Thank you all very much for your applications – it was very encouraging and inspiring for the whole No-More-War team to read about your passion and energy for nonviolence and spreading knowledge about peace!

Next comes realizing it all. Thirteen branches all over Europe have been very busy together with us to prepare this all and we are still continuing that process. In the last two weeks the No-More-War team created and tested an online community tool for helping us exchange information and discuss stuff – very different and hopefully a good addition to this news blog. More in another article!

The roots for raping males are often based on establishing dominance, devaluing other men “down” to the value of women:

“We are going to show you that you are women, that you are not men like us.”

To read more on this topic, I can recommend this article from guardian.co.uk, giving an indication of the scale and impact of this world-wide problem:

Twenty-one per cent of Sri Lankan males who were seen at a London torture treatment centre reported sexual abuse while in detention. In El Salvador, 76% of male political prisoners surveyed in the 1980s described at least one incidence of sexual torture. A study of 6,000 concentration-camp inmates in Sarajevo found that 80% of men reported having been raped.

If you know more ressources about this topic or have comments, I would invite you to share them in the comments section below.

Hey all,

for those who cannot wait to do something against war, there is a world-wide effort running right now again to stop money being spent on military actions.

The demilitarize.org webpage thankfully created a list with organizers and details of activities around the globe for you to join in and get more details:

http://demilitarize.org/action-events/

Additionally, I was asked to promote one activity happening in Sydney (Australia):

Keep War from our Door
Wave of Hope

a new network to resist the US military buildup in our region and the stationing of US marines on Australian soil which threaten to bring war to our doorstep

Tuesday, April 17

Theatrette, NSW Parliament House, Macquarie Street, Sydney

Please be seated by 12 noon
Program
Professor Stuart Rees, Sydney Peace Foundation
Greens Federal Senator Lee Rhiannon
Bite the Bullet DVD
Dr. David Palmer in conversation with Australian military historian and author Paul Ham
Message from Professor Jake Lynch, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies
Paul McAleer, Secretary Sydney Branch Maritime Union of Australia.
Jane Brock, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Migrante.

If you are in need for more information, you can find more details and contacts about this specific action on their webpage:

http://anti-bases.org/

Applications for the Peace Caravan are open – but maybe three weeks isn’t enough for you and you’re ready to take up the rewarding challenge of spending six weeks on the road to spread a message of peace, intercultural understanding and anti-militarism? Then you may consider applying as a Long Term Volunteer!Four positions are open: two LTVs will travel from June 30 2012 to August 9 2012; two others will travel from 5 August 2012 to 14 September 2012. More details below!
Interested? Then contact your branch for the next steps of the application process!

FIRST ROUTE

Theme: Peace Education
Location: Travelling project: A- Finland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Romania, Austria
Project dates: A- 2012-06-30 to 2012-08-09
Duration: The LTVs will travel 6 weeks with the Peace Caravan
Application: Volunteer will get a decision about his/her application before May 10th
Vacancies: 2
Languages:
# Project: English
# Local: Local languages- proficiency in local languages is an asset but not neeeded for activities

Project Description:
The Peace Caravan will take place this summer, between July 1st and September 13th , and will be an amazing opportunity to organise peace education actions and spread a message of peace.
It will travel across Europe, from Finland to Catalunya, across 13 countries (Finland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo,Romania, Austria, Hungary, UK, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain).
Four teams will travel three weeks each (after an intial training and team-building seminar), mostly by train, and will organise peace education in cooperation with the branches.
In each team, there will be two LTVs, travelling with two groups, for a total of six weeks. They will receive a specific online pre-departure training.

Work: * Designing and implementing peace education workshops and activities
* Organising peace education activities in collaboration with hosting branches

Requirements: High motivation, travel experience, flexibility and ability to
adapt to unexpected circumstances, and to travel sometimes long hours by train, peace education skills, ability to live in a group

Food: Provided by hosting branches
Accommodation: Provided by hosting branches- be ready for basic accomodation. Bring a sleeping bag.
Pocket money: None
Insurance: Health insurance should be organized by the volunteer.
Fees: None
Visa: Visa invitation letter will provided
by SCI if needed. Costs related to visa have to be covered by the volunteer.
Others: For any additional information, please contact Sylvie Gosme: sylvie_gosme (at) yahoo (dot) fr

SECOND ROUTE

Theme: Peace Education
Location: Travelling project: B- Austria, Hungary, UK, Belgium, Germany, italy, Spain
Project dates: B- 2012-08-05 to 2012-09-14
Duration: The LTVs will travel 6 weeks with the Peace Caravan
Application: Volunteer will get a decision about his/her application before May 10th
Vacancies: 2
Languages:
# Project: English
# Local: Local languages- proficiency in local languages is an asset but not neeeded for activities

Project Description:
The Peace Caravan will take place this summer, between July 1st and September 13th , and will be an amazing opportunity to organise peace education actions and spread a message of peace.
It will travel across Europe, from Finland to Catalunya, across 13 countries (Finland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo,Romania, Austria, Hungary, UK, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain).
Four teams will travel three weeks each (after an intial training and team-building seminar), mostly by train, and will organise peace education in cooperation with the branches.
In each team, there will be two LTVs, travelling with two groups, for a total of six weeks. They will receive a specific online pre-departure training.

Work: * Designing and implementing peace education workshops and activities
* Organising peace education activities in collaboration with hosting branches

Requirements: High motivation, travel experience, flexibility and ability to
adapt to unexpected circumstances, and to travel sometimes long hours by train, peace education skills, ability to live in a group

Food: Provided by hosting branches
Accommodation: Provided by hosting branches- be ready for basic accomodation. Bring a sleeping bag.
Pocket money: None
Insurance: Health insurance should be organized by the volunteer.
Fees: None
Visa: Visa invitation letter will provided
by SCI if needed. Costs related to visa have to be covered by the volunteer.
Others: For any additional information, please contact Sylvie Gosme: sylvie_gosme (at) yahoo (dot) fr

That’s it, the Peace Caravan is officially launched, and you can now apply to join it this summer!

What is the Peace Caravan?

Should that wish be fulfilled? Certainly not, past experience has shown that
a) the number of casualties will increase a lot when weapons are brought into the country and an open civil war is furthered.
Further b) the participation of civil society would diminuish and the success chance of the uprising, which is linked to the participation of the population would go down while at the same time offering the brutal Syrian government even more ‘excuses’ for military intervention against its own people.
Additionally c) it would strengthen Assad’s narrative that the uprising is directed by foreign countries and therefore resistance would be a legitimate way of dealing with the ‘terrorists’.

Furthering violence is not a viable option for helping the uprising. So what is?

So what can we still do to help nonviolently? “Bund für Soziale Verteidigung“, my second peace organisation, a German one, has published a paper on the situation last week (in German, here an automated translation by google).

I will put the four main political requests here and explain some of the background:

1. Support of the civilian, non-violent resistance against the Syrian government.

There is some ways to still do this – e.g. by spreading news about the non-violent resistance or supporting them directly. BBC has an audio report on “adopt a revolution“, a German based support organisation for Syrian activists. The report starts at around 2:00 minutes and ends at around minute 7:15 and includes some discussion on how to support nonviolent movements in general as well.

2. No deportation of Syrians from Germany, not even into “safe third countries”; non-bureaucratic granting of asylum to refugees from Syria, even when the claims are made from within  so called “safe third countries”. We call on the Conference of Ministers of the Interior  to adopt an immediate stop of deportation concerning Syrian refugees and call on the German Bundestag to immediately terminate repatriation agreements with Syria, which came into effect in 2009.

Now this, though focused on Germany here, is clearly something you can do in your own countries as well, advocacy for accepting Syrian refugees and not deporting them at all including the to so-called ‘safe third countries’ (which often enough just send the refugees back). You can find some more information on the webpage of the German Goethe institute (thankfully in English): http://www.goethe.de/lhr/prj/daz/mag/mip/en5210609.htm.You can read a statement by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles from 1995 here, explaining and criticizing the practice.

3. Develop a proposal for and deploy a new civilian mission by the United Nations and the Arab League, which has a wide-ranging mandate, which also contains a large number of civil society monitors, which members’ bring experience in civilian, non-violent intervention.

Where people can closely monitor and spread news worldwide, violence tends to stop. This principle is used by Peace Brigades International, Nonviolent Peaceforce, even the UN blue helmets and others for decades now. This is far from being a military intervention. You cannot protect civilians by killing them, that much is certain and any military intervention or arming the rebellion will lead to higher casualties among the Syrian people, if history has any relevance here while lowering the chances of success – read up on this in here  and here in an article by Erica Chenoweth who thankfully makes her research and data available on this page.

4. Pledge of full support of the country once President Assad resigns; provide support that reaches all people in the country, no matter whether they belong to the opposition or  are still siding with current government – often due to financial worries.

This gives not to be underestimated moral support to the uprising in these certainly dire times, can help speed up the defection from Assads regime and by that speeding up its end while at the same time preparing for the necessary peace and reconciliation process later on.

I feel and empathize with the emotion of being helpless. But arms will not help. Instead putting pressure on Russia and China to not support the Syrian government anymore is something, we can all work on. My heart is saddened further looking for ways to help, avaaz would in theory be a good ressource, they actually published a call for signatures here, but sadly do call for military intervention in disguise of a safe zone (which could only be established and guaranteed by foreign military intervention). And the Syrian government has already prepared for this by putting landmines into the ground.

Perhaps this is the time for Service Civil International to create a common call and putting public pressure on China and Russia? To help you organize I set up a yahoo group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sci_syria_pressure where you can join and discuss! Lets see if this will be possible – if you like the idea, please spread it!