Why I Write About Peace Today

Part One — Omid Attardimaj

Nearly twenty years of my life in Iran were connected with studying law, working in court, practising law, mediation, and arbitration; twelve of those years were spent practising as a lawyer. Handling a wide range of cases brought me into contact with the lives and concerns of many people—from families caught in disputes to people in business and those holding positions of social and public responsibility. Each case opened a window onto a part of society that I might never have had the opportunity to understand so closely outside this profession.

Among these experiences, some disputes occupied my thoughts and my work for years. To understand them, I needed to pay attention to the relationships between people, their concerns, their interests, and their social circumstances. These encounters gave rise to questions about justice, power, and trust—questions that have led me to study and write about peace today.

In one particularly complex dispute, I repeatedly found myself having to look beyond the case file. Many parties were involved, and the further I went, the more questions arose: What had brought these people to this point? What were they afraid of? Why did the dispute keep taking on a new form instead of being resolved?

Legal knowledge was essential to my work, but it could not answer all these questions on its own. I tried to examine the situation from social and psychological perspectives as well, and to better understand the role of power and the relationships between those involved.

During those years, I saw how fear can lead people to conceal the truth; how power without accountability creates opportunities for abuse; and how vulnerable trust can be when it is not accompanied by understanding and responsibility. Gradually, I began to think more deeply about what justice means in people’s lives. For someone worried about meeting their basic needs, that question carries a different urgency.

My interest in peace is rooted in those experiences and questions. During my life in the Middle East, I had often felt the absence of calm and security. Later, beginning again in Luxembourg gave me an opportunity to recognise the effect of a safer environment on my own life: being able to study, learn, and make plans for the future, even while carrying wounds from the past.

Today, alongside my mediation work and the conversations I conduct about peace, this is where I want to begin writing—with the experiences and questions that prevented me from seeing human disagreements solely within the boundaries of a legal case.

In this series, I will share part of that journey with you each week. The question that stays with me for now is this: before disagreement turns into harm, what do we need to notice and take seriously?