Swords Into Plowshares

Etched into a prominent wall across from the United Nations building in New York City are the following words from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” This wondrous vision has, for millennia, been expressed through countless heartfelt prayers from people around the world. Nations would be recruited, through the UN, to participate in a global peacebuilding effort in which each participating nation would reduce its military spending by 1% and place those funds into a Swords into Plowshares Fund administered by the UN. The Fund would be devoted to the development of water resource systems in places of constant drought, programs of reforestation, and new plantings to provide carbon sinks to help abate climate change and address the many problems that continue to leave so many of our fellow human beings languishing in lands that have productive potential but that lack the financial resources to fulfill that potential.