The Broken Rifle

Accommodation and Fees

This year's Council will take place in Liege, Belgium, from Saturday 20 July in the evening until Thursday 25 July in the afternoon. Participants will be expected to arrive on Saturday and the Council will start after dinner with an introductory session. The closing session will end around 3pm on Thursday.

Speaking tour with Saswati Roy, from SWADHINA (India) - June-July

The WRI FöGA working group, which had already sponsored Saswati's participation in the 1994 Triennial in Brazil, is now planning a speaking tour for Saswati in Germany from mid-June to mid-July. These dates were chosen to allow her to take part in the next WRI Coundl meeting, in Liege. Saswati has already been invited by several groups to speak on the position of women in India and grassroots relationships between development, environment and women's issues.

Proposal for a study conference on Social Change Strategy

From time to time, WRI is approached by movements engaged in social struggle to discuss questions of strategy development and the use of nonviolence. To increase WRI's capacity to respond to these approaches, the 1995 Council meeting agreed to hold a study conference on Social Change Strategy.

The February meeting of the WRI Exec proposed a working group to develop a structure for a study conference of up to 100 people.

DFG-VK Votes to Double its Affiliation Fee to the WRI.

In Hamburg last November Gernot Lennert, the anti-militarist answer to Jørgen Klinsman, scored the most marvelous goal for WRI in Germany since the Berlin Coundl meeting of 1990. The goal followed an incisive tactical build-up and delicate interpassing with WRI's French star Dominique Saillard.

Lennert began the move with a shrewd agenda-change resolution, a manoeuvre rarely seen outside Germany, opening the way for Saillard to face the assembled ranks of the DFG-VK.

Action for Civil Alternative (APAC), Lebanon

Tarek El Husseini of Action for Civil Alternative, Lebanon, was pleased to meet the WRI Executive during a brief visit to London. APAC has about 60 active members and has already met nonviolence trainers from francophone groups (Jean-Marie Muller and Hervé Ott from France; Michel Megard, Switzerland, and Françoise Bazier, Belgium). An APAC leaflet declares "Our style of work is based on cooperation, auto-direction, and nonviolence, to attain full participation in civil society.

Violence in a "Culture of Violence" -15-28 April, Turkey

This two-week international training on nonviolence is a co-operative effort of the DFG-VK Bildungswek NRW, the Kurve Wustrow training centre, FöGA, and the Izmir War Resisters Association (ISKD).