As long as we have had some form of social organisation we have had two paths along which people have walked to advance the human condition. One is that of governance. The other is that of enquiry.

The path of governance is for those who have chosen to accept some kind of mandate from their peers to exercise authority and to make decisions on behalf of their peers about how to regulate human relations and about how to distribute resources through the institutions and offices of a public administration. In the UK this is our Government. The proposed Ministry for Peace would then be an organ of this administration, charged with exercising its authority to bring about a just and peaceful society in a just and peaceful world.

The path of enquiry is for those who have chosen to scrutinise whether a given administration or government actually exercises its authority in the spirit of the mandate given them by their peers. In the Uk this is done through our elected parliamentary representatives as well as through diverse bodies and individuals within civil society. The proposed Commission for Peace would then be one of these bodies whose explicit business it is to hold to account our government, including its Ministry for Peace, with respect to its methods for bringing about a just and peaceful society in a just and peaceful world.

In any country that aspires to a democratic system of governance the government officers and parliamentarians alike are directly accountable to the electorate. Therefore any proposed Commission for Peace would be guided by the principles of good governance and constituted in such a way as to represent all stakeholders.

In any truly democratic society it is every person's responsibility to participate fully in bringing about good governance and in advancing the work of creating a just and peaceful society. We are all accountable for our actions. Here we are guided by the aspirations set out in the UN declaration of Human Rights and the UN Millenium Declaration on the one hand and by whatever principles we invoke to specify our human duty of care to one another.

It is up to us to ensure that what we do is done for the highest as well as the common good. Walking together along the path of ethical authority vested in a government while at the same time walking together along the path of ethical responsibility enacted through members of civil society will bring us closer to this goal. In this way we can bring about a society where authority and administration meet in an ethical embrace on the long hard road towards a just and peaceful world.