World Leaders Take Action Now
Save precious lives, give peace a chance!
October 2014
We are a Pan-African Network of Peacemakers from over 30 countries across the African continent and represent more than 20 organisations. Our 20-member Steering Committee has representatives from West, East, Central Africa, southern Africa and the islands. Some of our members are also from the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, with strong African connections. We work at the grassroots level, training in Nonviolence and mobilising communities for Peacebuilding.
War Resisters' International held its first quadrennial International Conference in Africa 4-8 July 2014, in Cape Town's City Hall. The conference we co-hosted by the Ceasefire Campaign.
The meeting brought together 220 activists, researchers, and campaigners doing peace and nonviolence work from around the world for five days. Of the 220 participants, over half were African. The public conference followed meetings of the Pan-African Nonviolence and Peacebuilding Network and the Women Peacemakers Program. Before and afterwards WRI's Council and Assembly meetings took place. The meeting will have impacts on WRI as a network for years to come.
We, the undersigned, call on members of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to immediately impose a comprehensive arms embargo on South Sudan. We also call on IGAD to issue a communiqué requesting the United Nations (UN) Security Council to adopt a resolution imposing a comprehensive international arms embargo.
Dereje Wordofa presents the trend of "militarisation of youth and child soldiers" in Africa, despite the international instruments for human rights.
Dereje Wordofa is Regional Director for Africa at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). He is committed to lasting peace, sustainable development and social justice.
This webinar is part of the series of webinars by and for the African Nonviolence and Peacebuilding Network.
People power in South Africa – mass nonviolent direct action –
helped end the scourge of apartheid and vicious, politically-sanctioned racism.
Today, twenty years since our first democratic elections, South Africa still faces many problems - including street violence, small arms, xenophobia, economic injustice – and opposition to these ills are mounting, with civil society again using creative, unarmed methods. Throughout the continent, we see increasing militarism too often supported by powerful politicians, and this year’s South African elections suggest that people all over are tired of business as usual.
It is in this context that we are welcoming War Resisters' International to Cape Town, for the first ever WRI International Conference in Africa.
Back to information on the Small Actions, Big Movements: The Continuum of Nonviolence conference
The African Nonviolence and Peacebuilding Network will meet together on 1st July and 4th July for full day meetings, as well as for short daily meetings through the Small Actions, Big Movements conference.
Between July 26 and 30, in Johannesburg, South Africa, peacemakers from 12 countries throughout Africa met to share experiences and birthed a new, continent-wide African Nonviolence and Peacebuilding Network (ANPN). As part of a War Resisters International (WRI) initiated African Nonviolence Trainer’s Exchange, the gathering was hosted by South Africa’s Ceasefire Campaign, an historic anti-war organization which grew out of the mass, anti-apartheid-oriented End Conscription Campaign. The delegates from more than a dozen organizations heard from Sherif Joseph Rizk, a participant in the 2011 Tahrir Square protests, and pledged to intensify coordinated nonviolent resistance from the south to the north of Africa.
Gathering Hosted by War Resisters' International and Ceasefire Campaign
Between the 26 – 30 July in Johannesburg, peacemakers from 12 countries in Africa met to share experiences, and birthed a new, continent-wide African Nonviolence and Peace-building Network. The delegates from over a dozen organizations pledged to intensify coordinated nonviolent resistance from the South to the North of Africa.
