International Journal for Peace and Justice

Our first Special Issue comprises of select Conference Proceedings from Our Whole Society Conference held in Winnipeg (June 15-17th 2025) and other invited articles. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights was a hub for civic reflection and moral dialogue. The Arthur V. Mauro Institute for Peace and Justice at St. Paul’s College was honoured to collaborate with the Canadian Interfaith Conversation in co-sponsoring the conference. With the theme ‘Fostering Hope in a Divided World,’ the conference brought together scholars, activists, public servants, and faith leaders in a search for transformative solutions to today’s urgent social challenges. Our collaboration was intentional in that the theme for this Conference is directly aligned with Dr. Arthur V. Mauro’s vision for Winnipeg, namely, to be cultural center of hope. Hope is complex. It is more than an emotion, mixed with the expectation that peace, justice, and human dignity might be possible. It is more than a passive attitude. Hope is deeply enmeshed in social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. As a collective and active force, hope is a refusal to give up on imagining the possibility of a better world. Hope can, in other words, be a catalyst for real transformational change. In this Special Issue our authors share their stories and struggles with this phenomenon called hope.

ISSN 3110-9403