'Civil Peace Corps' is the name given to young volunteers who carry out non-governmental peacekeeping actions in 'conflict areas'. The institution, born in Italy in 2013 within the Department for Youth Policy as a non-violent and unarmed civil defence corps, has in recent years taken many young Italians to different areas of the world for a year of activities aimed at conflict prevention and interposition. The last year has just ended and the young people who left with Un Ponte Per have recently returned to Italy from Lebanon, Jordan and Romania. The following document reports their precise considerations on the current situation of international escalation and very serious human rights violations. In what capacity do they express themselves? Article 2 of the decree for the organisation of the Civil Peace Corps, point 2., letter c), expressly mentions 'monitoring respect for human rights and humanitarian law' among the programme's areas of intervention in conflict areas.
This is why the following communiqué is particularly significant.

"2 October 2024 - As volunteers CCP (Civil Peace Corps), we denounce and condemn the human rights violations that have been taking place in Palestine and Lebanon for almost a year. Since 7 October, the state of Israel has been carrying out a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people that has exterminated, to date, over 42,000 civilians, including over 16,000 children. Israel has knowingly razed to the ground civilian homes, hospitals, schools, newspaper offices. With the deception of so-called 'safe places', it has forced people to move from one place to another in the Gaza Strip, bombing both those very makeshift spaces referred to as shelters, and the areas crossed by the fleeing population. Since 8 October, the state of Israel has been carrying out a bombing campaign in southern Lebanon, hitting military and civilian targets. In the last week, Israeli bombs have reached the capital Beirut, causing over 1,000 deaths, razing entire civilian neighbourhoods to the ground and causing theforced exodus of thousands of people. On Lebanese territory, in addition to the white phosphorus bombs already reported, destructive bunker busters were used on Friday 27 September, which, penetrating even underground locations before exploding, literally pulverised the bodies of civilians killed in the attack, making it almost impossible to give an exact estimate of the real number of victims. On the brink of aground invasion into Lebanese territory, which cannot be justified in any way by the 'right to defence', we are concerned and disheartened by theinadequacy of our policies in countering these operations. The war crimes and crimes against humanity that the state of Israel has been committing for almost a year now have been denounced by all international bodies, from the UN to the Hague Court; however, the criminal conduct of the Jewish state goes unpunished. Just as the crimes committed by Israel since its foundation remain unpunished. The UN Resolutions aimed at countering Israel's continuing campaign of occupation of Palestine and the Middle East - an intent well spelled out by Israeli Prime Minister B. Netanyahu at the UN headquarters - and the plan for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, the apartheid regime, as well as those Resolutions enshrining the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their land in Palestine, remain just words. We are well aware, therefore, that even these words of ours will remain just that and that they will be added to the many others that have been uttered before, without making any noise. Nevertheless, we know that this is the only right thing to do. To denounce by every means at our disposal, in every space we cross, the horror and inhumanity that is taking place before our eyes, to express solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese people, to carry out small daily practices aimed at opposing the normalisation of a criminal state. First of all, follow and join the BDS campaign , Boycott Divestment and Sanctions.

We invite readers to not only follow the campaign's indications of daily funding and purchases, but to develop a greater awareness of the impact of each seemingly small action, to further empower themselves. We also invite you to support, according to your possibilities, fundraising campaigns to address the urgent needs of the civilian population in Gaza and Lebanon, in cooperation with the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) and the Lebanese Amel Association International, respectively.
To donate:

Water for Gaza | A Bridge For

Lebanon Emergency Fund | A Bridge To

Aware, moreover, of the great synergy between the army, industry and academia in Israel, and in line with the desire to oppose the normalisation of a state that violates UN Resolutions, we denounce all agreements on cooperation in the military and defence sector between the Italian and Israeli governments, first and foremost the sending of Italian arms and the presence of 1,000 Italian reservists with Israeli passports in the ranks of the Israeli army.

In this regard, we recall how Law 185/1990 explicitly prohibits the sale of arms to countries whose governments are responsible for proven violations of international human rights conventions.

We also denounce the normalisation practices between the Italian and Israeli governments that are expressed through collaboration agreements between Italian and Israeli universities, economic-commercial agreements, and cooperation agreements in the field of research and industrial, scientific and technological development. In this regard, we recall how on 29 October 2023, in the midst of the bombardment of Gaza, an agreement was signed whereby ENI and other companies obtained a licence to exploit a gas field in the sea off Gaza. What has been written so far is part of our rights and duties as human beings and political subjectivities, as members of the so-called 'civilised nations' whose general principles of international law on which our Constitution is based should be in force. Well, our Constitution, our partisan history, and our mandate to "monitor respect for human rights and humanitarian law" as Civilian Peace Corps oblige us not only not to remain indifferent to the genocide in Palestine and the massacres in Lebanon, but to express our dissent and put in place practices and tools to raise awareness aimed at not normalising inhumanity. We invite anyone reading this communiqué to do the same.

Civil Peace Corps members just returned from a year-long mission in Lebanon, Jordan and Romania with the association Un Ponte Per