The Norwegian peace researcher Johan Galtung was born in Oslo, in 1930, as son of a professor for military history and strategy. Based on the discussion with his father about the Second World War he began thinking about the causes of conflicts in young age. In Oslo, in 1959, he founded the world’s first peace research institute. He says: “To establish enduring peace it is not enough to analyze and react to past, consisting or upcoming conflicts. What we need is a global establishment of peace research as an academic discipline. We have to untangle this clew of conflicting interests, myths and misunderstandings, racist, religious or historical animosities, fears and prejudice and anything that will lead to violence.” Galtung speaks of three types of violence, which one can clearly differentiate: 

1. Direct violence in means of military power, which aims at killing quickly.

2. Structural (or systematic) violence, which is mostly rooted in economic and social structures and leads to long-term suffering and slow death.

3. Cultural (or political) violence, which legitimates the first two types by giving those in power the right to use violence against those they classify as enemies.

“Peace is the ability to solve conflicts in a non-violent, compassionate and creative way. A conflict is a complex mix of attitude, behaviour patters and contradictions. They are deep-rooted processes, deep-rooted psychological behaviour patterns and deep-rooted misunderstandings that mainly operate under the surface or in the unconsciousness of a culture. The deep-rooted cultural beliefs of a society comprise their mythological beliefs, historical traumata and also suppressed basic fears. Whereas the deep-rooted behaviour patterns of a society can be  traced back to fear and concern about securing the basic needs. To begin with, these patterns consist of the survival instinct, followed by physical health and a fundamental quality of living (food, cloth, homes, education), then the guarantee of physical and mental freedom and finally the integrity of cultural identity, which gives life its meaning. In my opinion, conflict regulation is only possible if the opposing sides recognize and accept each other’s basic needs."

Galtung is the inventor of the so-called Transcend-Method, which solves conflicts in three steps that transcend. “ When working for peace, one must pull threads across the multiple layers of inner psychic, interpersonal, social, domestic and international conflicts of interest. In order to change these violent behaviour patterns, we must intellectually question war as a political tool, learn peaceful strategies of solving conflicts and also guarantee everybody, anywhere their basic needs. To control conflicts of interest and contradictions we do not only need a strong international organization and a democratic process within the conflict parties, we also need creative approaches for a peaceful transformation.”

Based on this complex, multilayered and interdependent system for securing peace and overcoming violence,  Johan Galtung and his international network for peace TRANSCEND have formulated about a dozen combined approaches for the development of a peaceful world.