Another topic to be debated at the Congress: Move the military money to humanitarian work: IPB proposal

As you may know, the World Humanitarian Summit takes place on May 23-24 in Istanbul. In taking advantage of this big and very relevant Summit, the International Peace Bureau has circulated the following pledge text, to encourage states to promote the idea of military spending reallocation at the Summit:

“We pledge to reallocate 10% of our national military budget this year for rapid application to humanitarian projects. We support, and urge other governments to support, the proposal to establish a global fund into which such resources can be invested; to be managed by the United Nations in order to reach those most in urgent need.”

Please forward this request to your government delegates who will attend the Summit, or relevant departments at your country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and encourage them to incorporate the pledge into their statements to be delivered during the Summit next week.

Regardless of any reply you may obtain, we also urge you to include this idea in your own messaging: via social media, newsletters, websites etc. It is an idea whose time has come…….Time to move the money! Do we need to wait any longer to start making the change in priorities?

Here you will find a more elaborated form of the IPB position, published just before this year’s Global Days of Action on Military Spending. Feel free to distribute widely.

Colin Archer