International

You Get What You Pay For 2010

WILPF members attending the 54th meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women push to reallocate government dollars from military expenditures to basic human needs. A pamphlet produced as the result of our strategizing at the International Board meeting about how to unify WILPF's talking points is available: Click here to view or download the pamphlet as a pdf file.

You Get What You Pay For

Planning “Keep Space for Peace Week” October 4 to 12 2008

Prevent an Arms Race in Outer Space The U.S. continues to use its overwhelming space resources to both threaten and wage pre-emptive wars while it seeks control of both outer space and earth below. WILPF instead promotes space law and for the fifth year is co-sponsoring Keep Space for Peace Week with Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space nationally and internationally. Last year there were 17 WILPF events – this year we hope every Branch can report an action, whether ambitious or very small.

WILPF DISARM UPDATE has resources for your programs vigils, fliers, classroom presentations, demonstrations at AFB bases or aerospace contractors, contacts with Congressional (and Presidential) candidates, a new WILPF video and more. Read past reports for inspiration. WILPF Branches and members send reports, photos and copies of fliers, etc. to DISARM UPDATE for posting and sharing on our WILPF web sites.

2010 Nuclear Proliferation Treaty Practicum

Disarm Budget Resources

International

The Disarm: Dismantle the War Economy Committee developed two PDFs for use in Tax Day vigils:

Federal Budget Resources (pdf) includes an extensive list of resources for Tax Day vigils and to develop a feminist, progressive federal budget that dismantles the war economy and moves towards a peaceful society.

Cutting the Military Budget (pdf) includes suggestions on ways to cut a significant chunk of the US military budget and how to spend the savings.

WILPF and the UN

International

WILPF and the UN

From the outset WILPF called for an “organization of the society of nations” and in 1919 welcomed the establishment of the League of Nations and actively followed its work.

WILPF Tells US Senators to Keep Space for Peace

The U.S. has been the only nation in the world to vote NO on a United Nations resolution to Prevent an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS). However a PAROS treaty is our best alternative to space weaponization and war in, from and through space. Critical votes on this issue will again come before the U.N. General Assembly in November and December.

WILPF created a petition addressed to United States Senators, urging them to support the UN Resolution and to vote yes when it comes up for a vote again.

The petition was closed to new signatures on October 24, 2008 and over 190 individuals signed it.

Please click here to view the text of the petition and see the signatures.

WILPF is in the process of distributing the petition and the signatures to our Senators.

Reaching Critical WIll E-News Advisory November 2007

Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors,

The sixty-second session of the General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International Security closed on Friday, 2 November 2007. It was a rather uneventful session, with a few key highlights (see below). Most delegations continued to lament the lack of progress in disarmament and non-proliferation, especially in the Conference on Disarmament (CD). They called for the adoption of the comprehensive programme of work in the CD at the beginning of 2008, and expressed hope for success at the next nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee. It would be preferable if First Committee itself was used more effectively to advance the cause of disarmament and international security, rather than as a stage from which to "urge" consensus in another forum. In his remarks on 18 October, Ambassador Landman of the Netherlands paraphrased Victor Hugo, announcing that the time will come when the instruments of war, and in particular weapons of mass destruction, "will be on show in museums in the same way as today one can visit and inspect instruments of torture, fashionable in the Middle Ages and thereafter. And we would all be wondering that such weapons have existed and their use ever contemplated." To reach this point, governments, diplomats, and civil society need to not just theorize about the new (collective) security environment they envision, but to work towards it.

Best wishes,
Ray Acheson, Project Associate