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The World March will begin in New Zealand on October 2, 2009,
the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth, declared the
“International Day of Non-Violence” by the United Nations. It will
conclude in the Andes Mountains (Punta de Vacas, Aconcagua,
Argentina) on January 2, 2010. The March will last 90 days, three
long months of travel. It will pass through all climates and
seasons, from the hot summer of the tropics and the deserts, to the
winter of Siberia. The stages will be the longest American and
Asian, both almost a month. A permanent base of a hundred people of
different nationalities will complete the journey.
In every city the March visits, local individuals and groups will
organize forums, meetings, festivals, conferences, and events
(sports, cultural, social, musical, artistic, educational, etc.,
depending on their own creative initiative.
At this time hundreds of projects have already been set in motion by
different individuals and organizations.
Who is participating
The March was initiated by “World Without Wars,” an international
organization that has been working for 15 years in the fields of
pacifism and non-violence.
The World March, however, will be created and shaped by everyone.
Open to any person, organization, collective, group, political
party, business, etc., that shares the same aspirations and
sensibility, this project is not something closed. Instead, it is a
journey that will be progressively enriched as different initiatives
set their contributions in motion.
That is why this is an invitation to anyone and everyone to
participate freely. So that wherever the March goes, the local
people can contribute their creativity in a great convergence of
multiple activities.
There’s space for everything the imagination is capable of
conceiving.
The possible channels of participation are multiple and diverse,
including virtual participation in the March through Internet.
This is a march by and for the people, with hopes of reaching most
of the world’s population. For this reason we are asking all media
to spread the word about this journey around the world for Peace and
Non-violence.
Why
Because we can end world hunger with 10% of what is spent on arms.
Imagine how life would be if 30-50% of the arms budget went towards
improving people’s lives instead of being used for destruction.
Because eliminating wars and violence means leaving human
pre-history behind and taking a giant step forward in the evolution
of our species.
Because we are accompanied by the voices of all the war-torn
generations that came before us. The echo of their voices still
resounds throughout the world, wherever armed conflict leaves its
sinister memorial to the dead, disappeared, disabled and displaced.
Because a “world without wars” is an image that opens the future and
seeks to become reality in every corner of the planet, as violence
gives way to dialog.
The moment has come for the voiceless to be heard! Out of agonizing
and urgent need, millions of human beings are crying out for an end
to wars and violence.
We can make that happen by uniting all the forces of pacifism and
active non-violence worldwide.
World Without Wars
The association World Without Wars works to promote and foster all
kinds of ideas and actions that have the potential of helping put an
end to war in our world. Its methodology of action is based on
active nonviolence.
Founder Rafael de la Rubia introduced World Without Wars at the
international level for the first time in 1995, at the “Open
Encounter of Humanism” at the University of Santiago in Chile, an
event attended by delegates from more than 50 countries.
Since that time WWW has been developing numerous activities in many
countries on the five continents. Over the last year it has focused
on campaigns for worldwide nuclear disarmament.
Convinced that a world without violence is possible, WWW takes its
inspiration from the philosophy of Universalist Humanism and the
doctrine of its antecedents.
WWW subscribes to and promotes the “Humanist Document,” whose basic
tenets are:
MANIFESTO FOR A WORLD WITHOUT WARS
WARS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN PRESENT IN HISTORY
BUT TODAY THE NUCLEAR THREAT PUTS HUMANITY AT THE EDGE OF AN ABYSS
In the history of humanity wars have always been present, but the
forms they took and the types of suffering they imposed on the
populations varied markedly. The first conflicts were sometimes
solved in combats between chiefs of clans or tribes, minimizing in
this way the number of deaths. At other times the victims in the
battle fields were mercenaries of armies to whom kings and noblemen
paid the "soldada"
for their services. Today, the battle fronts extend to the civilian
populations that become their direct and involuntary scenarios in
which an army attacks a destitute and defenceless population and by
virtue of such an attack their dead become the political weapon of
those who "direct" the conflict from another scenario in which they
declare war or sign agreements of peace or surrender.
The advances experienced by the human species in its long process in
all fields have also happened in the development of the military
industry. The step from cutting and impact weapons to gunpowder
based ones supposed a remarkable increment in their destructive
effects. But the largest leap took place with the appearance of
nuclear weapons with which the destructive capacity reached unknown
and monstrous proportions. In this way, technological advances
applied to the military field produced progressively more
devastating conflicts. On the other hand, there is agreement in
affirming that the human species has evolved and it has advanced in
the last centuries, being today more "civilized". From the point of
view of wars both things are in evident contradiction, because in
the last centuries, and mainly in the XX century, the brutality, the
destruction and the barbarism exercised by those "civilized" people
speak otherwise, of a process of increases in conflicts and
aggressions more characteristic of a self-destructing madness.
The scientific-technological restrictions happening at the beginning
of the nuclear weapons production left them in the hands of a
minority that exercised their power by virtue of this monopoly.
Conceived to be used basically on the civilian population, their
great destructive power was joined by another decisive factor: the
enormous dread that took hold of the populations by just considering
the possibility of them being used. Science and technology have
continued their remarkable advance and as a consequence the number
of countries that today are members of the
nuclear club is increasing. If we continue in this
direction, in just a few years many others hope to also have access
to this progressively less select club. In turn, advances in
research multiply the destructive capacity of the old bombs ten to a
thousand fold, at the same time that their weight is vastly
decreased, being able today to carry a nuclear bomb in a small
briefcase.
In such dynamics, what future awaits us? A world where a great
majority of countries have nuclear weapons? Where technology allows
every time smaller nuclear weapons, accessible to fanatics,
terrorists or pressure groups wishing to destabilise certain areas?
How will all that be regulated?
The USA continues today, against the terms of the Non Proliferation
Treaty, to develop tactical nuclear weapons and working on the
design of small capability nuclear bombs to be used in a controlled
way. Behind it follow Russia, the United Kingdom, China, France and
the other countries belonging to this sinister club. The revision of
the USA’s nuclear doctrine introduces a novel change: if during the
cold war atomic weaponry was always considered the last resort in
the event of a military confrontation (the famous deterrence), now
it states that nuclear bombs can be used in regional conflicts. For
example, the emphasis on the destruction of supposed underground
enemy fortresses: The existence of these fortresses or bunkers is
being leaked by the US secret services to the press to "prepare"
public opinion. Meanwhile, the American war industry, intimately
linked to their government, has already begun the production of
small tactical nuclear bombs, supposedly capable of destroying those
bunkers.
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