This editorial piece is by our founder and director of the Atlante delle Guerre e dei Conflitti del Mondo, Italian journalist and traveller Raffaele Crocco.
Information is a building brick. It is a phrase we use often and always write with conviction.
It is a fundamental brick for many things. It is for democracy, which does not exist without good information, because information generates substantiated opinions. It’s a building brick for the freedom of individuals and communities: good information creates the tools to be free. It is a brick in building Peace, which is born, feeds and becomes systematic if good information sustains and supports it.
For these reasons, at the Atlas of Wars and Conflicts of the World, we thought it was fundamental to grow, to be even more present in the World. We have done this by opening our home window and looking outside. Last January we started doing so by launching the website www.atlasofwars.com, which from London tries to tell the story of the causes that lead to wars, the chronicle of disasters and the positive actions that are taken. Now we continue with this first full edition of our printed Atlas, for the very first time in the English language.
For twelve years now, we have been working on this project as a whole, reworking our tools and language. We have processed data, we have told stories, we have become angry at injustices, we have denounced the absence of rights where and when it was needed, we have supported the ideas of reconversion, of environmental protection.
For twelve years we have been telling the horror of war in order to grow the culture of Peace. Our editorial line – as both writers and editors of this project – is this. We say this with loyalty and transparency. We say this because we respect our readers, all readers, even those who do not share our work.
This new part of our old adventure is another piece in this puzzle that we are patiently building. I truly hope it will find the same consensus that we have received for what we have done so far.
