Peace Organizations
& Peace Movements by Country
Let's review Peace Organizations in the world!
Q
Lots of Peace Organizations try to endeavor to make peace in the world.
Peace movements by country
Canada
Agnes Macphail, a Canadian pacifist, was the first woman to be elected to the
Canadian House of Commons. Macphail objected to the
Royal Military College of Canada in 1931 on pacific grounds.
[55] Macphail was also the first Canadian woman delegate to the League of Nations, where she worked with the World Disarmament Committee. Although a pacifist, she voted for Canada to enter
World War II.
The
Canadian Peace Congress (1949–1990) was a leading organizer in the peace movement for many years, particularly when it was under the leadership of
James Gareth Endicott who was its president until 1971.
Currently, Canada has a diverse peace movement, with coalitions and networks in many cities, towns and regions. The largest cross-country umbrella coalition is the
Canadian Peace Alliance, whose 140 member groups include large city-based coalitions, small grassroots groups, national and local unions, faith, environmental, and student groups, with a combined membership of over 4 million Canadians. The Canadian Peace Alliance has been a leading voice, along with its member groups opposing the "War on Terror". In particular, the CPA opposes Canada's participation in the war in Afghanistan and Canadian complicity in what it views as misguided and destructive U.S. foreign policy.
Canada has also been home to a growing movement of Palestinian solidarity, marked by an increasing number of grassroots Jewish groups opposed to Israel's policies, in many cases likening them to Apartheid, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.
Germany
During the Cold War (1947–89), the West German peace movement concentrated on the abolition of nuclear technology, particularly weapons, from
West Germany and Europe. Most activists stridently attacked both the United States and Soviet Union. Conservative critics repeatedly warned it was infiltrated by agents from the East German secret police, the
Stasi.
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After 1989, the cause of peace was espoused by
Green parties across Europe. It sometimes exercised significant influence over policy, e.g., as during 2002 when the
German Greens influenced German Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder to oppose involvement in Iraq. The Greens controlled of the German Foreign Ministry under
Joschka Fischer (a Green and the single most popular politician in Germany at the time). Fischer sought to limit German involvement in the
War on Terrorism; he joined with French President
Jacques Chirac whose opposition in the
UN Security Council was decisive in limiting support for the
U.S. plan to invade Iraq.
Israel
Main article:
Projects working for peace among Arabs and Israelis
The
Israeli–Palestinian conflict and
Arab–Israeli conflict have existed since the creation of
Zionism, and especially since the 1948 formation of the state of
Israel, and the 1967
occupation of Palestinian and other Arab lands. The mainstream peace movement in Israel is
Peace Now (Shalom Akhshav), whose supporters tend to vote for the
Labour Party or
Meretz.
Peace Now was founded in the aftermath of Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem, when many people felt that the chance for peace might be missed. PM Begin acknowledged that the Peace Now rally in Tel Aviv at the eve of his departure for the
Camp David Summit with Presidents Sadat and Carter—drawing a crowd of 100,000, the largest peace rally in Israel until then—had a part in his decision to withdraw from Sinai and dismantle Israeli settlements there. Peace Now supported Begin for a time, and hailed him as a peace-maker, but turned against him when withdrawal from Sinai was accompanied by an accelerated campaign of land confiscation and settlement building in the West Bank.
A map showing settlements in the
West Bank, produced by Peace Now.
Peace Now advocates a negotiated peace with the
Palestinians. Originally this was worded vaguely, with no definition of who "the Palestinians" are and who represents them. Peace Now was quite tardy in joining the dialogue with the PLO, started by such groups as the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace and the
Hadashcommunist party. Only in 1988 did Peace Now accept that the PLO is the body regarded by the Palestinians themselves as their representative.
During the first Intifada, Peace Now held numerous protests and rallies to protest the army's cruelty and call for a negotiated withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. At the time Peace Now strongly targeted then for Defence Minister
Yitzhak Rabin for his infamous order to "break the bones of Palestinian trouble-makers". However, after Rabin became Prime Minister, signed the Oslo Agreement and shook Yasser Arafat's hand on the White House lawn, Peace Now strongly supported him and mobilized public support for him against the settlers' increasingly vicious attacks. Peace Now had a central role in the November 4, 1995 rally after which Rabin was assassinated by
Yigal Amir, an extreme-right militant.
Since then the annual Rabin memorial rallies, held every year at the beginning of November, have become the main event of the Israeli Peace Movement, always certain to draw a crowd in the tens or hundreds of thousands. While officially organized by the Rabin Family Foundation, Peace Now presence in these annual rallies is always conspicuous.
Nowadays, Peace Now is especially known for its struggle against the expansion of settlement outposts on the West Bank.
Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, is a radical movement to the left of Peace Now. In its present name and structure, Gush Shalom grew out of the Jewish-Arab Committee Against Deportations, which protested the deportation without trial of 415 Palestinian Islamic activists to Lebanon in December 1992, and erected a protest tent in front of the prime minister's office in Jerusalem for two months—until the government consented to let the deportees return. Members then decided to continue as a general peace movement with a program strongly opposing the occupation and advocating the creation of an independent Palestine side-by-side with Israel in its pre-1967 borders ("The
Green Line") and with an undivided Jerusalem serving as the capital of both states.
While existing under the name Gush Shalom only since 1992, this movement is in fact the lineal descendant of various groups, movements and action committees that espoused much the same program since 1967, and that occupied the same space on the political scene. In particular, Gush Shalom is the descendant of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace(ICIPP), which was founded in 1975. The ICIPP founders included: a group of dissidents from the Israeli establishment, among them were Major-General
Mattityahu Peled, who was member of the
IDF General Staff during the 1967
Six Day War and after being dishcarged from the army in 1969 turned increasingly in the direction of peace; Dr.
Ya'akov Arnon, a well-known economist who headed the Zionist Federation in the Netherlands before coming to Israel in 1948, and was for many years director-general of the Israeli Ministry of Finance and afterwards chaired the Board of Directors of the Israeli Electricity Company; and
Aryeh Eliav, who was secretary-general of the
Labour Party until he broke with the then PM
Golda Meir over the issue of whether or not a Palestinian People existed and had national rights.
These three and some two hundred more people became radicalised and came to the conclusion that arrogance was a threat to Israel's future and that dialogue with the Palestinians must be opened.[
citation needed] They came together with a group of younger, grassroots peace activists who had been active against the occupation since 1967. The bridge between the two groups was
Uri Avnery, a well known muckraking journalist who had been member of the
Knesset (Israeli Parliament) between 1965 and 1973, at the head of his own radical one-man party.
The main achievement of the ICIPP was the opening of dialogue with the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), with the aim of making Israelis understand the need of talking and reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians, and conversely making Palestinians aware of the need to talk to and eventually reach a deal with Israel.
At present, Gush Shalom activists are mainly involved in daily struggle at Palestinian West Bank villages that have their land confiscated by the
Separation barrier, erected to stop suicide bombers. Gush activists are to be found, together with those of other Israeli movements like
Ta'ayush and
Anarchists Against the Wall, joining the Palestinian villagers of
Bil'in in the weekly non-violent protest marches held to protest confiscation of more than half of the village lands.
Although
Gush Shalom earned itself respect among peace-seeking Israelis as well as in the
United States and Europe, it is regarded by mainstream Israelis as a purely pro-Palestinian movement.[
citation needed]
United Kingdom
From 1934 the
Peace Pledge Union gained many adherents to its pledge, "I renounce war and will never support or sanction another." Its support diminished considerably with the outbreak of war in 1939, but it remained the focus of pacifism in the post-war years.
Post–World War II peace-movement efforts in the United Kingdom were initially focused on the dissolution of the
British Empire and the rejection of
imperialism by the United States and
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The
anti-nuclear movement sought to "opt out" of the
Cold War and rejected such ideas as "Britain's Little Independent Nuclear Deterrent" in part on the grounds that it (BLIND) was in contradiction even with MAD.
The VSC (
Vietnam Solidarity Campaign) led by
Tariq Ali mounted several very large and violent demonstrations against the Vietnam war in 67/68 but the first anti Vietnam demonstration was at the American Embassy in London and took place in 1965.
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StWC Placard
The peace movement was later associated with the
Peace camp movement as
Labourmoved "more to the centre" under Prime Minister
Tony Blair. By early 2003, the peace and anti-war movement, mostly grouped together under the banner of the
Stop the War Coalition, was powerful enough to cause several of Blair's cabinet to resign, and hundreds of Labour Party MPs to vote against their government. Blair's motion to support militarily the
U.S. plan to invade Iraq continued only due to support from the
UK Conservative Party.
Protests against the invasion of Iraq were particularly vocal in Britain. Polls suggested that without
UN Security Councilapproval, the UK public was very much opposed to involvement, and over two million people protested in Hyde Park (the previous largest demonstration in the UK having had around 600,000).
The primary function of the National Peace Congress was to provide opportunities for consultation and joint activities between its affiliated members, to help create an informed public opinion on the issues of the day and to convey to the government of the day the views of the substantial section of British life represented by its affiliated membership. The NPC folded in 2000 to be replaced in 2001 by
Network for Peace, which was set up to continue the networking role of NPC.
United States
See also:
Opposition to war against Iran
During the tail end of the
Cold War, U.S. peace activists largely concentrated on slowing the
superpower arms race in the belief that this would reduce the possibility of nuclear war between the U.S. and the USSR. As the
Reagan administrationaccelerated military spending and adopted a tough, challenging stance to the Russians, peace groups such as the
Nuclear Freeze and Beyond War sought to educate the public on the what they believed was the inherent riskiness and ruinous cost of this policy. Outreach to individual citizens in the Soviet Union and mass meetings, using then-new satellite link technology, were part of peacemaking activities in the 1980s. In 1981,
Thomas started the longest uninterrupted peace
vigil in U.S. history.
[58] He was later joined at
Lafayette Square by anti-nuclear activists
Concepcion Picciotto and
Ellen Thomas.
[59]
In response to Iraq's invasion of
Kuwait in 1990, President
George H. W. Bush began preparations for a mideast war. Peace activists were starting to find their groove just before the
Gulf War was launched in February 1991, with well-attended rallies, especially on the west coast. However, the ground war was over in less than a week. A lopsided Allied victory and a media-incited wave of patriotic sentiment washed over the protest movement before it could develop traction.
During the 1990s, peacemakers' priorities included seeking a solution to the
Israeli–Palestinian impasse, belated efforts at humanitarian assistance to war-torn regions such as Bosnia and Rwanda, and Iraq; American peace activists brought medicine into Iraq in defiance of U.S. law, in some cases enduring heavy fines and imprisonment in retaliation. Some of the principal groups involved were
Voices in the Wilderness and the
Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Protesters against the
Iraq War in New York.
Before, during, and after the
War in Iraq began, a concerted protest effort began in the United States. On
February 15, 2003 a series of protests across the globe took place with events in approximately 800 cities. In March 2003, just before the U.S. and British Military led invasion of Iraq, a protest mobilization called "The World Says No to War" led to as many as 500,000 protestors in cities across the U.S. However, many protest organizations have persisted as the United States has maintained a military and corporate presence in Iraq.
U.S. activist groups including
United for Peace and Justice,
Code Pink (Women Say No To War),
Iraq Veterans Against the War,
Military Families Speak Out (MFSO),
Not In Our Name,
A.N.S.W.E.R.,
Veterans for Peace, and
The World Can't Wait continued to protest against the
Iraq War. Methods of protest include rallies and marches, impeachment petitions, the staging of a war-crimes tribunal in New York (to investigate crimes and alleged abuses of power of the Bush administration), bringing Iraqi women to tour the U.S. and tell their side of the story, street theater and independent filmmaking, high-profile appearances by anti-war activists such as
Scott Ritter,
Janis Karpinski, and
Dahr Jamail, resisting military recruiting on college campuses, withholding tax monies, mass letter-writing to legislators and newspapers, blogging, music, and guerrilla theater. Independent media producers continue to broadcast, podcast and Web-host programs about the movement against the Iraq War.
Starting in 2005,
opposition to military action against Iran started in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, including the creation of the
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran. By August 2007, fears of an imminent United States and/or
Israeli attack on
Iran had increased to the level that several
Nobel Prize winners,
Shirin Ebadi(Nobel Peace Prize 2003),
Mairead Corrigan-Maguire and
Betty Williams (joint Nobel Peace Prize 1976),
Harold Pinter (Nobel Prize for Literature 2005) and
Jody Williams (Nobel Peace Prize 1997), along with several
anti-war groups, including The Israeli Committee for a Middle East Free from Atomic, Biological and Chemical Weapons,
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,
CASMII,
Code Pink and many others, warned about what they believed was the imminent risk of a "war of an unprecedented scale, this time against Iran", especially expressing concern that an attack on Iran using
nuclear weapons had "not been ruled out". They called for "the dispute about
Iran's nuclear program, to be resolved through peaceful means" and a call for
Israel, "as the only Middle Eastern state
suspected of possession of nuclear weapons", to join the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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Every country hates war and wishes to have peace but it has been failed due to unreasonable material to make peace.
Peace will come when everybody has a good mind to give sacrifice one another.
