03/05/2018 |

Final GDAMS Press Conferences and Press Releases

The 2018 edition of Global Days of Action on Military Spending comes today to its end, with a positive balance of more than a hundred actions and events held by our GCOMS partners in more than 25 countries.

Yesterday, as a new and big closure to this year’s campaign, five press conferences were organized in Sydney, Tokyo, Helsinki, Berlin and Barcelona coinciding with the publication of 2017 SIPRI data on military spending, and to present the GDAMS final statementon the urgence to reduce a 10% military expenditure and to redirection this money to social and development goals.

Press Releases were also available in Italy and New Zealand.

The statement is now available in several languages. Download, read, and disseminate it!:

The press conference in Tokyo was hosted in the Peace Boat Center in Tokyo at 2pm, and participated by Kawasaki Akira (Peace Boat Executive Committee Member, Member of ICAN International Steering Group), Tanaka Terumi(Committe Member of Hidankyo) and Yoshioka Tatsuya (Peace Boat Executive Coommittee Member). Apart from expressing their concern about this year’s high increase in military expenditure in East Asia, members of the campaign announced hat the replica of the Nobel Peace Prize will travel with Hibakusha from Hiroshima and Nagasaki around the world onboard the Peace Boat.

The NSW Parliament House in Sydney has the venue that hosted the Australian press conference, offered by Kellie Tranter, lawyer and activist, Sister Monica Cavanagh, congregational leader for the Sisters of Saint Joseph and professor Stuart Rees, Human Rights activist and founder of the Sydney Peace Foundation.

Activists from Rauhanliitto and Sadan Komitea in Finland were in charge of the organization of the press conference at the Posthouse, in Helsinki. The SIPRI figures were presented by Tuuli Vuori, activist from the campaign. Then, Olli Ruhomäki, visiting Senior Fellow at Finnish Foregn political inistitute FIIA, offered a comment on the global security  trends and Timo Mielonen, chair of Sadan Komitea presented the Finnish defence budget and the military investements on the way.

Barcelona’s press conference, hosted by La Fede.cat, gathered representatives of several peace organizations, such as the Delàs Center for Peace Studies, which is  also coordinating the global campaign, Fundipau, Justicia i Pau and NOVACT. The organizations presented the new SIPRI figures and trends, rising concerns around another important increase in Spanish military spending. Activist from Social Movements David Fernàndez highlighted the need to get more people involved in campaigns for disarmament and war tax resistance.

The Berlin press conference was held in the IPB headquarters and involved the co-president of the IPB Reiner Braun, who also presented the appeal Disarm! Don’t arm!, whose signatories are, among others, Noam Chomsky, Mairead Maguire, Samir Amin or Federico Mayor Zaragoza. It was participated also by Antje Heider-Rottwilm, Church and Peace e.V, Michael Bloss from the German Green Party, Marco Bülow, member of the German Parliament for the Green Party and Kathrin Vogler, MP for Die Linke party.
Other available documents include: