database on Violence Against Women and Girls. Available from: data.unwomen.org
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