On Sunday 16 July the European Union signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Tunisia. Migration management is one of the five pillars of the agreement: the EU pledges to provide an additional EUR 100 million to Tunisia to strengthen border management, search and rescue operations at sea and 'anti-trafficking' measures in order to reduce the number of arrivals from the country. The securitarian rhetoric and the fight against the 'root causes of migration' waved by the Commission barely disguises its intention to block all forms of mobility from Tunisia to Europe, with the consequence of preventing those seeking protection from accessing the right to asylum.
Since the beginning of the year, 44,151 people have arrived in Italy from Tunisia, and only a fraction of these are Tunisian nationals: these are in fact, increasingly, people from West Africa who, in the North African country, are experiencing a situation of growing racism and violence, primarily at the hands of the institutions.
The signing of the agreement comes to validate the actions of the Tunisian authorities in recent months. Institutional racism, which also draws on theories of so-called ethnic substitution, has taken the form of serious violations of fundamental rights by the authorities:
The signing of the Memorandum with Tunisia not only ratifies the European Union's complicity with Tunisia's violent policies towards migrants, but also takes place in total disregard of the rules and principles that - at least on paper - bind the EU itself.
Under the conditions described so far, how can Tunisia be considered a safe country for third country nationals or even for its own citizens? It is not even clear how it can be considered a 'safe' place for the disembarkation of people rescued at sea, especially for citizens of other countries.
Organising, supporting and financing the systematic interception of people fleeing by sea - this is the clear objective of the reinforcement of the Tunisian Coast Guard established in the agreement - means forcing people stranded at sea to return to a country that, in addition to being plagued by racist violence and characterised by a heavily authoritarian turn of events, lacks a system capable of guaranteeing the protection of the rights and protection of foreign citizens present on its territory.
In this sense, we believe it is essential for international organisations such as IOM and UNHCR to distance themselves from this situation, so that they do not become an instrument of legitimisation and production, in the final analysis, of the violations that will result from the implementation of the Memorandum in a similar way to what is happening in Libya. Their presence and activity in Tunisia cannot be considered a real guarantee of protection for migrants, nor can it obviate the blatant violation of the right to asylum that the blocking policy implemented by the agreement represents. Mechanisms such as resettlement or humanitarian corridors have demonstrated their insufficiency in Libya. Moreover, they have entailed a shift from the level of rights to the level of granting pochз the possibility of leaving the territory of a state, including their own, to seek protection. Similarly, the instrument of voluntary repatriation, in the way it is implemented, presents profiles of serious illegitimacy and constitutes a form of disguised expulsion.
With due differences, the dynamic that is developing seems to have disturbing features in common with the Libyan model both in the way it is implemented and in its consequences. As for the former, this is yet another agreement between actors of international law that is dangerously removed from the rules of treaties and internal constitutional systems: no publicity during negotiations, no control, no ratification by representative bodies. As for the consequences, this agreement also has the effect of systemising indiscriminate violence as a means of deterring mobility, an increasing role for an unscrupulous Coast Guard, a systematic and progressive emptying of the right to asylum through humanitarian instruments that have no real impact in terms of rights.
In the face of this situation we ask
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These are times of high social conflict in Iraq, as evidenced by the mass protests that swept across the country in 2019 in what went down in the news as the Thawra Tishreen, the October Revolution. An uprising moved by a young generation of Iraqis tired of living in a country criss-crossed by conflict, which does not guarantee a future, and who fought to build the foundations of a democratic and inclusive state.
It is in this complex scenario that the role of civil society organisations becomes crucial in bridging the gap between communities and authorities at the grassroots level, trying to create change from below and promote constructive dialogue, ensuring respect for human, social and environmental rights as well as equal participation of men and women in community and political life.
To be most effective, however, local organisations need support. To make their way through the meshes of a complex bureaucracy and build autonomous and horizontal spaces of viability. External support that must be respectful, however, of country-specific cultural and social processes.
This is why the two-year project 'Tatweer', funded by the European Union, was conceived and implemented by our Iraqi colleagues. And it is being carried out by them, with great results.
"We want to empower Iraqi civil society organisations to have an impact in the promotion of human, civil and environmental rights; to enable them to respond effectively to the needs of the community, and to collaborate fruitfully with the authorities," explains Bahman, an Iraqi colleague we meet in Rome, who is visiting our headquarters for a few days.
"Iraqi organisations need to increase their advocacy capacities, provide adequate space for young people and women in leadership, the opportunity to learn how to operate, and the availability of spaces where they can meet and grow together. With this in mind, we have opened three centres: open and safe spaces for exchanges of best practices, meetings, workshops and seminars on human rights, environmental and gender issues,' she tells us.
The centres are now in Erbil, Basra and Mosul, the latter a Daesh stronghold in Iraq during one of the darkest pages of Iraqi history, and have already accompanied and supported the birth and work of more than 40 small local organisations.
"The first centre to open its doors was the one in Erbil, in the summer of 2020, right after the pandemic and the lockdown. In February 2021, we opened the one in Mosul, which operates throughout Nineveh and the areas liberated from Daesh. Finally, the one in Basra opened in May 2021,' Bahman says.
There are many fields in which the centre works to support organisations. First of all, legal advice: 'We have lawyers and experts who provide specific advice free of charge to cooperatives, voluntary groups, local NGOs and trade unions. We also provide support at administrative and management level. Everything we use for training is then made available online, through a platform, so that anyone can benefit from it and improve their work. After training members of organisations, we help them to access small tenders to make their intervention sustainable. We follow the whole process: from setting up the local organisation to accessing funds to project completion and advocacy,' he says.
"Our main objective is to support civil society in the creation of realities and structures that represent it in order to create change, so that they work effectively, transparently, democratically, respecting human and labour rights. Since we started, we have managed to accompany many people,' Bahman explains with great satisfaction.
To date, 24 micro-projects have been financed thanks to 'Tatweer'. Of these, 17 had to do with human rights and environmental issues.
Because in Iraq today, the question of access to rights remains central, especially for the generation born after the US-led invasion of 2003, which grew up with the promise of a free and democratic country, but still struggles with corruption, lack of work, and exploitation of resources. And with climate change, a scourge that worries young Iraqis in particular.
'Iraq today is one of the five most environmentally endangered countries in the world,' Bahman reflects. 'In addition to the consequences of climate change, which we face here as everywhere else in the world, there are also issues related to our context: pollution, the construction of the Turkish and Iranian dams that control the flow of our rivers - the Tigris and the Euphrates -, the severe drought that is affecting the south of the country, fossil fuels polluting the aquifers, and the despoiling of land for oil extraction. We are extremely worried,' he says.
And also in his opinion, after 2003, the challenges for Iraq have been, and remain, many. 'For 20 years, the Iraqi people have been trying to build a democratic system, but there are still many obstacles due to corruption, the lack of experience of the political class, and the rules of application of the constitution. The country continues to periodically fall into spirals of conflict compounded by tribal and inter-communal tensions. The Thawra of 2019 has shown that the new generations want real change. They want a state and a country they can take pride in. That is why it is so important to support civil society organisations: because it is the young people who animate them, trying to build change from below that does not come from above. They have lost faith in the authorities and no longer want to sit still and wait: they try to create change at least at the community level so that the generations that will come after them are not forced to live in the same present,' he concludes.
by Silvia Abbà - ICSSI* International Coordinator and author of the book 'My place is everywhere. Voices of women for another Iraq'.
Talking to young Iraqi women and men, it is surprising how much History - the one we read in school books - is intertwined with concrete personal stories, how great events have become embedded in their daily lives, determining their course, geography, and timing. Sahar Salam is a 29-year-old Baghdad woman, who has been working with Un Ponte Per for the past three years as the project manager of "Al Thawra Untha" (The Revolution is Woman), funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"I have lived my whole life in Baghdad, except for two years, since 2008, when my family was forced to move to another governorate. The first week after our return to Baghdad we received an envelope with bullets in it and we said 'Either we stay, or we leave for good'. We decided to stay and take our chances. Luckily it worked out well for us."
Sahar refers to the years of civil conflict that followed the US-led military intervention by the international coalition. The second Gulf War, which started in March 2003, now 20 years ago. She grew up in the new Iraq, in a country without dictators, formally democratic, where women were supposed to be - finally - free. Yet the protests that broke out in October 2019, bringing thousands of people to the squares of Iraqi cities, speak of endemic corruption, a lack of basic services and serious inefficiencies. They are a symptom of a deep crisis of legitimacy of the sectarian system inaugurated in the aftermath of the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the Ba'th party from power. Similar protests, however, had already erupted in previous years. The real novelty this time was the massive participation of women, in the squares and in the virtual spaces of social media.
"Before 2019, there had been several other, smaller protests that had no real effect. The October Revolution was a historic moment for feminism because women were at the forefront,' she says. Today, new generations are denouncing the distortions of what was supposed to be the new Iraq, and young women in particular are raising their heads to loudly assert their right to exist, to choose for themselves and their country.
"Being a feminist means making sure that women are treated fairly. To defend their rights regardless of background, religion, nationality,' Sahar explains. The voices of Iraqi activists and feminists guide us in the weaving of new alliances that are sorely needed today to build, together, a world in which we can all be free.
*Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative (ICSSI) is an Iraqi and international coalition of activists fighting for justice, respect for human rights and peace in Iraq. https://www. iraqicivilsociety.org/
"Together with my brother, we grew 8,000 trees: we had olive, lemon and vine trees. We lost 3,000 of them to Daesh (ISIS), because of the constant fighting. But little did we know that the worst was yet to come: this year we lost another 3,000 due to lack of water."
This was Ahmad's account to Daniela Sala, collected in a beautiful reportage published in the Guardian in 2021. Unfortunately, not much has changed since then, and northern Syria continues to suffer from a severe water shortage. The causes can be found in climate change, but also (and perhaps above all) in the dams upstream of the Euphrates river - in Turkey - which mercilessly cut off the flow of water reaching Syria. Another huge problem is that of waste; more than a decade of war has not only left wounds in people's bodies. The entire landscape is still largely reduced to rubble and the amount of debris everywhere is appalling.
"During sandstorms in the most desert areas, one can see real clouds of rubbish floating in midair".
Our co-chair Angelica Romano, who recently returned from a trip to the country with Alfio Nicotra, also co-chair of Un Ponte Per, told us.
After years of rebuilding hospitals and health facilities, as well as opening clinics in refugee camps, since 2019 we have been working on the recycling and proper disposal of medical waste, supporting over 36 health facilities in the governorates of Hasakeh, Raqqa and Aleppo. Environmental and ecological protection is one of the main axes of commitment for the Autonomous Municipalities of North-East Syria(NES). Last year here, together with our partner Kurdish Red Crescent (KRC), the local authorities and thanks to the support of the Area Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB) and the Prosolidar Foundation, we laid the foundations for the first pilot project of waste separation and recycling at municipal level in the NES. Not only medical waste, but also common waste, produced by households. Below is the video story of Angelica and Alfio.
In the Municipality of Hasake, we have found particularly fertile ground for these first projects, in which the collaboration between local authorities and citizens is crucial to their success. Obviously, awareness-raising activities were carried out 'house by house', to prepare the population for a new way of collecting waste. Today, we can say that the waste collection system set up is working, also involving some local cooperatives in door-to-door waste collection.
"The waste is collected from the houses, and then taken to a place for sorting and recycling," says Rovand Abdo, co-chairwoman of the Environment Department of the Municipality of Hasake, a really smart woman who confirms the very important link between female leadership and the environment. A pairing that we strongly support, and which is often encapsulated today by the term 'eco-feminism'. Let us remember that Syria is still one of the areas in the world with the highest rates of gender-based violence and a very limited supply of protection services. This is whyRovand's example is even more revolutionary. We can listen to her in the video below, in which she shows the results of the Zero Waste project we are running alongside her.
As you can see in the video, mainly in these early stages of the project, the separate collection and recycling of plastic/metals, paper and organic waste was started. With the organic waste, fertilisers and manure are produced. "Great for the soil," Rovand adds, proudly showing the agricultural fields where it is used to increase the city's green spaces.
"In the next phase of the project, we will try to expand to other neighbourhoods, so that other people can benefit from this programme because it has beneficial effects on the environment, agriculture, hygiene, human health and in general on reducing waste."
concludes co-chair Rovand Abdo with great determination, and we hope with all our hearts that it will happen. Maybe it is just a drop in the bucket, as our co-chair Alfio Nicotra says, or maybe it is the prelude to a bigger change towards a highly sustainable circular economy.
Un Ponte Per has been present in north-eastern Syria since 2015, initially sending humanitarian shipments destined for the Kurdish Red Crescent, and then structuring its intervention since 2016, when several projects were launched to rebuild the area's health system and offer support to the population fleeing Daesh.
Elena Popova, head of the Russian Conscientious Objectors Movement, sends this important update (originally published on the website of the Italian Nonviolent Movement) on the recent decision by the Russian government to outlaw the organisation.
Together with the Russian Conscientious Objectors Movement, founded in 2014 by a group of activists to help the young people avoid the draft, we have been providing online legal and psychological support to conscientious objectors from all regions of Russia, including people from the LGBTQ+ community. Donate now to help us support them.
***
As of last Friday, 23 June, the Conscientious Objector Movement was officially declared by the authorities as a 'foreign agent' in the Russian Federation.
The Ministry of Justice accuses us of disseminating information believed to be false about the government's actions, decisions and policies, as well as opposing Russia's military actions in Ukraine. For the current government of the Russian Federation, these accusations are sufficient to justify outlawing our organisation.
While this is a demonstration of the effectiveness of our work, it is also fundamentally a discriminatory application of the law that tramples on universally accepted human rights and freedoms.
Our team worked tirelessly over the weekend to take measures for the safety of the members of our Movement dedicated to the community we serve. A significant number of our volunteers and coordinators still live in Russia and now face an increased risk of state pressure and persecution. Despite these increasing threats, we remain committed to supporting those who resist war and forced conscription.
We want to assure you that the Conscientious Objector Movement will continue its mission. We remain firm in our principles and values, dedicated to educating people about their right to conscientious objection to military service.
This underlines the importance of our partnership with the global community.
We take this opportunity to remind you of the importance of your continued support. Whether it is amplifying our voice, providing outreach opportunities or assisting with fundraising efforts, your contributions are invaluable in these challenging times.
Thank you for standing with us. We deeply appreciate your continued commitment and support.
Best regards,
Elena
'To stop war it is necessary to make more war'
We hear this every day in the unified media as Western governments continue to send increasingly sophisticated and devastating weaponry into the field. This obstinacy in failing to see the quagmire into which Europe has been thrown by Russia's invasion of Ukraine - an invasion we strongly condemn - represents a veritable clouding of reason. The more the military solution to the conflict proves to be impossible, the more we are driven to pursue it. Since 24 February 2022 we at Un Ponte Per have argued that neither side, Ukraine and Russia, is capable of winning this war and that only negotiation, accompanied by an immediate ceasefire, can help stop it, opening a real discussion on a common security system in which no state can feel threatened by another.
"There are those who sing the praises of war, even nuclear war, heedless of the pain it brings; those who champion various interests, daily bludgeoning those who think critically, zeroing in on confrontation and transforming dialogue into an absurd polarisation: friend of Putin if you are for peace or defender of democracy if you adhere to sending arms to Ukraine. Even the Pope has been declared an 'extremist pacifist', as if calling for peace were cowardly or worse, inept, incapable of 'taking a stand'."
Gianni Minà wrote this, with great lucidity, in his last editorial published a few days before his death. Very topical words. What relationship exists between wanting to support the Ukrainian people and the British decision to poison them by sending depleted uranium weapons? Despite what Her Majesty's Generals claim, the consequences of the use of these armaments on the health of the population are more than clear. According to scientific research reported by The Guardian, leukaemia rates in Iraq as a result of the use of depleted uranium bullets during the war are worse than those recorded after the bombing of Hiroshima. The Falluja bombing caused a 1,260% increase in childhood cancers and 2,200% increase in leukaemia rates. In Japan, they increased by 660%, some 12 years after the bombing (when radiation levels peaked). In Falluja, the increase occurred in a much shorter time span, averaging only 5 to 10 years after the bombing.
Evidence that Iraqis had been exposed to radiation also lies in the infant mortality rate,820% higher than in neighbouring Kuwait. Not to mention the hundreds of Italian soldiers who fell ill as a result of exposure in places where particles released by the high combustion induced by depleted uranium had been released, and who subsequently died over time.
This is also why there will be no victory brought by weapons. The history of the last thirty years in which no war has been won teaches us this. George Bush, who had the audacity to declare victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been belied by subsequent events, with tens of thousands of deaths and the growth throughout the Middle East of jihadist terrorism, which has also reached Europe. War is always a bad investment for the peoples, it enriches the arms lobby and the merchants of death, but it brings new hatreds and injustices.
That is why we rebel against the supposed 'realism' of those who plan new walls and iron curtains on our continent. Of those who want us armed to the teeth by diverting immense resources from social to military expenditure. It seems to us an act of unprecedented blindness because not only does it not put war out of history, but it plans it to the point of making it the dominus to which future generations will have to submit.
The very idea of Europe, the one conceived under fascism by the Ventotene internees, dies every day crushed by an uncritical Atlanticism and a muscular idea of international relations.
But the new generations do not want to be cannon fodder for the old and new powers of the planet. That is why we support conscientious objectors in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. That's why we watch closely the mobilisations of the young against the environmental devastation caused by an economic model that is increasingly incompatible with the survival of living species.
We see in the slogan 'Woman, Life, Freedom', born in Syrian Kurdistan and taken up by Iranian women, something very similar to what the slogan 'Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité' was for humanity. Evidence of the extraordinary consciousness-raising of women in West Asia can be found in the beautiful book by our own Silvia Abbà - 'My place is everywhere. Voices of women for another Iraq' - which we helped to publish and which we warmly invite you to read.
A well known Italian song says 'only peace is the only victory'. That is why we continue every day stubbornly to weave the web of the bearers of hope.
Editorial by Alfio Nicotra - Co-President of Un Ponte Per - at the opening of the new issue of our biannual magazine - no. JUNE 2023 >>
Last weekend, the Austrian capital hosted the International Summit for Peace in Ukraine. A meeting promoted by international civil society to define a 'bottom-up' contribution to peace building paths, starting with a strong call for a 'ceasefire' that would lead to concrete and shared negotiations. Among the promoters of the Vienna Summit was also the Italian coalition "Europe For Peace", of which Un Ponte Per is a member together with the Italian Peace Disarmament Network. Fabio Alberti, founder of Un Ponte Per, participated on our behalf, recounting the two days of meetings in the article published on Michele Santoro's Servizio Pubblico. Here is the text:
"Cease fire immediately, without ifs and buts, save lives and start negotiating". This appeal emerges unanimously from Vienna, even in the difference of points of view that exist in a movement as broad and plural as the peace movement. Together, a commitment was made to continue the mobilisation in all countries, more than 40 of them represented here, until a week of global mobilisation from 30 September to 8 October.
These are the results of two very intense days of work in which 400 delegates from all continents were engaged in the summit promoted by two of the oldest peace organisations, theInternational Peace Bureau, founded in 1891 and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1910, and the Woman International League for Peace and Freedom, which in 1915 took up the call against the useless slaughter of the Great War by dozens of women's organisations. Also promoting the summit was the Italian network Europe for Peace, repeatedly cited as an example of its capacity for unity and present with a sizeable delegation that included the Peace and Disarmament Network, CGIL, Sant'Egidio, Le Acli, the Nonviolent Movement, Un Ponte Per, Pope John XXIII, and the #StopTheWarNow caravan. Also numerous was the US participation, which since the Vietnam War has been constantly striving to curb their country's militarism.
At the centre of the debate were first and foremost the victims, hundreds of thousands of both Ukrainian and Russian, as witnessed by the Ukrainian representatives whose descriptions of the suffering of the populations moved the room, and received the solidarity of the Russian and Belarusian participants who are fighting the war at great personal risk. The president of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, Yuri Sheliashenko, said that war is 'first and foremost the mass killing of human beings' and is never inescapable but 'always a choice'. The choice to kill other human beings that conscientious objector Vitaly Alekseenko - whose message came at the conference - rejected by paying with the prison sentence from which he was recently released also thanks to international pressure. A solidarity confirmed together with the will to further tighten cooperation with Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian civil society.
No doubt about the condemnation of the Russian invasion, reiterated in the final communiqué. "No error on the part of the West, no threat from NATO, no geopolitical calculation can ever justify the decision to invade a country and bomb its population," said a Ukrainian representative, receiving thunderous applause from the hall even as she implored "stop fighting now" then there will be time to discuss, but in the meantime stop killing. Negotiations take a long time and - as former US Army Colonel Ann Wright reminded us - can take a very long time, like those after the Korean War, for example, but in the meantime it is necessary that the killing does not continue. An immediate and unconditional cease-fire is the central and unifying point of the global movement, which 'does not mean recognising any territorial rights to Russia, but only stopping the killing and giving peace a chance', as the convening document puts it.
The West has made many'mistakes', starting with its failure to propose a system of shared security to Russia at the end of bipolarity, its enlargement of an alliance that, having exhausted the role for which it was created , should have been dissolved, and its failure to do anything to prevent the outbreak of war by boycotting even the first negotiations, as reconstructed in detail by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, former advisor to President Gorbachev. A Western responsibility too, therefore, is evident, but it does not justify it. Indeed, it is one thing to explain, on the basis of the laws of geopolitics, the dynamics that lead to the outbreak of a war, and quite another to use this to justify the decision to invade a country.
The peace movement is convinced, as polls show, that it represents the vast majority of public opinion, in the West, but particularly in the Global South. On this important were the testimonies of the delegates from the countries of the Global South, numerous from all continents. Most of the countries of the world, representing 75 per cent of the world's population, did not join the economic sanctions, while condemning the Russian invasion because, said Indian professor Anurada Chenoy, "they do not trust the West" based on the experience of 500 years of colonisation and fear that a consolidation of a position of Western global dominance will emerge from this war. This position, he added, is shared by democratic and non-democratic countries alike and explains the emergence of numerous peace initiatives from the southern hemisphere. 'The South proposes cooperation and the West responds competition, the South proposes multipolarism and the West responds unipolarism'. This is the evocative summary proposed by Prof. Chenoy, a concept echoed in a highly applauded speech by Colombian Vice-President Davis Choquehuanca. 'We must put an end to the politics of division proposed by the West,' he said, adding the need for a global policy inspired by unity, harmony and cooperation not only between nations but also with mother earth.
There was much interest, therefore, in the proposals that go in the direction of negotiation, after that of China, the Brazilian initiative, the African Heads of State, the Indonesian proposal, adding to the Turkish attempt at mediation, which failed, or was made to fail, in March 2022, and the Vatican proposal, which, it was learnt during the conference, is about to be launched together with dozens of Nobel Peace Prize winners.
These are all peace initiatives that the conference does not judge on their merits, but which it actively supports and will support as a whole. This is another commitment indicated in the final communiqué, because, it was said, it is necessary for the international community starting with the United Nations - much criticised for inaction - to act actively also because the war affects everyone. The war does not only make victims in Ukraine or Russia, but has made victims, particularly in Africa, because of rising food prices, it has increased energy costs all over the world creating millions of poor, it is causing a restriction of democratic space in all countries and, as no speaker failed to mention, it can lead tonuclear holocaust.
Article by Fabio Alberti, published on 11/06/2023 in serviziopubblico.it
Below is the text of the 'Vienna Declaration for Peace' drawn up by the participating organisations - downloadable here in PDF format.
We, the organisers of the International Summit for Peace in Ukraine, call on the leaders of all countries to act in support of an immediate ceasefire and negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
We are a broad and politically diverse coalition representing peace movements and civil society, including believers, in many countries. We are firmly united in our conviction that war is a crime against humanity and that there is no military solution to the current crisis.
We are deeply alarmed and saddened by the war. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and injured, and millions are displaced and traumatised. Towns and villages throughout Ukraine, as well as the natural environment, have been destroyed.
Far greater death and suffering could still occur if the conflict escalates to the use of nuclear weapons, a risk that is higher today than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
We condemn Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. The institutions created to ensure Peace and Security in Europe have failed, and the failure of diplomacy has led to war. Diplomacy is now urgently needed to end the armed conflict before it destroys Ukraine and endangers humanity.
The path to Peace must be based on the principles of common security, international respect for human rights and self-determination of all communities.
We support all negotiations that can strengthen the logic of Peace instead of the illogic of war.
We affirm our support for Ukrainian civil society defending its rights. We pledge to strengthen dialogue with those in Russia and Belarus who put their lives at risk to oppose the war and protect democracy.
We call on civil society in all countries to join us in a week of global mobilisation (Saturday 30 September to Sunday 8 October 2023) for an immediate ceasefire and for Peace negotiations to end this war.
Vienna, 11 June 2023
"We must all do our part, to live up to the task of Peace" (Albert Einstein).
