Opinions

Lawyer and human rights activist, Dr. Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, was in Montreal at the Millennium summit on April 16 with others major players and key figures from government organizations, civil society, and leading international humanitarian organizations to raise awareness on the importance on sustainable development and the eradication of poverty. At the Summit, Dr. Ebadi proposed an International Convention to eradicate poverty.

President Obama’s decision to release the “torture memos” was a victory for
transparency; but his decision not to prosecute the agents who committed
torture is wrong, and betrays his own calls for accountability and moral
renewal.

Actress and UNICEF ambassador Mia Farrow was a guest speaker at the recent Millenium Summit in Montreal. She spoke about the crisis in Darfur, a region she has visited 11 times since 2004.

The problems between India and Pakistan are not problems of common people, but problems of those who are deciding for all.

We are starting to see signals from different sectors about the urgency for nuclear disarmament, the first of the objectives of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner recently confirmed her support for the World March for Peace and Nonviolence, an initiative of the Humanist Movement. She also said she would be pleased to welcome the marchers when they pass through her country.

‘In this age of the atom bomb, unadulterated nonviolence is the only force that can confound all the tricks of violence put together.’

On April 4, in honor of Dr. King and his visionary ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech in 1967, 10,000 people marched on Wall Street to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to demand a larger investment in the needs of our communities. Labor, veterans, students, immigrant rights groups, military families, faith-based people, women’s groups, and community groups joined for a lively, vibrant march.

The destructive force of nuclear weapons in the world today is hundreds of millions of times more powerful than that of the atom bomb dropped in Hiroshima in 1945. President Barack Obama’s proposal to reduce atomic warhead arsenals by 80 percent has given rise to the hope of eradicating the threat of nuclear proliferation

More than 300 of the world’s top physicians have called on US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to “end the nuclear weapons era once and for all.”