CONVOCATION: 29 April 2018: DISARMAMENT: Transform the Military Expenditure

DISARMAMENT: Transform the Military Expenditure

This past 7 September 2017, in a United Nations conference, 130 countries approved a new treaty with a view to achieve and maintain a world free of nuclear weapons. The new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is open for signature and has as its objective to prohibit the possession, use, threat to use, and support for the installation or production of nuclear weapons. This new multilateral treaty promotes nuclear disarmament. Its predecessors, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in force since 1970, which restricts the possession of nuclear weapons, or the treaties on Partial and Complete Ban on Nuclear Testing have not contributed to world disarmament, as opposed to what has happened regarding chemical and biological weapons and others that have been prohibited globally and universally.

It is necessary to work towards world disarmament and for that reason we actively support all initiatives and campaigns to eliminate nuclear weapons through nonviolent actions such as ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons). This initiative, formed by an international conglomerate of NGOs, publishes alerts on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of those arsenals. In 2017, ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to bring about a treaty that would prohibit them and for pressuring the nuclear states to initiate gradual elimination of its nuclear arsenals.

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is putting pressure on its members to spend 2% of their GDP on their military budgets with the objective of financing wars and aggression, and exhorting or encouraging member states to not abandon or eliminate its nuclear arsenals as a deterrent for avoiding conflicts between the states having nuclear weapons. This has become an obligation for the majority of the members of the European Union, despite the fact that the member states submit to strict austerity policies. The government of Spain, for example, intends to increase it military expenditure alarmingly in the new budgets.

Women in Black are against war, against militarism and the patriarchy. Both maintain the established order and are systems for domination and injustice that do not guarantee sustainable human development.

As Women in Black, activists, anti-militarists and feminists:

♀ We support the actions of the activist groups that have opposed and alerted us to the catastrophic consequences that could result from the docking of ships sailing under the Saudi flag that recently used the ports of Bilbao and Santander to load weapons destined for the war in Yemen.

♀ We support and will continue to support the nonviolent actions of the international nuclear disarmament camp Trident Ploughshares, which annually brings together pacifist activists in Coulport and Aldermaston (United Kingdom).

♀ We express our recognition of the Camp of Women for Peace against nuclear weapons at the Greenham Common military base (Berkshire, England) from1982 to 2000.

♀ We firmly oppose Spain’s fulfilling its commitments with NATO to increase the percentage of the GDP for defense dedicating public resources to defense, and we demand that these funds be destined to investments for the development of social justice.

♀ We ask our government to sign and ratify the UN Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, even though being part of the destabilizing NATO.

♀ As women, we demand an end to the military intervention of NATO, that Spain leave NATO and that it finally be dissolved.

On your income tax form, declare Fiscal Objection to the Military Expenditure
as a service for Peace!

This communiqué is supported by the Foro de Movimientos Sociales de Madrid

Translation: Trisha Novak, USA – Yolanda Rouiller, WiB Spain