Most of the literature emphasizes the correlation between location (topography), human activities (in a social, relational or communitarian way) and related meanings (cultural, moral or ideological ones) towards a more meaningful “sense” of space. The model space by Edward Relph (1976), outlined in his fundamental Place and Placelessness, provides keys to address the notion of space (physically and figuratively) from the point of view of the relations you can engage and the (social and moral) meanings you can single out.

A human need of any nature, in fact, exists in the extent to which it is associated to a place, which is a physical or a conceptual space, and connected to a texture of a social relations, which is a kind of common ground for actions and interactions. If we choose to ignore this need and allow the forces of displacement to continue undisturbed, then the future can not be more than an environment where places (presence of places, sense of places, memory of places) will not have any importance and relations will be downgraded up to make human meanings, feelings, and relations disappearing.

If we choose to transcend displacement, this can generate a potential for the development of a positive environment (geo-human) where the places “are for” people, representing and hosting a variety of human experiences and cultures, relationships and sociality. Which one, among these possibilities, or even if there are further ones more, can not be determined with certainty, but one thing is clear: if the world we live has a displaced geography, empty in places and experiences, or, instead of this, a human geography, full of significant places and meaningful links, the responsibility will be exclusively ours.

The lesson we can learn from this is especially a lesson for human security issue, for civilian defence and democracy topics: a place we can consider significant from the point of view of the human experiences and the human relations you can establish in, is also a secure and safe place, where the matrix of safety and control is no longer solely related to police stand and military check. This is a social achievement, if you think the topic in terms of civilian defence, human rights and, finally, peace work.

The European Parliament Recommendation B4-0791, issued in 1999, advices the Commission and the Council to set up a Civil Peace Corp and a Preliminary Feasibility Study for such a Civil Peace Corp (CPC) inside the European Foreign and Security Policy. The document recommends to activate a minimal flexible structure, in order to record, prepare and mobilize either NGO-based resources and institutional resources granted by Member States and to concur to their mutual coordination.

The CPC is conceived as a professional organization of European peace-oriented civil society, mostly inspired by non-violent vision, in charge of intervening after an expressed instance coming from local context-based civil actors, in the pre-conflict situation (prevision and prevention), in the on-going conflict situation (interposition and protection) and in the post-conflict case (unarmed and non-violent civilian peace-keeping and peace-building), with tasks such as violence prevention, mediation and social re-composition.

The European Parliament suggests a “standard composition” for a CPC made by:

• a little group made by specialized people with different qualifications and full-time employed with tasks for management and continuity (a board to manage, intervene, evaluate, link and collect studies and reports),
• a large group made by qualified people to send to missions one after another (like experts, volunteers and professionals, adequately prepared) for specific tasks, projects and missions, as professional peace operators.

The topics for an operational path addressed to CPC operators should be:

.   non-violent and constructive conflict management,
.   changes in the war and in the way to act the war in the history,
.   conflict analysis, conflict pre-assumptions and warnings analysis (war prevention),
.   history, contexts and circumstances about human rights and gross violations,
.   psycho-social aspects of discrimination, stereotypes and prejudices,
.   socio-anthropological aspects of “Majority/minority (M/m)” relations,
.   ways, methods and tools to change the “Majority/minority (M/m)” relations,
.   descriptions of experiences and activities of international Civil peace corps,
.   “conflict sensitive” economic cooperation and humanitarian relief in conflict areas,
.   project work for conflict management and peace-making approaches and actions.