At Christmas, the world can seem a little more humane than usual – even in wartime.
One such glimpse of peace appears each year in what is widely considered the world’s longest-running communist insurgency.
Fought in the Philippines, the guerrilla conflict between the Maoist New People’s Army (NPA) and the government is set to enter its 57th year in 2026 and has claimed some 60,000 lives.
But once a year, the fighting tends to pause as both sides down their arms for Christmas.
The tradition has been observed in many years since at least 1986, a rare moment of restraint in a world that is now more violent than at any point since the Second World War.
According to the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), the number of conflicts involving states reached its highest level since 1946 at the end of last year. In all, 61 conflicts were active in 2024 – nearly twice as many as 20 years ago.
Last year was also the fourth-most violent since the end of the Cold War, surpassed only by the three preceding years in terms of battle deaths.
The spread of Islamic State franchises since 2014, along with the heavy toll of wars in Ukraine and Gaza, were among the main drivers of these spikes, said Siri Aas Rustad, a researcher at PRIO.
Conflicts now tended to last longer than in the past, she added, while peacekeeping operations and peace processes had declined.
The peace order is fraying
Experts see a discouraging broader trend behind this shift: the moribund state of the Western-grounded liberal order and multilateral institutions like the UN.
That order, grounded in ideas of universal human rights and democracy, encouraged dispute resolution through non-violent means, said Oliver Richmond, a leading peace researcher at the University of Manchester.
But the US-led western allies failed to establish a genuinely fair global system and often prioritised their own interests, inviting challenges, he said.
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Emerging powers such as China, Turkey, Russia and Gulf states had styled themselves as peacemakers but were pursuing their own systems of domination, Mr Richmond argued.
Conflicts from Ukraine to Sudan now grind on as outside actors tolerate – or enable – violence in pursuit of a “victor’s peace”, he added.
Small pauses can have larger meanings
Against this bleak backdrop, Christmas ceasefires in the Philippines offer a glimpse of an alternative approach.
The tradition of halting hostilities over the holidays – reflecting the biblical message of peace on earth – goes way back. The most famous example came in 1914, when British and German troops crossed trenches during the First World War to celebrate Christmas together.
Such brief ceasefires rarely ended conflicts, but they aided the “long-term trust building needed to establish long-term… peace agreements”, said Ms Rustad.
In the Philippines, it has become custom that both sides independently declare unilateral Christmas ceasefires without signing an agreement.
Even former president Rodrigo Duterte – notorious for his brutal “war on drugs” and now facing the International Criminal Court – occasionally called Christmas truces, promising “quietude and serenity” for Filipinos during the holidays.
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The motives were not purely altruistic as “Christmas ceasefires were good propaganda on both sides”, said Patricio Abinales, a political historian at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
“With the guns temporarily silenced, rural communities could celebrate Christmas peacefully – as could government troops in their camps and the NPA in their guerrilla zones,” he said.
Peace from the ground up
Mr Richmond, the peace researcher, argued that peacemaking was more successful in any case when informed by such grassroots practices and local communities, rather than driven by meddling geopolitical powers and institutions.
“The victims are directly affected by the conflict and tend to have a clearer understanding of what a peaceful settlement may require,” he said.
In 2023, a Russian-proposed truce for Orthodox Christmas was rejected by Ukraine, which suspected Moscow was seeking time to regroup.
“There was clearly not enough trust to agree on this,” said Ms Rustad. Russia declared a brief unilateral ceasefire in May this year but Ukraine branded it a farce, saying attacks continued.
Ultimately, ending protracted conflicts comes down to political will, according to Mr Richmond.
The tools for peace are well-known: major powers could oppose violence and invest in “truly multilateral institutions like the UN, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, mediation and international human rights law”, he added.
“But they are unwilling to do that even as societies clamour for peace,” Mr Richmond said.
A fading tradition?
Away from that geopolitical tug-of-war, the Christmas tradition of peace in the Philippines still survives – just.
This year, as in 2023, the NPA declared a four-day ceasefire covering Christmas and New Year, even if it wasn’t reciprocated by government forces.
Prof Abinales said the insurgency had been badly weakened and was becoming increasingly irrelevant – which may eventually bring the decades-long conflict to an end.
“If the current trend continues, Christmas ceasefires will become a thing of the past,” he said.
