News on Nukes

Alongside main panels the youth had a seminar organized by the Olaf Palme Foundation on Friday and a self-organized Youth-Meeting on Saturday. We met to share our experience and wishes for our future.

Let me share this experience: When I arrived in Stockholm on Thursday it was a rainy and cold day as you might remember. After a long travel I was coming to my hotel. I was searching for the door and finally I found the door because some light was coming through the glass of the door. I tried to push the door to enter it but it didn’t move so I tried by pulling the door. But it didn´t open. I got annoyed and exhausted by seeing warm and safe destination but being not able to reach it through THIS door. But then a young friendly girl showed up and told me that the door I’m searching for was to my right. I was surprised that I didn’t see the door while kept pulling and pushing at the wrong door.
Maybe you have a clue about what I’m trying to express by this small story. It is a metaphor on our situation in Disarmament work with having our goal of a nuclear weapons free world in front of us but still having the same points on our agenda for a long time. Sometimes you need a new perspective on things and you just cannot keep to the same ways of trying to reach your goal.
I think this is why the youth participation and the perspective of young people in the Nuclear Disarmament Process is so important.
So I now going to read out the recommendations we were coming up in the Palme seminar.
“The young people from many countries of the world attending the Palme Project seminar “Mobilizing the New Generation for Nuclear Disarmament” are giving this report to the conference about “The role of civil society in strengthening the NPT”
After a warm welcome by the Olof Palme Memorial Fund and an introduction in nuclear policies by Mr Pierre Schori (chairman of the Olof Palme Memorial Fund, and with a long career as among other diplomat and Swedish ambassador in the UN) we divided into groups to talk about the major points we are willing to push forward to the NPT Conference in New York next year.
The most important point we agreed upon was the urgency of awareness rising. We have seen the importance of disarmament education also in the Palme Seminar since some participants felt that they lack of further knowledge on nuclear weapons and that their schools missed to educate them about it. The horrors from nuclear wars should no longer stay a non-issue in education. We have to inform people about the danger of nuclear weapons and visualize the military costs vs. social spending and sustainable development. This has to come both from the civil society, the governments and the media.
Another point that was raised was to ask the question of security for whom, when governments are arguing that weapons will provide security. There is a big difference between military security and human security and this must be further stressed. The concept of military security is not understandable for us who grew up without experiencing the cold war and having, thanks to the globalization and technical improvements, contacts and friends all over the world.
A third outcome of the Palme Seminar was the importance to promote dialogue between the youth in countries who are in conflict with each other. This is an essential way to go in order to see through the war propaganda that the media and the weapons industry constantly are feeding us, resulting in a dehumanization and demonization of people. We must act for a general understanding that, the so called “others”, also are human beings just like us. With the same sorrows and joys we have.
In the seminar we were asked to look at what we like the best in life. Most answers to this question regarded friends, family, security and peace. We would like to ask everybody to look at what they love. Because these things we love in our lives are our motivation to abolish nuclear weapons! I’d like to make some short remarks. We discussing on an action that is including our points of educate people - raise awareness - and could be done by many NGOs together. “