The world is full of tensions and conflicts; whether for economic, ethnic, religious or territorial reasons, wars are unfortunately a constant in the evolutionary history of our planet. However, it is necessary, for the proper development of our Society and to put the welfare of the individual first, to arrive at a social condition of peace. States must be encouraged to cooperate with each other rather than fight each other, and disputes must be resolved through agreements rather than through arms and force.

Promoting a culture of peace means, therefore, putting human rights first and rejecting weapons as a means of conflict resolution so that a Society characterised by theabsence of tension and fearcan flourish.

Common funds to promote peace can include projects on issues directly linked to the rejection of weapons and everything related to violence(weapons, military procurement, oppressive regimes, nuclear power) or to comply with international regulations on the subject, dictated by the resolution of geopolitical conflicts and the disarmament of 'non-conventional' weapons (nuclear, cluster bombs, anti-personnel mines).

Sustainable investors use different management strategies:
The Exclusion Approach: Funds exclude any type of holding that is linked to military procurement or the production or sale of conventional or unconventional arms, and holdings linked to states with oppressive regimes or that do not respect human rights.
The Normative Approach: Funds take particular account of international regulations aimed at regulating geopolitical conflicts and eliminating unconventional weapons (cluster bombs, anti-personnel mines).

We use 47 criteria to assess the importance of the theme of peace in our universe's mutual funds.

We find a balance between ESG Risk management and Impacts assessment strategies, with instead a large preponderance of the use of Screening strategies as the main assessment tool. The most frequently used strategy is theexclusion of weapons (conventional and unconventional)from its investment universe.

Measuring the adverse effects of investments in relation to Peace is a difficult, even contradictory task.
In fact, all states invest in arms to watch over their own security, so even Europe cannot afford to have a policy as pacifist as Costa Rica (which divested its army in 1948).

The European Union, however, has required sustainable funds to measure two particularly significant aspects:

• Exposure to controversial weapons:
  The Share of Investment in Society investees involved in the production or sale of controversial weapons (chemical and bacteriological weapons, nuclear weapons, anti-personnel mines, fragmentation bombs).
• Countries where you are invested subject to social violations.:
  The Number of countries where invested subject to social violations.

The European Union implicitly decrees that there is an "acceptable" way to carry out warfare, and an unacceptable one; at the same time, it intends to give preference to investments in states that respect the rights of peoples, and refrain from applying violence on their populations.