Europe

On January 29, two families – one Palestinian and the other Israeli – participated in a joint lunch for peace and reconciliation between both peoples. Both families, who have suffered consequences from the Middle East conflict, chose the path of non-violence. The program has been promoted by the NGO Messengers for Peace and the Parents Circle Family Forum.

Alyn Ware, winner of a 2009 right-livelihood award promotes the Nuclear Weapons Convention and vegetarianism in his acceptance speech, at the award dinner in Sweden. He attacks the weapons industry and calls on individuals to act locally while thinking globally to tackle the threat of nuclear weapons and climate change. “It is a minority who are spoiling it for the rest”.

Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois, College of Law has filed a complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and others for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” perpetrated upon about 100 human beings.

Under the motto “Vicenza fights back” pacifists of the Italian city of Vicenza protested against the expansion of the US military base there. Braving the winter snow and cold, they entered the zone currently under construction making a laughing stock of security guards during their change of shift, and hanging peace banners from the tops of cranes.

An appeal to the European Court of Human Rights is planned. A simultaneous legal challenge to the ban on same-sex marriage and opposite-sex civil partnerships is being prepared by LGBT human rights group OutRage!. The group has the support of legal expert, Professor Robert Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law at Kings College in London, who has agreed to take on the case.

Over 200 protesters from Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Stop the War Coalition gathered outside the Afghanistan Conference in London’s Lancaster House. Campaigners greeted Gordon Brown and the visiting Presidents, Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers with the clear message that majorities in almost all their countries want their troops brought home.

Over 50 Italian organisations have demanded the immediate release of Muhaned Abu Awwad, a nonviolence activist and the eldest son of the General Manager of the Palestine association ‘Parents Circle – Families Forum’, who was arrested on January 23 by Israeli armed forces. ‘His arrest falls within the framework of a wider repressive mission’, stated Luisa Morgantini.

The Congolese journalist, Caddy Adzuba, is in Spain to receive the award granted by ‘El Club de las 25’, a women’s journalists’ association, for her work raising awareness of the conflict in her country and how this violence is affecting women in particular. Despite receiving death threats, she is pressing forward with the project ‘A Loudspeaker for Silence’.

A week has already passed since I left Punta de Vacas. I have arrived in Geneva and am going to leave my bags at home, in the Valais Mountains.
I’d love to sum up this wonderful adventure. The World March already seems like a far-away memory and a chapter has just ended. The experience and facts now belong to the past.

The town hall of Fuenlabrada, south of Madrid, is exhibiting thirteen paintings made by students from several local schools. They are inspired by Pablo Picasso’s famous painting that portrays the horrors of war. This initiative is one of the activities developed by ‘World Without Wars and Without Violence’ during the World March for Peace and Nonviolence.