Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Veterans For Peace

2017

Campaign by Veterans For Peace (founded in the US in 1985) to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons for divestment from corporations manufacturing nuclear weapons, and their endorsement of the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017. Their campaigns include: ‘The Golden Rule’ educational project, ‘Disarm Trident’, and ‘Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

Available online at:

https://www.veteransforpeace.org/take-action/abolish-nuclear-weapons

Peace Insight

Originally published: 2007

Peace Insight, lunched in 2007 by Peace Direct, links local groups engaged in peacebuilding in conflicts around the world - about 2,000 in 2021- with each other and with international bodies.  It also provides expert analysis and commentary on conflicts.

Available online at:

https://www.peaceinsight.org/en/about/our-story/

Fridays for Future: How the Young Climate Movement Has Grown since Greta Thunberg's Lone Protest

In: The Conversation, 2020

Explores briefly the Fridays for Future movement and its interconnection with the struggle against systemic racism.

See also: FridaysforFuture website page: https://fridaysforfuture.org/what-we-do-/activist-speeches 

See also: 'Young voices on the Frontlines of Climate Change', The Elders' Blog, https://theelders.org//intergenerational-climate-blogs

An update of experiences of climate activists from both the Global North and the Global South.

Available online at:

https://theconversation.com/fridays-for-future-how-the-young-climate-movement-has-grown-since-greta-thunbergs-lone-protest-144781

Against Her Will. Forced and Coerced Sterilization of Women Worldwide

Open Society Foundations2011

This Open Society Foundations fact sheet provides information on instances of forced sterilization of racial and ethnic minorities, poor women, women living with HIV, and women with disabilities in Chile, Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Hungary, India, Mexico, Namibia, Kenya, Peru, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Venezuela, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uzbekistan. It also provides recommendations for governments, medical professionals, UN agencies, and donors on how to end the practice of forced and coerced sterilization.

Educating Girls: The Path to Gender Equality

Global Partnership for Education, Washington, D.C., 2019, pp. 11

Outlines the challenges faced by girls seeking an education, and provides data related to most of the African countries, alongside Afghanistan, Yemen, the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste.

Nigerian women protest against Abuja police raid and rape

In: African Feminism, 2019

Narrates the background of the #AbujaPoliceraidOnWomen campaign, in response to the violent arrest of 70 women in two clubs on the accusation of prostitution. The police allegedly raped those women who couldn’t afford the bail.

See also the interview on this campaign with Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi, founder of the Stand To End Rape (STER) initiative  http://africanfeminism.com/police-brutality-against-nigerian-women-an-interview-with-oluwaseun-ayodeji-osowobi/ and http://africanfeminism.com/protests-arent-tea-parties-dont-expect-women-to-be-civil/

Available online at:

http://africanfeminism.com/nigerian-women-protest-against-abuja-police-raid-and-rape/

Murdered women can’t celebrate International Women’s Day

In: Foreign Policy, 2019

Looks at the expansion of political and legal rights on gender-related issues in Latin America. The article also discusses the overall progress of women in education; their role in the labour market; and women’s access to health-care and social security. Emphasises the predominance of gender-based violence and lack of reproductive rights in the region.

Available online at:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/07/murdered-women-cant-celebrate-international-womens-day/

Indigenous Anti-nuclear Summit Declaration

Indigenous Environmental, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1996

The Indigenous Anti-Nuclear Summit declaration that brought together a network of Indigenous Peoples from different areas that have been negatively impacted by the nuclear chain. This includes Uranium mining in the Grants Mineral Belt; northern Saskatchewan; the areas near the Sequoyah Fuels Uranium Processing Plant, and the Prairie Island Power Plant.

Available online at:

https://www.ienearth.org/indigenous-anti-nuclear-summit-declaration/

Opinion Special. The George Floyd Protests

In: Guardian Weekly, 2020, pp. 7-16

Six brief commentaries on key issues relating to the resurgence of Black Lives Matter in both the US and Britain. Philip V. McHarris, 'Property damage is not real violence'; Malaika Jaball, 'Police brutality is ingrained in America'; Jericho Brown, 'We need the rage that abolished slavery'; Kojo Koram, 'Systemic racism is a British problem too'; David Olusoga, 'Toppling a slave trader's statue is history being  made'; Patricia J. Williams, 'The corrupt language used to describe black pain'.

See also: ‘The Big Story: Black Lives Matter: Do Look Now’, Guardian Weekly, 19 June, pp. 7-14.

Covers protests in the UK against statues honouring slave traders and imperialists; anti-racist demonstrations in Belgium and a petition to remove all statues of King Leopold, who presided over a particularly brutal colonial rule in the Congo; protests against police violence and racism against indigenous and black citizes in Canada; and demonstrations in the Dominican Republic about racist discrimination against those of Haitian descent. There is also an article reflecting on lessons to be learned from how Germany has confronted its Nazi past. 

We Will Make a New Chile: Interview with Isidora Cepeda Beccar

In: Jacobin Magazine, 2019

An interview with a political activist in Santiago in the context of 'the largest demonstrations in Chile since the return of democracy', which had developed into demands for a new constitution and comprehensive political reform.  Beccar argues that the post-Pinochet reforms had primarily benefited a small elite.  

Available online at:

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/chile-protests-fare-hike-pinera-demands

Mexicans petition Dia de Muertas, memorial to femicide victims

In: TeleSur, 2018

Describes Mexican activists that are collecting signatures to declare October 24 Dia de Muertas in order to create awareness of the three thousand femicides that occur every year. Human rights organizations hope the new commemorative day would draw international attention to the impunity surrounding the rising number of gender-based crimes.

Available online at:

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Mexicans-Petition-Dia-de-Muertas-Memorial-to-Femicide-Victims-20181024-0030.html

Successes and Shortcomings: How Algeria's Hirak can inform Lebanon's Protest Movement

Vol 03/06/2020, Middle East Institute2020

The author summarizes the beginning  of the two movements, but notesthat despite significant victories, given the political power structure has not been overthrown the goals of regime change 'remain elusive'. She considers the successes in Algeria - the wide range of social groups involved and 'ethos of peacefulness' - and the shortcomings of lack of leadership and of a clear strategy to achieve change. Using the Algerian example she suggests lessons for Lebanon, such as maintaining nonviolence and avoiding political partisanship and sectarianism. 

Available online at:

https://www.mei.edu/publications/successes-and-shortcomings-how-algerias-hirak-can-inform-lebanons-protest-movement

Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN)

WECAN is a climate justice body which stresses that indigenous women, women of colour, women on low incomes and from Global South countries live on 'the front lines of climate change'. Therefore solutions to climate change require not only ending extraction of oil and gas, but 'building a new economy' based on communal and women's rights, right of nature and the rights of future generations. WECAN aims to mobilise women around the world in policy advocacy (for example at UN climate conferences) and in movement building.

Available online at:

https://www.wecaninternational.org

ECLAC: At least 2,795 were victims of femicide in 23 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2017

Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean

2017

Stressing the need to create inter-agency agreements, the 2017 Economic Commission for the Latin America and the Caribbean’s report on femicide shows that Brazil topped the list of femicides (with 1,133 victims confirmed in 2017). In 2016, Honduras recorded 5.8 femicides for every 100,000 women. In Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia, high rates were also seen in 2017, equal to or above 2 cases for every 100,000 women. In the region, only Panama, Peru and Venezuela have rates below 1.0. In the Caribbean, four countries accounted for a total of 35 femicide victims in 2017: Belize (9 victims), the British Virgin Islands (1), Saint Lucia (4) and Trinidad and Tobago (21). In the same year, Guyana and Jamaica — which only have data on intimate femicides — reported the deaths of 34 and 15 women, respectively, at the hands of their current or former partners. In 2017, the rates of intimate femicides in Latin America ranged between a maximum of 1.98 for every 100,000 women in the Dominican Republic, to a minimum of 0.47 in Chile.

A Cold War cast of thousands. Anti-nuclear activists and protest-action

In: National Park Service, 2017

Discusses the anti-nuclear weapons movements in the late 1950s, for example the Committee for Non-Violent Action, and the shift of focus, from the mid-1960s until the early 1970s to the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War by many local and national peace groups in the United States. In the late 1970s and 1980s Europe and the United States experienced a resurgence of concern over nuclear weapons.

Available online at:

https://www.nps.gov/articles/antinuclearactivism.htm

Rape during conflict: The Wolves of War; the Nobel Peace Prize honours two campaigners against rape in war

In: The Economist, 2018, pp. 59ff

Reports on the Nobel Peace Prize jointly awarded to Nadia Murad, a Yazidi in Iraq who was made a sex slave by Isis and wrote a book, The Last Girl, on her experience, and Dr. Mukwege in the Democratic Republic of Congo who runs a hospital that has treated over 40,000 women and children, survivors of rape and mutilation by militias.  He has survived an assassination attempt in 2012.

See also: 'Nobel winner vows to use honour in fight to protect Congolese women', Observer, 7 October 2018, pp. 28-9.

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