Let’s act together on Saturday 25 September 2021 everywhere in France
« For peace, nuclear disarmament and climate, for social justice and human rights »
International commitments have been made to fight climate change and to deal with its consequences, for the total elimination of nuclear weapons and for peace, to develop sustainable development actions. The commitments and international texts are there, but the States do not respect their commitments. It is time to say « enough is enough, we want action ».
We citizens want to speak out again, not only to denounce the failure to respect these commitments, but to propose that solutions to these challenges, which are known, be implemented.
Several groups of hundreds of organisations and associations have decided to gather their forces everywhere in France on 25 September 2021: public actions, demonstrations, marches, debates, concerts, etc. around the unifying theme: « for peace, nuclear disarmament and climate; for social justice and human rights ».
In their international appeal, 70 scientists and academics from around 20 countries believe that « dealing with the consequences of climate change requires immense resources, both monetary, industrial and scientific. These resources exist but are partially sterilised in budgets devoted to the nuclear arms race and the militarisation of space.
Indeed, war or the threat of war has never solved the conflicts that can exist between countries or within states. The situation in Afghanistan is a heartbreaking demonstration of this: once again a people, the Afgan people and Afghan women in particular, are paying a high price for war incursions.
War, with its disastrous human and environmental consequences, feeds frustrations and hatred. September 11, 2001 was the starting point of a new race for military expenditure, which doubled between 2000 and 2020, from 840 billion euros in 2000 to 1700 billion in 2020. In the name of the war against terrorism, interventions in foreign countries have multiplied, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and victims, social, health and environmental disasters, and enormous population displacements. Without resolving anything, quite the contrary.
WE WANT PEACE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
We want an end to wars, violence, misery, injustice, human exploitation and the waste of natural resources. This is the challenge facing all humanity. We want the huge sums of money spent on armaments, especially nuclear armaments, to be used to meet the social needs of the population and to preserve the environment.
We want the international commitments to be effectively implemented in each country, and particularly in France: nuclear disarmament, action for the climate, the realisation of all human rights (health, education, etc.).
As the Hibakusha (survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) point out in their 2016 international appeal for the elimination of nuclear weapons, which has gathered millions of signatures around the world, « Today, humanity is at a crossroads. Either we save our blue planet as it is, with all its living things, or we are heading for self-destruction. Nuclear weapons could wipe out the human race, as well as all other living creatures. They could destroy the environment and turn the earth into a dead planet.
All the States of the World and in particular the 9 countries possessing nuclear weapons, including France, must ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted on 7 July 2017 by the UN General Assembly, which was able to resist the immense pressure of the 9 countries possessing nuclear weapons (Russia, USA, Great Britain, France, China, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Israel).
76% of French people are in favour of nuclear disarmament and 67% are in favour of France signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (Ifop/La Croix/Planète Paix poll).
In this period of serious climate, economic and health crisis, we want peace, because peace is the only solution for the planet. We want the effective reorientation of the resources of the richest countries towards social justice, the resolution of climate challenges, food, health, ecological and social security based on the realisation of human rights.
Only a true climate of peace can promote the voice of citizens and their representatives, at all levels, from the neighbourhood to the assembly, in companies or in international organisations. Let us follow the commitment of the Chileans who today, 43 years after the military coup of 11 September 1973, are advancing to promote democratic solutions.
On the call of the National Collective of Peace Marches
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)