GLOBAL ACTION TO
PREVENT WAR -
A PROGRESS REPORT
Global Action to Prevent War (GAP), a major project of LCNP
and its parent body, the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, is
becoming a global coalition, with a newly formed international coordinating committee and
a strong boost from the Hague Appeal for Peace.
GAP is a comprehensive program combining conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and
disarmament measures in an integrated approach to reduce the scale and frequency of
violent conflict, including genocide and other internal strife. It seeks to create a war
prevention regime in four phases over the first three to four decades of the 21st century,
as more fully described in Bombs Away, Fall 1998. The GAP document, now in its tenth
revision, can be found at www.globalactionpw.org,
or contact LCNP for a hard copy.
As an integrated program, GAP promotes a wide range of political and legal projects. For
example: compulsory jurisdiction of states before the International Court of Justice,
compulsory jurisdiction of individuals before the International Criminal Court;
humanitarian intervention by appropriate UN standing forces; establishing a
non-provocative or defensive security system; and training in non-violent conflict
resolution in educational environments throughout the globe. Among other things, GAP aims
to create a global security environment more conducive to the elimination of nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons. The importance of controlling and reducing
"conventional" arms in this regard was most recently illustrated by the Russian
military staff's announcement that during exercises held in early July, Russia was
required to use nuclear weapons to meet an
overwhelming conventional force.
A coordinating committee has been organized involving prominent policy and political
activists from the developing world such as Vandana Shiva, ecologist/feminist; Alejandro
Bendana, Director, Center for International Studies, Managua; Jacklyn Cock, University of
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; and Walden Bello, Focus on the Global South, Bangkok and
Manila. Mary Kaldor of the London School of Economics, Joseph Rotblat of Pugwash, John
Burroughs of LCNP, Merav Datan of IPPNW, and Jonathan Schell of The Nation Institute are
among the participants from the developed world.
At the Hague Appeal for Peace, GAP held two major sessions featuring Bendana, Cock, and
Bello. Five other sessions included GAP founders Randall Forsberg, Director of the
Institute of Defense & Disarmament Studies, Jonathan Dean, former US ambassador to
Mutual Balanced Force Reduction negotiations and Senior Consultant to the Union of
Concerned Scientists, and Saul Mendlovitz, LCNP Vice-President and Co-Director of World
Order Model Projects. Four open meetings were held, where lively discussions ensued. GAP
was adopted as a fundamental program of the continuing HAP process.
In the coming year, GAP has been asked to make presentations at the State of the World
Forum; the Nobel Conference, the Future of Arms Control; the Seoul Conference on the New
Millennium; and the Montreal Conference on World Civil Society. GAP will also assist in
the organization of the citizens' millennium conference at the UN, spring 2000. GAP is
actively seeking to find a number of states at the UN to submit the draft in an
appropriate forum so that it will be discussed and acted upon in the next two or three
years.
Your comments are invited on the GAP document, whose next revision is scheduled for
December 1999. Your participation in the GAP program is invited as well - visit www.globalactionpw.org, send an e-mail to globalactionpw@idds.org, or contact the World
Order Models Project at 212 870 2391.
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