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Peace and Disarmament

Starting Over: A Nun, a Wedding Singer and a Pair of Self-described Nerds Seek Refuge in Northern Iraq

 Human Wrongs Watch A Syrian singer’s songbook, a Turkmen calligrapher’s ink, a Palestinian Iraqi’s lucky lighter, a Yazidi teenager’s Taylor Swift album. These are a civil war’s survivors and the things they carried.’  By Lauren Bohn*, November 2014 — The…

Major powers must learn trust

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited the former Berlin Wall border crossing point Checkpoint Charlie, November 7, 2014. At one of functions marking this commemorative day he remarked that tensions between the major powers have pushed the world closer to…

Anti-nuclear campaigners pleasantly surprised as US joins humanitarian forum

The US government signalled its intention to participate in the forthcoming Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in early December. The conference is the third in a series of such conferences that started in early 2013 in…

Why arming rebels will fuel Syria’s inferno

The Syrian conflict is taking yet another dramatic turn as the militant jihadists of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, rout rebels from their strongholds in Idlib, threatening to eliminate entirely any presence by moderate rebels in northern Syria, as…

Poppies – wishing that WWI violence is never repeated again

Armistice Day, November 11. Bright red poppies have appeared in their thousands to adorn the spaces around the Tower of London. The symbolism evokes the image of poppies springing up from destruction and decay in Belgium’s Flanders Fields, sites of…

Syria — New UN Plan to ‘Freeze’ Conflict, Stop ‘Carnage’

  Human Wrongs Watch The war in Syria must be “frozen locally” on the ground so that the growing threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) may be fully confronted, a United Nations envoy on…

PNND Council member becomes new EU Foreign Minister

Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND) Dear Friends The past two months have been exciting for PNND. Members have taken action around the world to highlight the first International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. And we…

Initiative on Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons Takes Centre Stage at UN General Assembly

  Human Wrongs Watch It took a full 5 minutes for New Zealand’s Ambassador for Disarmament, Dell Higgie, to read out the list of the 155 co-sponsors of the Joint Statement on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.*   The…

‘Clock Is Ticking’ for War-Ravaged Gaza; Promises on Rebuilding Must ‘Quickly Materialize’

  Human Wrongs Watch On the heels of last week’s visit to Gaza, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 21 October 2014 told the Security Council today that promises made at a recent donor conference on rebuilding the war-ravaged enclave…

When the last tree was cut down

Easter Island was a closed system for 1400 years according to scholars specialising in the history of the place.  It was populated by Polynesians coming from the West who arrived on canoes with a stock of plants and animals that…

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