Приветствие президента Международного бюро мира Т. Магнуссона

I love a short poem, which I have borrowed from a local peace group in a suburb of Stockholm, brought to them from a group in India they cooperative with but originally ! think it is Chinese:

"Many little things done in many Utile places by many little people will change the face of our world"

I believe it is true as a guidance to peace work. We are in fact dealing with the biggest problem on earth - arms race, nuclear threats, violence between countries and people, hostility... But the things we do, the small things that we are able to do, one and each of us, will give result when we also gather our struggle and walk together in one direction.

So, I congratulate with this message the "Federation for Peace and Conciliation" on its 60 years anniversary, and my toast goes to all the achievements of your movement during these years, while my request is: do keep up the spirit, because there are some unsolved business, even for a 60-year old organisation!

Let me take the opportunity to make two suggestions on areas where the peace movement around the world can gather forces much more and make results:

The first is on nuclear arms, a problem inherited from the very specific situation of the second world war. This is the field of work where the "Federation" and its predecessor The Soviet Peace Committee has been active all its history. While the nuclear arms race in some way was understandable - although not acceptable - during the time of the cold war, it is now beyond understanding why there is still a threat of the existence of nuclear weapons, and the threat of use of weapons of mass destruction. And not only arc the weapons continuously kept by the nuclear states, but renewed and kept on alert. The time from now up to the Non Proliferation Treaty Review Conference during springtime 2010 has to be used to gather support and create activities all over the world. If we manage to act in the spirit of the "Stockholm Appeal" and show the governing circles of the nine nuclear states (and those wanna-be's) that nuclear disarmament has great support in every corner of the world - from Moskow and Washington down to the single little village, all the many little places...

The second is the many local wars, the "new wars" as peace researchers use to describe them: Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Israel- Palestine. All the ongoing violent conflict which geographically is within one country, but with the involvement from outside, supported from outside, and ongoing year after year, many of them decade after decade. Wars fought in a manner that makes civilians to be dominating among the victims. As peace activists we need to keep us informed, and keep an eye on our own countries action in regards to those conflicts, arms trade, companies looking for profit, groups or individuals with dirty hands! In the new and globalized world there are refugees and victims of those conflicts spread out all over the world, we have a radically new opportunity to work on those conflict, and the ending of violence, together with the victims and their relatives - this is a new way of conflict solving that could be much more used by the peace movement.

The International Peace Bureau has as its main program beside our traditional work against Weapons of Mass Destruction "Disarmament for Development", where we are advocating a total change in the way of financing development in the world, and that is cutting resources from the military spending. Our newest book is called "Nuclear Weapons: at what cost?" and shows the absolute waste of resources, in terms of money, in terms of natural resources, and in terms of waste of human resources, human brains.

This is hopefully a new set of arguments both for those peace activists campaigning for nuclear abolition, and those campaigning for disarmament and development. And we need, in the peace movement, both re-newel and tradition, we need both 60 years old movement to be further active, as we need new organisations, new activists - and new result out of our peace work!

Tomas Magnusson, president International Peace Bureau