Dare for peace

It is possible to remain human amid the fragilities of our time.

The world, seen from certain angles, seems like an immense wound that never stops bleeding. Yet, there is a common thread that unites seemingly irreconcilable places: the borders between countries at or near war, the stage of a prison, and the hospital wards under the bombs of Gaza. It is the thread of those who have decided to "dare peace," not as an abstract slogan, but as a daily, methodical practice that penetrates the desperation of so many human contexts to find horizons of hope.

Filippo Grandi, who until December 31st was United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, has walked for years through the mud of refugee camps in many parts of the world. He knows that peace is an exercise in "total observation." While politics slides into a rhetoric that transforms human beings into numbers or threats, he has seen the best of humanity in the gestures of local communities, as he recently did in Sudan.
"There's an innate sense of welcome," he declares, recalling that solidarity is a force capable of resisting even the most brutal massacres. Daring to create peace, for him, means first and foremost having the political courage to act, but also the patience of a restorer who rebuilds, piece by piece, a destroyed mosaic.
It's a specialist's job, requiring perseverance, an antidote to the selective empathy that makes us cry over a nearby border and blinds us to others, as happens in Myanmar or Nicaragua.

From global horizons to the prison gates, Maria Grazia Isoardi, who admits she can't stand walls, has paradoxically found freedom precisely where freedom is denied. Co-founder of the National Coordination of Prison Theater and head of the Associazione Voci Erranti, she has witnessed how masks fall away in prison. Daring to find peace behind bars means practicing "non-judgment." It's a challenge to a society thirsty for vengeance, one that prefers to "make people pay" rather than heal. "Without a path to peace, prison remains a failure," she asserts with the strength of someone who sees human fragility exposed every day. Theater thus becomes a tool of liberation, a bridge that allows the "inside" to speak to the "outside," breaking down the granite-like stereotypes between inmates and guards. Peace here means giving a new chance to those who have made mistakes, because peace—simply, yet profoundly—benefits everyone. Maria Grazia recalled a disturbing fact: Italy has the highest recidivism rate, with 7 out of 10 inmates released from prison returning after their release.

Giorgio Monti, Emergency coordinator in Gaza, describes a reality that is "out of scale." But what remains of peace when the wind outside blows so strong it wants to destroy everything? It's not just war; it's an aggression that demands an inhuman sacrifice from the civilian population. As a doctor, he has a profound desire to establish a sort of alliance with his patients, a close encounter with pain. To avoid being overwhelmed, Giorgio anchors himself to something "beyond": for him, daring to make peace is a spiritual necessity. It is the unshakeable faith in being "surpassed by good," even when the dust from the rubble seems to say otherwise. "Nothing, after the war, is better than before," he says with the clarity of someone who has seen flesh torn apart. Only peace restores equal dignity to the parties; only peace allows us to make that qualitative leap that takes us beyond the logic of violence.

These three lives, so distant, converge on a single conviction: peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but a courageous, slow but determined construction.
A peace that thrives on choices and begins with the idealism of those who left for Thailand without internet, but with a great dream of knowing and working in the world, capable of discovering the authenticity of an actor in prison who sheds the mask of the criminal, strengthened by the faith of a doctor who heals under bombs.
Daring to achieve peace means stopping the denial of violence in all its forms and beginning to conjugate, with effort and perseverance, the verb "to remain": remaining human, remaining present, remaining capable of seeing in others—be they refugees, prisoners, or enemies—the same right to dignity. It is a daily, silent, never-ending task. But it is the only one that finally makes the world a habitable place.
 

Renato Bonomo
Focus
NP February 2026