The world is still suffering from the coronavirus pandemic. Naturally, there are difficulties and limitations for our activities, but the abolition of nuclear weapons remains crucial and urgent for humanity to survive. We have lessons and experiences from the 2020 Peace March.  Last year we organized a wide variety of creative marches/actions virtually and in person. Based on them, we are determined to further develop the Peace March, organizing street standing actions, signature collection, petitioning to local governments, operation of loudspeaker cars, use of social media platforms, online distribution of information and collection of pennants with wishes for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

The Peace March began in 1958 with Mr. Atsushi Nishimoto starting to walk calling for the prohibition of A and H bombs. Since then, it has taken place every year in every prefecture, gathering wishes of Hibakusha and walking to the A-bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This year, the 76th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we will continue to walk vigorously from Hokkaido’s Rebun Island in the north and from Okinawa in the south to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, calling for a world without nuclear weapons.

Friends,

We call on you to organize peace marches/actions in your communities, schools, and workplaces, irrespective of virtual or in person, in solidarity with the 2021 Peace March in Japan. Please send your plans/actions to us, we will report your plans/activities in a weekly peace march (virtual). Let’s walk and take action together for achieving a world without nuclear weapons.

2021 Peace March Schedule & Courses in Japan.

Please contact:

Peace March Committee:  antiatom@topaz.plala.or.jp

Malaya Fabros, international coordinator: malayavfabros@gmail.com

Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Gensuikyo): www.antiatom.org

The post Call for Organizing Peace Marches/Actions in Solidarity with the 2021 Peace March in Japan: May 6 to August 4, 2021 appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

• A Peace Agreement to end the Korean War;
• Life-saving humanitarian assistance; and
• Other humanitarian issues such as lifting the travel ban, reuniting separated families, and repatriating the remains of U.S. service members.

What to expect:

 Prior to the advocacy week, you will

• Be trained on how to lobby Members of Congress; and
• Be invited to educational webinars.
• Trainings and webinars will take place in the evenings (8pm ET) prior to the virtual advocacy week.

During the advocacy week, you will

• Have 1 to 3 meetings with Members of Congress and/or their staff.
• Meetings with Members of Congress will take place during the week, typically between 9am and 6pm ET.
• Meetings usually last about 30 minutes, and coordinators will do their best to work with your schedule.

After the advocacy week, you will:

• Have the option to attend a casual virtual happy hour and debrief.

Register here by June 21.

Organized by: Korea Peace Network, Korea Peace Now Grassroots Network, Peace Treaty Now

The post Please join the Sixth Annual Virtual Korea Peace Advocacy Week July 12-16, 2021 appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

 REGISTRATION: http://bit.ly/APElites

State foreign and military policies don’t necessarily represent the interests of a nation’s people. In the push-pull between ties with China and the United States, the foreign and military policies of countries in the region often are powerfully influenced by the financial and trade ambitions of their elites. The results often are to the detriment of their people, and increase military tensions and the dangers of war. The recently launched Asia‐Pacific Working Group will host a webinar providing background and analysis of the influence that Asia‐Pacific elites have had on money and trade, and foreign and military policies in the region.

Featured speakers will be:

Youkyoung Ko is a consultant for Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and women‐led Korea Peace Now! Campaign, and a standing executive committee member of the Korea Peace Appeal Campaign. She is an expert on impacts of the US‐ROK alliance and US military presence in South Korea.

Brian Hioe is a founding editor of New Bloom and a freelance writer on social movements and politics. A New York native and Taiwanese‐American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature and a former Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.

Andrew Lichterman is a policy analyst and lawyer with the Oakland, California based Western States Legal Foundation and a member of the Coordinating Committee of United for Peace and Justice. As a lawyer, Mr. Lichterman has represented peace and environmental activists in a variety of settings and writes about the politics of disarmament efforts and the relationship between disarmament work and other social movements.

The post WEBINAR: Asia‐Pacific Elites: Money & Trade, and Foreign and Military Policies. appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP) twice brought together leading lawyers, law professors, and analysts to reflect on these developments, in December 2018 and in May 2019. In January, LCNP released Human Rights Versus Nuclear Weapons: New Dimensions, which collects papers based on the speakers’ remarks.

• Roger Clark of Rutgers Law, LCNP Executive Director Ariana Smith, LCNP President Emeritus Peter Weiss, and Dr. Daniel Rietiker of the University of Lausanne examine and reflect upon the significance and implications of the finding of the UN Human Rights Committee.
• Bonnie Docherty of the Harvard Law International Human Rights Clinic addresses human rights aspects of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
• Andrew Lichterman of Western States Legal Foundation explores how human rights discourse could be a terrain for making connections between disarmament movements and other movements for a more fair, democratic, and ecologically sustainable society.

This publication is highly recommended reading for anyone seeking to understand how a human rights approach can contribute to the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Also in January, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy and Western States Legal Foundation made a submission to the UN Human Rights Committee concerning the nuclear weapons program of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The committee’s periodic review of the DPRK is now underway.

The submission begins:

“Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights defines the right to life in its paragraph 1 in the following terms: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” In 2018, in a general comment, the United Nations Human Rights Committee addressed nuclear weapons, finding among other things that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons “is incompatible with respect for the right to life.” In this submission, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP) and Western States Legal Foundation (WSLF), drawing on the general comment, hold that the policy and practice of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in relation to nuclear weapons contravenes the right to life under the ICCPR in multiple ways. At the end, we suggest questions to be included in the list of issues.

LCNP and WSLF have previously submitted a comment to the Committee concerning the Russian Federation’s nuclear weapons policy and have also made a submission to the Human Rights Council concerning the nuclear weapons policy of the United States of America. We are fully aware that the geopolitical situation of the DPRK is far different than that of major powers whose projection of power worldwide relies in part on nuclear arms. In particular, the DPRK for decades, even before it acquired nuclear weapons, has faced possible US use of nuclear weapons in certain circumstances. In 2017, the United States and the DPRK each made unmistakable and belligerent threats of use of nuclear arms, with President Trump making reference to “fire and fury” and the DPRK referring to its “rockets’ visit to the entire U.S. mainland.” Nonetheless, international human rights law and other relevant international law apply universally, regardless of a country’s particular circumstances, and each country must comply with the law.”

The submission goes on to address threat and use of nuclear weapons; the obligations to negotiate nuclear disarmament,  to refrain from nuclear testing, and to dismantle the nuclear stockpile; the obligations to afford adequate reparation to victims of nuclear testing and use and to remediate the environment; and the need to end the expenditure of resources on nuclear arms. It closes with suggested questions for the review.

The post Human Rights Versus Nuclear Weapons appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

In recent decades, the Pacific basin has been transformed by unprecedented economic growth, driven in significant measure by globalization, low wage production, growing economic inequality, repressive labor laws, and disregard for the environment.

The world’s two largest economies, China and the United States, are competing for primacy in the Indo-Pacific region and in the global economy. China is seeking to extend its economic reach through efforts like the Belt and Road initiative for development and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership for trade.

These dynamics have given rise to a U.S.-Chinese trade war and to other efforts by the U.S. to counter China’s growing influence, such as strengthened economic and military ties with long-time allies Japan, Australia, and Japan and also with India, the other rising major power in the region. Beginning during the Obama administration, the U.S. military has shifted forces to the Pacific, and has shifted its arms development efforts to focus once more on weapons suited to confront other nuclear-armed great powers such as China. The effects of the global pandemic have intensified these already unstable dynamics.

The newly launched Asia-Pacific Working Group will host a webinar providing background and analysis about the political economy of the Asia/Indo-Pacific region.

Featured speakers will be:

• Walden Bello, Focus on Global South & University of the Philippines
• Juliet Lu, Cornell University
• Achin Vanaik, Transnational Institute and University of Delhi (ret)

The post Webinar: Asia-Pacific Political Economy: Dynamics and Their Implications appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

Tuesday January 12 8 p.m. (EST)

Register at: Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_235ewCESQAOUgR_B_yjz3Q

The newly launched Asia-Pacific Working Group will host at webinar providing background and analysis of the history and dynamics of U.S. Asia-Pacific policies.

The United States has been an imperial power across Asia and the Pacific since Admiral Perry’s Black Ships “opened” Japan, and the U.S. conquered the Philippines, Guam and Samoa and annexed Hawaii during the “Spanish-American War.”  President-elect Joe Biden and Antony Blinken are repeating their commitments to reinforce U.S. Asia-Pacific alliances and to the military buildup to contain China that was begun with the Obama “pivot” to Asia and the Pacific and deepened by Trump’s ratcheting up tensions with China.

Featured speakers for the webinar will be:

Tobita Chow of Global Justice

Corazon Fabros of the Asia-Europe Peoples Forum, the ASEAN Civil Society Conference- ASEAN Peoples Forum.

Mark Seldon, professor emeritus of Cornell University and Coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Journal

Tobita Chow is the direc­tor of Jus­tice Is Glob­al, a spe­cial project of People’s Action to build a more just and sus­tain­able glob­al econ­o­my and defeat right-wing nation­al­ism. His recent work focuses on the US-China relationship and the growth of Sinophobia under the COVID-19 crisis.

Corazon Valdez Fabros is Lead convenor of the STOP the War Coalition Philippines and Nuclear Free Pilipinas. She is Vice President of International Peace Bureau and a core member of thematic circle on Peace and Security both at the civil society process at Asia-Europe Peoples Forum and the ASEAN Civil Society Conference- ASEAN Peoples Forum.

Mark Selden is a Research Associate at Columbia’s Weatherhead Center and the editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal apjjf/org. His research interests include the modern and contemporary geopolitics, political economy, history and social movements of China and the Asia Pacific. He is the author of China in Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited;  Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, and (with Jenny Chan and Pun Ngai), Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn and the Lives of China’s Workers” (2020). His homepage is markselden.info/

The post Webinar: Introduction to the History & Dynamics of U.S. Asia-Pacific Policies appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

Watch the recording: A discussion with CODEPINK Co-Founder Jodie Evans and the Qiao Collective about why #ChinaisNotOurEnemy. In the webinar we learn from the Qiao Collective- why in this moment they came together and why it so important, now more than ever, to dismantle the aggression and hate towards China. If you want to learn more about upcoming webinars when they happen, subscribe to our Youtube page here.

The post A discussion with CODEPINK Co-Founder Jodie Evans and the Qiao Collective about why #ChinaisNotOurEnemy appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

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