Ivan, a Ukrainian soldier convalescing in the port city of Odesa, has carried out four combat deployments since volunteering to serve his country in March 2022. By far the worst, he says, was his experience in Kherson.

“It’s a horror,” murmurs Ivan, his voice hoarse from exhaustion and chain-smoking. “You hear the sound of explosions 24/7.”

(Ivan, like the other soldiers in this story, requested to be identified using only a single name for privacy and security reasons.)

But neither the experience nor the injuries he endured have dissuaded him from returning to the front. Ivan wants to go back as soon as a doctor gives him the all clear.

For in the heart of the Kherson region, along the embattled banks of the Dnieper River, a struggle rages that embodies the spirit of sacrifice and determination of Ukraine’s civilians-turned-soldiers.

Initially intended to be a launching point from which to outflank Russian forces in the south, the hard-won foothold on the Dnieper’s eastern bank is now a critical defensive front. Outgunned and in swamplike terrain, Ukrainian marines must withstand Russia’s relentless artillery and mortar fire if they are to retain that ground.

“It’s the safest and narrowest point for Russians to cross, so it is important for us to be there to stop them from advancing and for us to use that point to advance further,” says Ivan, who has only seen his wife and daughter for 10 days since the war started. “My family gives me the courage to fight. ... My message to those there is hold on.”

A crucial bridgehead

The battle to get a foothold in the east bank of the Dnieper began with the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in the summer of 2023. The resulting floods rendered Ukraine’s initial battle plan obsolete. Ukrainian special forces adapted, spending months strategizing to secure a crossing. With the help of speedboats and helicopters, they succeeded in gaining a tactical foothold across the river in November.

Mstyslav Chernov/AP/File

Ukrainian service fighters board boats on the shore of the Dnieper River near Kherson, Oct. 15, 2023.

Holding that bridgehead has been costly. The tide of war shifted in Russia’s favor over the winter as Ukraine fought with dwindling Western supplies. But Ukraine appears determined to hold on, deploying at least three marine brigades and several artillery units in the zone.

Breaking out from the bridgehead would allow Ukrainian forces to outflank Russian defensive lines and pave the way on the southeast front toward Crimea, territory that Russia annexed in 2014.

“That would radically change the situation in Ukraine’s favor and to Russia’s disadvantage,” says Mykola Bielieskov, research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies. “That’s why Russians are so desperate to reduce this bridgehead to zero.”

Ukraine does not comment on combat losses. But the battle for the east bank of the Dnieper is widely perceived as one of the most costly of the war, due to the combination of difficult terrain, superior Russian firepower, and Moscow’s willingness to throw large numbers of soldiers into suicidal assaults that Ukrainian soldiers have dubbed “meat attacks.”

Mr. Bielieskov estimates that the Russians are devoting 15,000 to 20,000 troops to this part of the front line to keep up the pressure, twice as many soldiers as Ukraine has. While the defenders have not advanced, as planners had hoped, he considers their success in preserving the bridgehead a major achievement.

“We need to highlight the level of sacrifice and commitment of the Ukraine marine corps that is engaged in this kind of battle,” he says.

A dangerous crossing

In the unforgiving terrain of the Dnieper River’s east bank, evacuation is a perilous endeavor fraught with danger at every turn.

That’s how Ivan was wounded in April, ferrying fresh troops in and evacuating wounded soldiers from the east bank. The drone attack that almost took his life as he navigated the river’s treacherous waters under cover of night is a moment he recalls with chilling clarity.

On the riverbank behind him, buildings lay shattered and crumbling, their skeletal remains serving as a haunting testament to the ferocity of a war now in its third year. Amid the ruins, soldiers sheltered in the few surviving basements, their only sanctuary from the incessant barrage of artillery, Grad rockets, and drone attacks.

Dominique Soguel

Ivan, a truck driver-turned-soldier, is recovering from combat in the port city of Odesa. He was wounded as he piloted a boat to evacuate fellow soldiers from the east bank of the Dnieper River April 1, 2024.

A badly wounded soldier lying on the boat guided Ivan as he steered away from the wreckage. Ivan himself had incurred shrapnel wounds. In the chaos of it all, a Russian drone, its ominous silhouette barely discernible against the darkened sky, zeroed in on the boat. “Jump!” yelled the recumbent soldier. That warning proved lifesaving.

“We were all wounded, but we were able to reach the other bank and get evacuated,” Ivan recounts, sitting at an outdoor café in Odesa’s picturesque port.

As veterans vividly describe, the landscape itself is a formidable adversary. Craters, debris, and uneven ground hinder every step. Most evacuations are carried out not by combat medics, but by fellow soldiers. Sometimes they carry their wounded comrades for over half a mile before reaching an evacuation point.

Why they fight

The marines know when they deploy that they are heading for a fierce battle.

“Fear and cold” is how Dima, a native of Zhytomyr, sums up his experience on that front. He was wounded in a grenade explosion in an earlier deployment.

“It’s the hardest place I have served,” he says, but he has resolved to push on no matter the cost. “The most important thing is that the enemy suffers huge losses there,” he adds.

Many of the soldiers serving in the marine corps had ordinary jobs not so long ago. Maksym, from Orikhiv, was a welder and was transferred to a brigade of marines after volunteering his welding services to the army. He was angling for a short leave in order to marry his partner.

“I worry about my children – that they will stay alive and not end up on their own,” says the father of three, sitting with his thoughts.

Andrii, a former construction worker who is now a marine combat medicine trainer, is also torn between duty and family, but finds solace in a morning text exchange with his son. The boy just turned 12 and was disappointed not to see his father for the celebration – a disappointment allayed with promises of wonderful gifts. Such moments of fleeting normality, and contact with home, help feed the marines’ resolve.

The cost of holding on against Russia on the Dnieper bridgehead is high. But the cost of defeat would be even higher.

“I don’t want my family to see the kinds of things that happen here,” says Andrii. “I want my son to grow up in a free country and never have to bear arms. That’s why I fight.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.

WJCL/AP

Police respond to the scene of a shooting near Ellis Square in Savannah, Georgia, May 19, 2024. An argument between two women led to a gunfight that left 11 people hurt in a busy tourist area of Savannah, one of five weekend shootings in the city, authorities said.

Late one recent Saturday night, one of Savannah’s famously moss-draped squares exploded in gunfire. Eleven people were wounded; none died.

Four people have now been arrested in the hunt for the Ellis Square shooters. But a larger question looms for cities like Savannah, Georgia, a mostly Democratic city in a Republican-led state. As American gun laws ease and weapon production increases, what role, if any, do local lawmakers have in making sure people handle weapons responsibly?

In April, Savannah’s City Council unanimously passed an ordinance making it illegal to store a gun in an unlocked car, punishable by up to 30 days in jail. Some 233 guns were stolen from cars here last year.

But Savannah is swimming upstream. One man from Jesup, Georgia, has already filed suit against Savannah, citing a law that allows citizens to sue cities that enact gun ordinances. The state has at the same time removed any permitting and training requirements for public gun carry. Meanwhile, American gun manufacturers made 11 million guns in 2020, twice the number a decade earlier, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a Justice Department domestic law enforcement agency. 

“When you allow [weapons] to be everywhere, you can’t be surprised when they show up,” Mayor Van Johnson of Savannah said at a recent press conference.

Matthew Pearson/WABE/AP

Georgia Democrats stand on the south steps of the Capitol calling for a special session to address gun violence, May 10, 2023, in Atlanta.

States hold upper hand over cities

The struggle to address evolving norms around guns is particularly challenging for blue cities in red states, where looser state laws are shackling municipalities’ ability to address public safety around guns.

Forty-two states, covering 72% of the U.S. population, now have “right to carry” laws that allow people 18 and older to carry a gun without a concealed weapons permit training.  

That has left cities from Savannah to Columbus, Ohio, to Philadelphia struggling with how a permissive gun culture can lead to community-shattering results.

“Cities ... understandably want to fight back against that,” says Adam Winkler, a professor and author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right To Bear Arms in America.” 

The debate has intensified as gun violence spiked during the pandemic. Though violent crime across the United States has ticked down since then, it remains above the prepandemic average.

In states with tighter carry rules, about 9% of gun owners report carrying their weapons with them on a regular basis. In states like Georgia, about 20% of gun owners carry their guns with them. Georgia law does bar those who have felony convictions from carrying guns. It also allows law enforcement to report specific mental health records into the background check system.

“One way around the ... impasse between gun violence and enacting stricter gun laws is to have flexibility at the local level,” says Robert Spitzer, author of “The Gun Dilemma: How History Is Against Expanded Gun Rights.” “It’s short-sighted of the Georgia state government to not let Savannah do some of these things,” he says.

Meanwhile the number of guns, particularly semiautomatic-style weapons, has exploded, experts say. Often they are in untrained or criminal hands. That surge has come as the Supreme Court has made guns harder to regulate and states have relaxed gun laws and bolstered self-defense laws.

Florida, for example, can fine local officials who pass gun laws $5,000. In 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a set of laws that turned the Lone Star State into a “sanctuary state” for gun rights, expressly prohibiting state agencies and local governments from enforcing any new gun laws.

Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto/AP/File

People who have died from the extraordinary phenomenon that is gun violence in America are mourned in Houston, with a powerful installation of 4,164 vases. Each vase represents a Texan killed by a gun in 2020.

Patterns of gun violence by state

Gun rights proponents say increased gun violence is rooted in liberal policies that make it harder for police to root out crime.

“If more people are carrying guns, there will be an occasional incident involving otherwise law-abiding people,” says John Monroe, a gun rights lawyer in Dawsonville, Georgia. “But that’s at the fringe.” 

Yet some research finds that gun proliferation – legal as well as illegal – drives gun violence.

A January 2024 Rand Corp. analysis found that gun prevalence results in higher gun violence rates. Increased gun carry also leads to the Savannah problem: more gun thefts. More than a million guns were reported stolen between 2017 and 2021, according to Justice Department data. 

Conversely, experts say, states that allow cities and towns to pass gun laws – such as Hawaii, Massachusetts, and New Jersey – have the lowest per capita gun violence rates for the U.S.

In states like Georgia, which prohibits gun regulation, violence has become more pervasive.

One example: Before 2020, some 36% of all Atlantans lived less than a quarter mile from a fatal shooting. During the pandemic years, that rose to 58%, according to a recent New York Times investigation.

Alyssa Pointer/Reuters/File

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp makes a purchase from Adventure Outdoors gun shop after speaking during a news conference where he pushed for a new state law to loosen requirements to carry a handgun in public, in Smyrna, Georgia, Jan. 5, 2022.

Local empowerment in Illinois and Colorado

The looser the state’s overall gun laws, the less effective a city’s regulations will be, says Stanford University law professor John Donohue. But passing even marginal restrictions can yield benefits, he says. 

That seems to be the direction many cities are going. In the process, they are testing state laws preempting local action and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that shifted defending gun laws onto the government.

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther in 2022 declared gun violence a public health crisis. But he quickly got tangled in Ohio state preemption challenges.

That same year, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney signed an executive order banning all firearms from local parks facilities. The state’s preemption law made the order unenforceable.

But there have also been successes.

Last year, the Evanston City Council successfully passed the Safe Storage Act, making gun owners potentially liable when their weapons are used by others to commit crimes.  

In 2021, a court blocked a Boulder, Colorado, assault weapons ban. Two weeks later, a man used such a weapon to kill 10 people at a Boulder grocery store. Later that year, Colorado became the first – and so far the only – state to give regulatory power back to communities.

For Savannah, “the real question is, why is the state so opposed to the fact that people would have to lock guns in cars when we know people steal them?” says Professor Winkler, who teaches constitutional law at UCLA.

Still, Savannah’s new ordinance “may be primarily a political point,” he adds. “It’s hard to imagine how this law would have a huge effect on gun violence even if enforced. There are already so many guns in Savannah.”

Along a 5-mile stretch of Vancouver’s waterfront, where million-dollar homes enjoy views of ice-capped peaks and gleaming sky rises, three Indigenous-led housing projects are emerging in one of the world’s most competitive markets.

On one end, there’s leləm̓ – which means “home” – where 1,200 units are organized around street signs written in English and the Musqueam language. On the other, the Squamish Nation is building Sen̓áḵw: 6,000 units in perhaps Vancouver’s most coveted 10 acres of undeveloped land.

And in the middle sits the biggest – and most controversial – of all: Jericho Lands, a 90-acre development led by the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations that will turn this low-density section of Vancouver into one of the most bustling.

When completed, the projects will provide bold visibility to Indigenous groups that have long gone unrecognized in cities across North America. But their leaders also recognize they aren’t just dabbling in real estate. They are reclaiming agency and space – and demonstrating new pathways to apply Indigenous knowledge on sustainability. That knowledge has been increasingly heralded as a solution to the climate crisis, and now valued as a better way forward for cities.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Councilor Wilson Williams poses by an Indigenous mural at the youth center on the Squamish First Nation reserve in Vancouver, April 29, 2024.

“We have a voice; we’re present now,” says Wilson Williams, elected councilor for the Squamish Nation, at a community center on their reserve on the north shore of Vancouver. “We’ve become leaders today in regards to the challenges we’re facing, [like] the major housing crisis in Vancouver.”

“We’re no longer out of sight, out of mind in our own village,” he says.

“Taking back their land”

The initiatives frame a stark juxtaposition. British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples saw centuries of dispossession as Europeans resettled them onto reserve lands mostly outside present-day Vancouver.

The Sen̓áḵw location, for example, is “the most heartbreaking land that was taken from our people,” says Mr. Williams. On the edge of the waterfront, this meeting place where beaver and salmon abounded was slowly expropriated amid construction of railways and increasing industrialization until the Squamish were put on a barge in 1913 and sent to existing reserves.

Since the 1970s, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh have variously been engaged in negotiations and lawsuits to reclaim reserve land illegally expropriated by the Canadian government. Sen̓áḵw sits on land returned to the Squamish in 2003. The three nations, acting in partnership as the MST Development Corp., and the developer Canada Lands collectively acquired Jericho Lands in 2014.

“There definitely has been a rise in nations taking back their land,” says Maggie Low, a professor of Indigenous planning at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Fishing boats float in Fisherman’s Wharf in Vancouver. The city has some of the most expensive real estate in the world. The Sen̓áḵw development, where the ancestors of the Squamish First Nation had a village, is near this site.

As developers, the Indigenous groups see an economic and social opportunity to address one of the city’s most pressing needs: a lack of viable housing. In September, one estimate found that by 2030, at its current pace of development, British Columbia will be 610,000 units of housing short of what would have been considered affordable a decade ago.

Both Sen̓áḵw and Jericho Lands will be significantly taller and denser – their biggest towers at 59 and 49 stories respectively – than the surrounding neighborhoods of mostly single-family homes. Together with Heather Lands, another collaboration between MST and Canada Lands, the projects on the rise are slated to add more than 18,000 homes, including thousands of social and affordable units, to Vancouver’s housing stock.

A sixth of Sen̓áḵw’s 6,000 units will be earmarked affordable. Of those, 240 will be set aside for members of the Squamish Nation. And between social housing and below-market units, 30% of the units at Jericho Lands will be designated affordable.

But the benefits extend well beyond housing, says Chief Jen Thomas of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. “It’s also a great economic opportunity for our member-owned businesses,” she explains. “We have plumbers; we have cleaners. We have drywall companies. So they’re going to have procurement opportunities to work on all of these projects.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Chief Jen Thomas (left) and cultural liaison William George-Thomas stand in the Tsleil-Waututh administration building in North Vancouver. The Tsleil-Waututh Nation is involved in Jericho Lands, the largest Indigenous real estate project to date in Canada.

Through the projects, the city sees a concrete way to advance its priorities on Reconciliation, the Canadian concept that frames the modern relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Vancouver’s government has been working closely with the First Nations and their co-developers on bringing the projects through the approval process, says Matt Shillito, the city of Vancouver’s acting director of planning.

“We’ve been looking at less traditional ways to approach a project,” Mr. Shillito says of Jericho Lands, “being more flexible in our typical city policies and bylaws, listening to the nations and their objectives for the importance of the site.”

The spirit of the longhouse

As developers of the largest projects currently underway in Vancouver, the nations have seized an opportunity to imprint their values on the city. 

Sen̓áḵw is on track to become Canada’s largest residential property to achieve net-zero carbon emissions, with thermal energy systems that recover heat from sewer mains. It will provide just 1,000 parking spots for its 6,000 units.  

Its 11 residential towers feature bold, rippling vertical axes, alluding to the area’s coastal forests, mountains, and Squamish longhouses – another nod to principles around maximizing community. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Jericho Lands is highly ambitious and would bring major changes to Vancouver, but it is generating much controversy among some residents of the city.

“One of our values, actually, is the spirit of the longhouse, where if you want more people and more families to live in there, you just keep building out,” says William George-Thomas, cultural manager for Tsleil-Waututh Nation. “Now, however, that’s not a very modern concept. ... With all these skyscrapers and tall buildings, we’re turning it vertical.”

Plans for Jericho Lands have been guided by a “slow, store, restore, flow” approach to water conservation throughout the site, says Elisa Campbell, Canada Lands’ vice president for real estate. That means construction that works to replenish the watershed and offer spaces for “quiet moments of spirituality” by ponds and swales.

The new “nontraditional” library on the site will be styled as a “house of learning,” centering around oral history traditions rather than around the Western conception of “reservoirs of books,” Mr. Shillito says.

“We want to tell the story of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people,” says Mr. George-Thomas.

Building community?

The projects are not without opponents. Local groups such as the Jericho Coalition say the projects need to be smaller to mitigate environmental impacts, and that their societal impact is overblown.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The Jericho Lands development is planned to be built on this 90-acre area in Vancouver’s West Point Grey neighborhood.

“Reconciliation is being used as a way to paper over a kind of development greed and also the political need to show that they’re doing something about the housing crisis,” says Susan Fisher, a member of the Jericho Coalition.

Still, MST’s development strategy in Vancouver has received significant attention globally. The developers have been fielding calls from other Indigenous groups from as far away as Australia and New Zealand on how they’ve facilitated it, Ms. Campbell says.

They’re only getting started. MST currently oversees 160 acres of land in the Vancouver metro area. “We’re going to be part of the biggest Western developers across Canada within the next five, 10 years,” Chief Thomas says.

And as the first towers rise to meet the Vancouver skyline, they could serve as a global lesson on coexistence moving forward.

The projects are “actually helping to create more of a sense of community and understanding,” says Professor Low, “that we are all living on these lands, and there are ways to do that [that] support Indigenous sovereignty and that support the overall thriving of Vancouver, of British Columbia, of Canadian society.”

Hunched over a weatherworn hand-crank organ in his repair shop, Roman Dichi explains why the work of Mexico’s organilleros has endured for a century and a half. 

“This music evokes happiness, tradition, and childhood memories of going out to a plaza with Mom and Dad – or of falling in love,” says Mr. Dichi, president of the organ-grinders union in Mexico City. 

He has played the instrument since the 1980s, when his in-laws introduced him to the family business.

“It’s a classic sound of the city,” he says.

Organ-grinders, especially ubiquitous in Mexico City’s historic center, date back to the presidential administration of Gen. Porfirio Díaz in the late 1800s. The dictator’s adoration of all things European inspired Mexico’s elite to import organs into their homes. Eventually, the instruments moved out of private parlors and onto the streets as public entertainment. They were used to draw customers to circuses, with the help of monkeys, and to keep soldiers in good spirits. Over time, the European songs inside the machines were replaced with revolutionary ballads and local classics, such as “Las Mañanitas,” the Mexican birthday song.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

César Castillo plays his instrument near Mexico City’s central Zócalo square. “I get to interact with people,” he says.

Despite these deep roots, today the tradition is at risk.

Not everyone is charmed by the tip-seeking musicians. A crank organ’s sound – akin to the pitchy puff of air from a slide whistle – can be loud. In the wrong hands, an organ can be positively off-key, an assault against the ears. Police harassment of organ-grinders is common, as are quarrels with annoyed residents and business owners.

The organs are also expensive, with many organilleros renting them from the small stock available locally. And upkeep gets costlier with each passing year. The heavy instruments can get damaged while being wheeled down crowded city streets or warped by weather and time. 

Edgar Alberto Méndez Hernández has been slowly turning the crank on his organ in the capital’s historic center for some 15 years. He nets about 250 pesos (a little more than $15) on a good day after paying 250 pesos for his rental, he says. 

“I feel plugged into the city,” says Mr. Méndez. “There’s something special about being a part of the action on the street that I would miss if I did anything else” for work.

After several hours working along a bustling sidewalk near the Bellas Artes theater, he pushes his black-and-brown antique wooden organ on its dolly and heads several blocks toward the Zócalo square. When he shows up at this even busier – and potentially more lucrative – spot, the two young men already playing organs there take their cue, as if in a dance, and move to a side street. These shifts are imperceptible to the public but tediously negotiated with the union’s help.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Elsi Sastre (left) and Cresencio Torres work as a team of organ-grinders in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City.

Organilleros’ work is hardly stable. They are part of the nearly 60% of the Mexican working population who are in the informal labor force. They “live off of tips,” notes Yuleina Carmona, the Mexico City coordinator for Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, an international nonprofit. Shoeshiners and strolling mariachi bands have fixed rates for their services, but organ-grinders churn out music whether they are paid or not.

“It’s a different relationship with the public,” Ms. Carmona says, adding “the city wouldn’t be the same without them.”

In March, Mr. Dichi’s union submitted a proposal to Mexico City’s Congress to have organilleros’ work recognized as a cultural heritage. It was the fourth attempt – and this time it was approved. The legal recognition is expected to translate to better protection on the street from police harassment and greater support for organ-grinders in their disputes with residents and businesses. Ms. Carmona notes it will also give organ-grinders “a seat at the table” – a say in how Mexico City uses funds for cultural activities in the center.

“I like the street, being in the middle of everything,” says César Castillo, whose wife suggested he consider this line of work two years ago. He left his job in private security to crank an organ, which he rents, with a cuddly teddy bear perched on top. A colleague weaves through the crowd of pedestrians with his hat outstretched for tips.

“I get to interact with people,” Mr. Castillo explains. “A job well done can make them smile.” 

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Roman Dichi, head of the organ-grinders union in Mexico City, shows how to repair a crank organ’s drum in his workshop.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Parts of an organ are covered in dust in Mr. Dichi’s workshop. The instruments were imported to Mexico from Europe.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

A girl tips Mr. Méndez. Organ-grinders are part of the nearly 60% of the Mexican working population in the informal labor force.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Coins sit on top of Mr. Méndez’s antique organ while he works. On a good day, he nets about 250 pesos (a little more than $15) after expenses.

Reuters

Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze religious leaders and participants take part in an interfaith march for human rights and peace, in Jerusalem, Israel, June 3.

In March, roughly six months into the war in Gaza, the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry published a paper exploring “the possibility of reconciliation – that is, of refiguring relationships to open up a space for dialogue to create pathways to heal the ruptures.” The study, by Paul Komesaroff, executive director of the group Global Reconciliation, noted that “the rich history of partnerships and collaborations between Jews and Palestinians provides a robust infrastructure” for peace between the two estranged communities.

A similar theme resonates in the work of this year’s winner of the Templeton Prize, which highlights discoveries that yield "new insights about religion." The prestigious award was given to Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a South African scholar who has explored ways to nurture deep empathy between victims and perpetrators of conflict.

Her particular focus is on the power of forgiveness to expunge hatred and historical harms. Such an approach is now widely acknowledged as essential because of wars – from Ukraine and Gaza to Myanmar and Sudan – that have resulted in extensive harm to innocent civilians.

Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela “has a remarkable grasp of the personal and social dynamics that allow for healing in societies wounded by violence,” stated Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation. “Her work underscores the importance in contemporary life of cultivating the spiritual values of hope, compassion, and reconciliation.”

Serving on South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s, Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela gained insights into both the needs of those who suffered under decades of apartheid and the motivations of those who upheld racial separation through violence. Her life work, she said following the award announcement Tuesday, involves understanding “the conditions necessary to restore the values of what it means to be human – to want to preserve the dignity and life of the other.”

The award affirms values that marked South Africa’s transition from systemic inequality to a democracy in 1994. In national elections last week, voters broke 30 years of governance dominated by a single party. They demanded that political leaders be held accountable through a power-sharing coalition. Yet in a society still striving to move beyond a divided racial past, ordinary citizens must also reach out to others who differ with them.

“There’s no better time to shove away prejudices, pull up a chair with a supporter of that party you can’t stand, and talk with them about how we can work together for a brighter future,” wrote Ian Siebörger, a senior lecturer of linguistics at Rhodes University, in the Mail & Guardian newspaper on Thursday.

In her work, Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela offers ways to avoid “the passing on of grievance and a sense of victimhood from one generation to the next.” The “reparative quest,” she told Time magazine this week, is “a constant journey to repair and to heal” through atonement and forgiveness. It is not a singular moment. Victims and perpetrators move each other beyond the boundaries of their own experiences.

Forgiveness empowers those who have been harmed, she wrote, while “genuine remorse humanizes perpetrators and transforms their evil from the unforgivable into something that can be forgiven.”

For all the wrongs – either real or perceived – between Israelis and Palestinians, the hope of a stable peace can begin by remembering the many partnerships that existed between the two societies, stated Dr. Komesaroff. “In these dark times, when for many all hope seems to be lost,” he wrote, “it is important to remind ourselves of the resources for peace and reconciliation, painstakingly assembled over many decades, that, despite the obstacles, remain tantalizingly within grasp.”