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A big thank you to everyone who helped finance o

ur work Countering the Miltiarisation of Youth.

Our crowdfunding campaign has raised over £1200 to help us in the next stage of our work.

Read our book on the issue of youth militairsation, Sowing Seeds: The Militarisation of Youth and How to Counter It online here.

Watch our video to learn more about the issue here.

14th April marked the Global Day of Action on Military Spending.

Latin American antimilitarists shared this declaration: No queremos más armas para Latinoamérica!

Find below the report of an action against the Las Palmas Naval Base, and see here some photos of the evening action in Athens.

WRI is sad to hear of the death, on 2nd April, of Arlo Tatum.

Before Arlo's post as General Secretary of WRI, he worked for Central Committee for COs in the US. After leaving WRI he was active in the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), compiling the PPU song book with Sybil Morrison, and singing at PPU events.

Arlo was a member of the  Emergency Committee for Direct Action against Nuclear War which supported Harold Steele's attempt in 1957 to sail to the British Nuclear Testing site at Christmas Island in the Pacific.

He served on PPU Council, including Chair of PPU, 1979-81.

His last public appearance was, with Polly, at the PPU 75th anniversary party in 2009.

He was well loved and will be well remembered.

Please find Arlo's obituary in The Guardian.

Registration is open for the War Resisters' International Conference, co-hosted by Ceasefire Campaign, taking place from 4 – 8 July 2014, Cape Town, South Africa: /seminars/registrations/southafrica2014 

Please register by 30 May.

On 11 February 1990, only hours after his release from Robben Island, Nelson Mandela made his first public speech after leaving prison from the balcony of the City Hall in Cape Town.

This July, the same venue plays host to an International Conference that will bring together over 200 grassroots nonviolent activists from Asia, Latin America, Oceania and the Pacific, North America and Europe – and particularly from Africa.

Tomás Gisbert & María Jesús Pinto

The Colombian armed forces, with 281,400 military personnel, are the second largest army in all of Latin America, surpassed only by Brazil. Added to that are the 159,000 members of the National Police, a militarised police force that reports to the Ministry of Defence. In Colombia there are 6.2 soldiers per one thousand inhabitants, a ratio almost four times that of Brazil.

The surge in extractive mining and energy activities in Colombia over the last few years has come accompanied by the massive militarisation of the zones where the mining and energy sectors operate. The Colombian government has in recent years created what are known as Energy, Mining and Transport Battalions. Their growth has accompanied the policy of attracting foreign investment in the sector from multinational corporations for the implementation of the neoliberal extractive policy: the so-called 'mining and energy drive'. At the beginning of 2011 there were 11 mining and energy battalions, but by 2014 there were already 21.

[video:https://vimeo.com/90530047 autoplay:0]

In this webinar Matt Meyer explores the rich history of peace and pacifist encounters in Africa over the past century. Understanding that solidarity and social change are dialectical two-way streets, the presentation does not only review the work of those from Global North reaching out to Southern colleagues but equally examines the deep roots of indigenous African initiatives of unarmed civil resistence.

20 February was the 25th anniversary of the first  presentation of insumisos to compulsory military service in the state of Spain. Thousands followed, in squares, courts, and even in prison. Niether civilian or military courts, disqualifications or prison could stop insumisión. In fact, by assuming the consequences of their desobedience,  turn on a loudspeaker for their demands. WRI supported the movement since the first declarations of insumisión, and continues to work closely with Alternativa Antimilitarista MOC. We celebrate 25 years of disobedience!

[video:https://vimeo.com/88437755 width:400 height:300 align:centre]

This webinar, led by Geoff Harris, was the first in a series of webinars by and for the African Nonviolence and Peacebuilding Network. It took place on the 6 March, 2014. 

This series is open to all, and leading up to the July 2014 international conference: Small Actions, Big Movements: The Continuum of Nonviolence, taking place in Cape Town.

Please note: after Geoff starts speaking (3 minutes in), you may need to turn up your volume because there is a volume difference between when Javier and Geoff are speaking!

We republish in English a statement from Bund für Soziale Verteidigung, a WRI affiliated in Germany. Find the original (in German) here: http://www.soziale-verteidigung.de/news/meldungen/pressemitteilung-zur-…

Minden, 5. March 2014

We are observing the developments in the Ukraine with great concern; in particular, the ways

some media outlets and politicians are currently stirring up a revival of the East-West conflict.

Once more the world is divided into 'good' and 'bad'. The 'good guys are the uprising people of Ukraine, who demonstrated for democracy and association to (and membership of) the European Union. The 'bad guys' are once again 'the Russians', who are trying to stop this process through violence and the threat of military intervention in Ukraine. Neither is wrong, but the picture is much more complex. In fact, many protesters demonstrated on the Maidan because they were fed up with the corruption and arbitrary rule of the government of Yanukovych. They see themselves as only partly represented by the opposition parties – a strong element of the protests of recent weeks was the distrust people felt against all parties and all politicians.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQJwijEjBkY autoplay:0]

The Turkish-Cypriot conscientious objector Murat Kanatlı was sentenced to ten days in prison for his refusal to participate in the annual compulsory military exercises in the northern part of Cyprus Februar 25, 2014.

On February 28th, organizations of conscientious objectors from several countries demanded his release on an international action day. See photos below, and video above from an action in Istanbul.

The Egyptian group No to Compolsory Military Service also put out a statement: 'Free Murat Kanatli Now'.