Australia can become a global champion of peace

Raising Peace ANZAC Day statement 2024

This ANZAC Day 2024, the Raising Peace network of Australian peace organisations remembers the men and women of all nations, including First Nations, who have been killed and injured by war. We stand together to say without equivocation: the best way to honour their memory is to end war and commit to peace.
It is remarkable and distressing that Australians are being told that the lesson of ANZAC Day, built on a calamitous campaign at Gallipoli, is not that war is a disastrous endeavour, but rather that war is noble. The trauma and moral injury of war remain unrecognised and unacknowledged.
A nation that tries to found its identity on its military past risks engendering a ‘war first’ mentality in generations to come, rather than one that embraces peace. You cannot pick and choose which wars to honour. The relative clarity of the fight against Nazi Germany is absent from the Frontier War’s campaign of conquering Australia’s First Nations people, of the colonial Boer War, of the First World War’s horrors, or of the wars since that have been fought in support of United States’ hegemony.
Humanity needs to outgrow war, especially as nuclear weapons can destroy civilization itself. A tide of peace organisations grew out of World War 1; and in the shadow of World War 2 the United Nations Charter codified a peaceful global movement to ‘promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom’. Today we possess incredible tools of diplomacy, communication and of technology that enable us to resolve disputes without resorting to violence.
Australia helped to write the UN Charter, but all too quickly our leaders were willing to destroy more young Australian lives in war. In Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan we fought in wars with little justification and with disastrous outcomes.
Australia’s current fear of China, bolstered by the poorly conceived and costly AUKUS initiative, is misguided. In a situation that is reminiscent of World War 1, the world’s great powers are seemingly incapable of changing course away from conflict. A conventional war between the USA and China would be massively destructive to people and to the environment. The threat of nuclear annihilation makes it totally unthinkable.
Nations are responsible for assuring the security of their people. They can defend their borders by civil or military means; they can be friends and partners with neighbours; and they can contribute to global peace through myriad channels. Australia’s defence forces can defend our land without destroying someone else’s. They can contribute to peace-keeping as part of UN-sanctioned international operations. But there is no justification for military adventurism by any nation.
By committing itself to peace, Australia would honour all soldiers, family and community members killed, injured, and traumatised in war. In every international engagement it can commit to asking first: what is the way to resolve this peacefully? It can end the intrusion of the defence industry into our schools and universities, replacing it with investment in peacefocused education. Australia can become a champion of scholarship and the practice of peace-making, peace-keeping and peace-building. And, if it chooses to learn from its Indigenous population, Australia is uniquely placed to become the world’s leading
proponent of First Nations approaches to peace-building.
On ANZAC Day 2024, Raising Peace urges all Australians to remember the fallen and work for a peaceful future for all the peoples of the world.

News Letter March 2024

Dear IVP Member,

The 28th AGM of International Volunteers for Peace will take place on Thursday 23 May 2024, between 6:30 and 8pm. An agenda and other meeting papers will be circulated ahead of time.

At this meeting, a narrative report and annual financial report will be formally presented; and a new Executive Committee will be voted in. Nominations for any of the positions of Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and five committee members should reach secretary@ivp.org.au up to the time of the meeting. Likewise any matter members may wish to raise.

—
Stephen Horn

Join with Google Meet

Thursday, 23 May 2024 · 6:30 – 8:00pm
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/zba-wnri-kop
Or dial: ‪(AU) +61 3 8594 6503‬ PIN: ‪130 709 868‬#

More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/zba-wnri-kop?pin=9729214899732

Australians will be asked later this year to vote for the inclusion in the Australian constitution of a clause recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as First Peoples, and establishing a representative body that can advise parliament and the executive arm of government on issues of importance to indigenous people.

The Voice and recognition are both landmark issues for the country. IVP supports both, and urges all Australians to give consideration to voting Yes, to these straightforward changes.

Because the constitution is not front of mind; indeed these changes will be of immediate interest only within the legal community; does not mean that these proposed changes are not important, and positively affecting how we see ourselves, and how the world sees us. The format of the change came from indigenous people themselves; it is modest in conception but profound in its resetting of how Australians share the continent, within its deep history of human occupation, and its recent reconstitution as an extension of British nation building.

The Voice will place indigenous lives at the heart of Australia’s governance, not at its fringes. It represents a stage in our growth, bringing the majority with their origins in other continents and those who can claim those with origins in the thousands of years of Australia’s pre settlement history on a common footing. In this respect it is a step to bettering the lives of indigenous and non indigenous alike, respecting the just claims to equity within the larger Australian polity.

International Volunteers for Peace.

Dear IVP Member,

The 27th AGM of International Volunteers for Peace will take place on Saturday 10 June 2023, between 2 and 3pm. An agenda and other meeting papers will be circulated ahead of time.

At this meeting, a narrative report and annual financial report will be formally presented; and a new Executive Committee will be voted in. Nominations for any of the positions of Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and five committee members should reach secretary@ivp.org.au up to the time of the meeting. Likewise any matter members may wish to raise.

Following the meeting you are warmly invited to stay for a talk on “IVP at the Goulburn Show – a 5 year partnership”
—
Stephen Horn

Join with Google Meet

meet.google.com/crn-jqgr-kim
Join by phone
(AU) +61 3 8594 7065
PIN: 597003228

More phone numbers

When
Saturday 10 Jun 2023 ⋅ 2pm – 3pm (Eastern Australia Time – Sydney)

Dear IVS partners and Friends

I am writing this email to share with you the special workcamp that CYA cooperated with the Ministry of Environment Cambodia and 5 different project partners in Asia and Europe to organize a special workcamp on “Environment and Waste Upcycling” from 5 – 17 June 2023. We now urgently need your motivated volunteers to take part in this special workcamp so hope you can share this project among your members or promote it to your volunteers.

I attached the poster and the details of the project for your reference. Looking forward to receiving your motivated volunteers soon!

Best regards;

Sophat Sorn (Mr.)
Incoming Program Officer
(+855) 10 678 669 | incoming@cyacambodia.org
www.cyacambodia.org
#84, 2004, Sangkat Kakab, Khan Po Sen Chey,
Phnom Penh, CAMBODIA.
regular working hours: Monday – Friday 8 am – 4 pm (GMT+7)

Environment & Waste upcycling