FOR-USA Responds to Military Strike in Syria

On April 8th, IFOR's branch in the United States issued a statement in response to U.S. military action in Syria. While acknowledging the horror of the chemical weapons attack on civilians, FOR called upon its members to contact the White House to express their disapproval of military response to the crisis in Syria. The statement calls upon the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just days after the commemoration of his assassination and his famous statement against the Vietnam War one year earlier.  

The statement says "The logic that a military strike, even a limited one, will deter and quell aggression from the Assad regime, or the armed resistance, or the movement of Al-Qaeda believed to be in Syria, is fundamentally flawed. In violent escalation, both sides respond in turn with their own escalation of use of arms and aggressive attacks. We are already seeing the rumbling of this in Russia’s pronouncement of the strike as “an act of aggression.”   As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.” 

To read the full statement click here. 

Help Stop the eviction of Bedouin tribes in Israel!

IFOR Members in Israel are fighting the forced displacement of Bedouin Communities in the Negev. They are asking for support by calling on people of conscience around the world to sign a letter to Israel's Prime Minister. Please click here to sign the petition. 

IFOR members write: "In 1949, Israel evicted the Bedouin tribe Abu Al Qi'an from its lands in Wadi Zabbālih in the northern Negev. In 1956, the Israeli government settled the tribe in Umm Al Hiran and Atir in the north‐east region of the Negev. However, the government never granted these localities official recognition. Now, more than sixty years later, the government of Israel has ruled to evict its Bedouin citizens from Umm Al Hiran and settle Jewish citizens there instead, in a new Jewish town be called "Hiran." Please sign the petition, addressed to Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, calling upon him to prevent this outrage of evicting Bedouin citizens in order to settle Jewish citizens in their place."

UN Geneva: IFOR Condemns Ongoing Attacks in Colombia

On March 22, during the general debate following the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' report on the situation of Human Rights in Colombia, IFOR delivered a statement that spoke to the experiences of its members in Colombia. 

IFOR Fellow Martina Lanza delivering IFOR comments during the High Commissioner's Report

The statement was delivered by IFOR Fellow Martina Lanza and it underlined our concern for the ongoing attacks against human rights defenders and on the militarization of the country, even after the peace accords. To read the full statement please click here. 

(video of the remarks can be viewed here).

IFOR has deep relationships with human rights defenders in Colombia. IFOR is represented in Colombia by SERPAJ-Colombia and IFOR branches from Sweden, Austria, U.S., and the U.K. work collaboratively to provide protective accompaniment to human rights defenders in several regions of the country. The coordinated work of IFOR Austria, U.S. and U.K. is organized as FOR Peace Presence. IFOR members have accompanied the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó for the past 15 years. 

IFOR reports on Conscientious Objection to UN OHCHR

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is working on its four-year analytical report on conscientious objection to military service. The report will be introduced and opened to discussion during the June 2017 session of the Human Rights Council.

IFOR responded to the invitation of OHCHR to submit information on the topic last February. In our submission, we concentrate only on developments after 2013, because early details were comprehensively summarized in the first Quadrennial Report (A/HRC/23/22, 3rd June 2013).
Regarding to the international legal and normative framework, the submission reports developments at the UN and regional level. In the second part, it provides analyses, speaks of encouraging developments, best practices and remaining challenges at the national level.
 

The read the full text of IFOR's submission click here.