Middle East peace starts with development

"Peace Starts Here" is more than a slogan. It raises challenging questions about peace itself at a time when the very notion of a just and durable peace is under threat and when the Middle East peace process needs all the support it can get from us, the humanitarian actors working on the ground.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is using this powerful phrase as the basis for an outreach campaign that explains who we are, but more importantly who are the 4.8 million Palestine refugees we serve and why our human development work with them, in the Arab countries and territories around Israel, provides a starting point on which peace � one day � can and will be built.

Peace Starts Here also raises some very practical questions about what you need to do to establish and nurture peace: it might begin with a signature on a piece of paper, but what next? Education? Opportunity? Prosperity? Security? Justice? And after all that, what next?