Reportage

On the last evening of the World Social Forum, I was standing in the Azad Maidan, surveying the crowds and getting ready for the evening's concert. Two eager young men who suddenly came forward and began to introduce themselves interrupted that moment of reverie... “Good evening sir”, said the first, “I am Francisco DSa, from the Citizens Peace Committee of Rawalpindi”. After a few minutes of talking, he said, “Oh, we are hoping to meet with as many Indians as possible while we are here. We…

When WRI planned a visit to the South Caucasus, to develop co-operation with local groups on antimilitarism and conscientious objection, it was clear that this wouldn't be an easy task. However, it proved even more difficult than expected.

I arrived in Tbilisi in Georgia on 26 July, on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow. Georgia, which suffered a civil war in the early 1990s, still has two unresolved conflicts - Abkhazia and South Ossetia. While there is no war at present, neither is…

To assess something which you're intimately involved with is difficult. While I was out of the main Dublin-London axis for the War Resisters' International Triennial Conference, “Stories and strategies - nonviolent resistance and social change”', I was nevertheless centrally involved.

This meant that while aware of much of what was happening, beforehand I was not so much in the whirlwind and during it I was too busy to engage in some of the conference. But in any case a…

A banner in the rally said it all.

The events in Canada during the week when the big boys met in their bunkerised luxury resort in Kananaskis (owned by a Saudi prince) were wonderful expressions of the lives and visions of the world's people.

On 23 June an exuberant rally of over 5000 people wound through the city to Olympic Plaza where a First Nations speaker reminded us of Canada's role as a colonial power. She called on us to support First Nations' struggle for justice.…

Being Chilean, I was prevented from visiting Cuba between 1973 and 1990: had I travelled there I would not have been allowed to re-enter Chile, as I would have been labelled a Marxist. At the very least it would have caused me more troubles than the ones I was already experiencing with the dictatorship for being part of the human rights movement: in 1982, I was sacked from my academic work at a Chilean university for political reasons.

Getting a visa to enter Cuba was not possible…

I was attending a Council meeting of the War Resisters' International (WRI) for the first time and I thought, as many participants did, that the council meeting would be an opportunity to discuss our views, particularly in light of the threat of war.

But the discussions about this during the council meeting were short, due to a lack of time, and I was disappointed that it was mostly financial and administrative issues that were discussed. While this was how I felt then, I realised…

In February 2001, a little later than originally planned, 70 people from 20 countries on five continents met for a week at the Gandhi Labour Foundation in Puri on the Gulf of Bengal, in order to exchange experiences of empowerment, to raise questions, and to search for new answers1.

The venue was well-chosen. The Gandhi Labour Foundation, an educational centre of the Gandhian union movement, lies at the edge of a place of pilgrimage – Puri – and only a few minutes walk from the…