Welcome to our English Website

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Dear Visitor,

we apologize: Our Homepage is not bilingual. However, we try to present as much content to you as possible in English. Below you can find current events and postings. In the menu to the right you can find basic information about our work in English.

Appeal Regarding Ukraine

24.02.2022
24.2.2022 Appeal to all sides We call on Russia to immediately cease all attacks and withdraw its troops from the borders with Ukraine. We call on the people of Luhansk/Lugansk and Donetsk/Donetsk to make it clear to the Russian government that they want to determine their own destiny, not at the price of war. We call on the Ukrainian government to renounce military resistance and to proclaim civil resistance instead. We call on the Ukrainian people to refuse all obedience to a possible new government installed by Russia. This is called social defence. If everyone refuses to obey Russia's...Weiterlesen

Conference: "Nonviolent Resistance in Times of Repression: Strategies of Resistance and Forms of Support"

11.03.2022
© Von Homoatrox - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 3.0
CC BY 3.0 DE
Proteste, 30.08.2020. Minsk, Belarus (Weißrussland)
The theme of the conference is civil, non-violent resistance movements. Their numbers have increased greatly in the last thirty years; however, their success rate has been declining for about 10 years (see the new book by Erica Chenoweth, Civil Resistance. What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford University Press) 2021. It is still true that since 1900, over 50% of non-violent movements that have overthrown a regime or won territorial sovereignty have been successful. But their success rate - like that of violent uprisings - has fallen dramatically from 2010 to 2019. Less than 34% of non-violent...Weiterlesen

Paper: Qualification for Civilian Peacekeeping

04.01.2021
© BSV
In corona-gerechtem Abstand im Tagungsraum in Bonn.
In October 2020, the BSV held a symposium on the question how to qualify people as Civilian Peacekeepers / accompaniers. In the symposium it became clear that work in civilian peacekeeping / UCP requires many different competences, many of which are rather "soft" or social competences - stress resilience, the ability to build relationships, intercultural skills and - to a much greater extent than in other international work in the field of conflict transformation - the willingness to stand back and let the accompanied partners take the lead. A picture of qualification for this work as a step-...Weiterlesen

Watch and read: Struggle for Human Rights: The Nonviolent Protest in Belarus

22.12.2020
Olga Karatch
The situation in Belarus continues to deteriorate. The repression is massive, on some days over 1,000 protesters were arrested and mistreated in custody. Women are raped, activists disappear. In mid-November, it became known that a protester had apparently been beaten to death by Belarusian security forces. Nevertheless, the courage and activities of the Belarusian protest movement seem unbroken. The non-violent protests against President Alexander Lukashenko and the demands for new elections are not getting any quieter. However, the deliberately non-violent character of these protests has so...Weiterlesen

Appeal: For Peace. For Human Rights. For Europe

26.03.2019
2 February 2019. In the run-up to the European Parliament elections in May 2019, a broad alliance of 74 organisations and institutions from nine European countries is calling for the rescue of the European peace project. Among the signatories are many peace movement associations, churches and church organisations, the aid agencies Misereor and Bread for the World, and the environmental organisation Greenpeace. The alliance criticizes the European Union's plans to invest billions in arms research and military cooperation with third countries. The EU must not arm states that wage war or violate...Weiterlesen