Editorial invitado. El trabajo social frente a la guerra: un clamor de paz y justicia social

Abstract

What is most troubling about an era is not only the violence it endures, but the violence to which it begins to grow accustomed. Few moral defeats are as grave as this. As of April 2026, the wars ravaging Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen and Syria, together with the offensive by the United States and Israel against Iran and the armed violence tearing Haiti apart, sketch a bleak map of devastation. All these conflicts point to the same moral failure, repeated under different names: the collective inability to protect human life where it falls under threat.

Faced with this outlook, social work does not cry out from the margins, but rather from the very core of its identity. Indeed, it arises wherever a society decides that human dignity cannot depend on force, money, origin, status or the power of some over others. It is recognised, in short, wherever each person is regarded as bearing inherent worth, where human rights are not a concession but a foundation, and where vulnerability does not diminish anyone, but calls for care, protection and shared responsibility.

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