une 26 2013 – As more than 150 Palestine solidarity and social justice organizations from across the world, we stand in solidarity with all of the French campaigners for Palestinian rights facing legal action and repression for participating in demonstrations calling for a boycott of Israel.
Foto: European Parliament on Flickr
The European Union provides generous research and development funds to Israeli companies and institutions in the military sector.
Report and Appeal to the International community to support a process of dialogue and reconciliation in Syria between its people and Syrian government and reject outside intervention and war.
The economic crisis causes defence-budgets to decrease which brings some circles in alert modus. It is a subject that is dealt with in many speeches of NATO secretary-general Rasmussen who is talking about a growing and dangerous gap both inside NATO and with the rest of the world.
Foto: Militair Embargo
Action by Belgian Peace organisations at DG Enterprise in Brussels
Foto: Jos van Zetten via Wikipedia
(Contribution to the Conference 'Quo Vadis NATO?' in Bremen, 27 April 2013)
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was founded in 1949. Its supporters claim that this military alliance succeeded in building a dam against the aggressive expansionist communist system that threatened to wage war over Europe.
Mouna Ghanem is a Syrian woman, she lives in Damascus, although the civil war is causing a climate of violence even in everyday life. It is becoming more insecure and brutal. A couple of months ago Mouna took the initiative gather women for a peace-building process. 44 women from Syria met in November 2012 in Cairo to find out if and how they can cooperate.
Impoverishment of millions of people, mass unemployment, the collapse of public social regulations and programmes, people driven out of their houses : the crisis is taking deep roots in many regions of the world. It is slowing the rise of emerging economies. The collapse of the financial markets caused a deep economic crisis.
Brief skype address by Angie Zelter (*) to the International Network No to War - No to NATO
Annual Meeting on 8th March in Gent, Belgium.
Beeld: Scrap EU ETS
Vrede vzw has joined over 100 organisations and movements in calling on the EU to scrap its failed Emissions Trading System (ETS) and implement urgent effective measures to reduce greenhouse gas emisions. After seven years of failure, the EU’s claims that it can ‘fix’ its collapsing Emissions Trading Scheme no longer have any credibility.
The letter below has been sent to the Ambassador of Switzerland to Belgium concerning the refusal of 66 applications for visas by those wishing to attend the Syrian International Conference that was held in Geneva 28-29 January 2013
A few dozens of political leaders and prominent figures of the ‘other Syrian opposition’ gathered in Geneva to plead for a non-violent transition to a democratic and secular Syria. According to the organizers it is the first international conference of the Syrian popular and peaceful civil movement that aspires
Foto: Voice of America News: Scott Bob report from Azaz, Syria.
Syria is going downwards on a steep slope. The armed confrontation between the Syrian army and the armed opposition is sparing no one: 40,000 deaths, 200,000 injured, dozens of destroyed villages and various hundred of thousands refugees. The only recipe that regional and international big powers can think of...
Today, december 10 2012, the European Union was officially awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Foto: Petty Officer 2nd Class Ted Green, U.S. Navy
SIPRI is an independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament. One of the things it is best known for is its annual publication every April of military expenditures.
Foto: Lionel Allorge on wikipedia
Since 2008 the world has been hit hard by the economic and financial crisis. Government expenditures are being severely cut on a global scale with harsh social consequences. Notwithstanding the smaller official budgets the military spending is hardly concerned by the cuts.
Foto: Vrede vzw
The world spent 1,74 trillion dollar on military and defense in 2011. This sum is unacceptably high and stands in sharp contrast to the worldwide spending on development aid, which is not even a tenth of this amount.
Foto: MK on wikipedia
Although we live in times of crisis, the Belgian government still finds 242 million euro in the budget year 2012 to invest in military equipment. For the year to come the Minister of Defense, Pieter De Crem, assigns 212 million euro to his investment plan.