Humanist FutureHumanist FutureThe Humanist Parties that today make up the International Federation of Humanist Parties supported and participated in the first World March for Peace and Nonviolence in 2009/2010, organised by World without Wars and without Violence together with the Community for Human Development, Convergence of Cultures and the World Centre for Humanist Studies belonging to Universalist Humanism together with thousands of social organisations and recognised personalities from all over the world.
We also took part in the campaign for Global Disarmament as an urgent priority in 2006. Since our origins, almost four decades ago, our Humanist Parties everywhere denounce armament and nuclear danger by supporting every proposal that has emerged in the direction of disarmament and the prohibition of nuclear weapons.
As humanists we have always rejected violence in all its forms: economic, religious, racial, sexual and moral, and consequently we express our absolute rejection of the use of war as a method of resolving conflicts between regions or countries as is currently happening in the Ukraine and elsewhere on the planet.
In updating our memory we see that the death toll during the 20th century due to wars amounted to more than 155 million human beings and we experienced the devastating effect of the nuclear bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the USA.
After the Second World War, in 1945, the UN was formed as a body to prevent another world war and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted. However, in the years that followed, during the so-called Cold War, the development of nuclear weapons continued in parallel with the modernisation and accumulation of conventional weapons, increasing tension and the possibility of a global nuclear war with devastating consequences for our planet.
It was in the late 1980s that Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, aware of the enormous nuclear danger and in a barely acknowledged attempt, tried to change the course of history by reaching an agreement with the US government to progressively dismantle nuclear arsenals.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons signed in 1968 by 190 countries and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) of more recent creation, 2017, have not yet been implemented by all countries, so the nuclear danger remains in full force.
What has happened that after 70 years we continue to give the same answers? We could say that we have failed in the attempt since the wars continue and with the conflict in Ukraine it is clear that wars are useless, they are a disaster, they belong to human prehistory and that the populations want PEACE so we will continue to insist in the direction of nuclear disarmament.
We denounce the hypocrisy of the states that talk about PEACE, have nuclear weapons, trade with weapons and profit economically, and do not sign the NPT.
We find it very contradictory that the European fund for PEACE supports Ukraine with millions of euros in arms. PEACE is not achieved with more weapons and all efforts to justify wars should be focused on dialogue and finding new ways to solve the problem.
Who are those responsible? The web is large and complex; without going into an exhaustive analysis, one can see the interests of the military industrial complex and the international financial system, which subordinate the decisions of governments, reduced to mere administrations of corporate interests.
We could ask: How is it planned to put an end to armed conflicts? How is it planned to vacate all occupied territories?
It is urgent to consider another form of relations between peoples, relations of help and cooperation and not of who exercises power over others, putting people as the most important thing above money, power and any other value that does not have LIFE at its centre.
It is a time to choose the conditions in which we want to live, it is necessary to choose between two paths that lead to opposite worlds.