Seville Statement on Violence

The Seville Statement on Violence is an international declaration written in 1986 by 20 social sciences and natural sciences scholars from around the world, aiming to dispel the claim that war and organized human violence is inevitable due to biological factors. In 1989, the statement was adopted by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Later on, it was approved by more than 40 professional organizations, including the American Sociological Association, the International Congress of Psychology, the American Psychological Association, and the American Anthropological Association.

[Page 1541]The declaration contains several propositions on the linkage between war, violence, and biological factors. These include the following: a refutation of scientific theories seeing intraspecies organized violence as a biologically inherited tendency and as ...