Joint Committee Meeting of Religious and Disarmament NGO’s on Military Spending
On March 9th, 2011, the Committee of Religious NGOs and the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security held a joint meeting at Church Center to discuss excessive global military expenditures, explore ways to divert the money towards other global crises and prepare for participation efforts for the April 12th Global Day of Action on Military Spending. A panel of distinguished experts led the discussions and it included Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will, Ibrahim Ramey of Temple for Understanding and Muslim American Society, Hiro Sakurai of Soka Gokkai International and Allison Pylak of Religions for Peace.
Ms. Pylak made the opening remarks and explained that the motivation to organize the meeting was due to the unprecedented global expenditure on military, which reached an all time high of $1.5 trillion in 2009. She stressed that excessive and overall amount of spending was being put into defense at the expense of critical humanitarian issues such as education and development. She pointed out that the projections for military spending is expected to reach 1.6 trillion in 2010 and encouraged the NGOs present to participate on April 12th to raise awareness on the issue of excessive military spending.
Ray Acheson, Director of Reaching Critical Will stressed the staggering statistics attributed to global military spending. She pointed out that military spending went up 50% since 2009 and the global recession, instead of decreasing military spending, spurred 2/3 of countries to increase their spending. She said, “the industry that builds the means to slaughter each other is also one of the biggest contributors to the world economy.” Ms. Acheson spoke about how the global arms industry is becoming more concentrated, growing bigger and richer as instances of conflict, war and terrorism become more prevalent. She highlighted that as investments in conflicts increase by means of arms sales (5 permanent members of the security council are responsibly for 76% of the total annual arms sale globally), investments in conflict resolution and peace initiatives are falling far behind. She concluded her speech by bringing attention to the fact that one-year of current military spending – $1.5 trillion – is enough money to fund 700 years of the current UN annual budget.
Hiro Sakurai of the Soka Gokkai International and current president of the UN NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security spoke about the issue of excessive military spending from a Buddhist perspective. He stated that 1.5 trillion dollars itself seems like a weapon of mass destruction and that it is not contributing to the Millennium Development Goals set forth by the United Nations. He expounded upon the need to bridge the gap of communications between policy makers and disarmament advocates. He said, “For a successful dialogue, we need to know why our opponents find it necessary to hang on to these budgets. They think weapons enhance security but it creates tension and trouble.” Furthermore, Mr. Sakurai highlighted the importance of human security and recalled an ancient Buddhist episode to illustrate that hard power is not the way to sustain stability. To achieve true stability, he said, “Establish not through military might but through social development and democracy.”
The last speaker of the panel, Ibrahim Ramey of Temple for Understanding and Muslim American Society, touched upon a range of issues regarding religion and disarmament and specifically the need for greater disarmament dialogues within the Muslim community.
He said, “What is missing in the internal conversation in Islam and the larger global conversations about what to do 1.5 trillion dollars. Christian communities have led the way of serious discussions of peace and disarmament dialogues. In Islam, you have a different challenge, because the platform for this kind of dialogue has not started to solidify.” He also stressed the importance of raising the leadership of women to the forefront because the consequences of war and militarizing have been more devastating to women and children. He said, “If the war systems of the world is crafted by men, we need to recognize that women will lead us out of it. Discourse of movement has to include women.” Lastly, he called upon the faith based community to find ways to demilitarize the U.S. economy and push for the idea of a National Department of Peace which would work towards converting the militarize U.S. economy into a normalized economy.
The event was attended by a host of faith based NGOs and UN agencies such as the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs. The robust discussion after the panel’s speeches touched upon a variety of issues including the actual figures regarding military spending. It was pointed out that actual military spending is much higher that what is reported because it does not include money spent on nuclear capabilities and covert operations. The group also noted that high military spending countries are almost all democracies. The event concluded with a short video that asked people from all walks of life about what they would do with 1.5 trillion dollars. Their answers, almost unanimously, touched upon humanitarian causes. The success of this joint effort by RNGOs and Disarmament NGOs will hopefully propel further collaborative efforts between NGOs ahead of the April 12th Global Day of Action Against Military Spending.
