Jordi Calvo, vice-president of IPB and coordinator of GCOMS, attended the PyeongChang Peace Forum 2020 (PPF 2020), a global peace platform that delivers the peace-establishing momentum from the Korean Peninsula over the global community. This year, commemorating the 70^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, the PPF 2020 gathered top speakers from home and abroad to explore practical measures to attain peace in the Peninsula and go beyond the feud and division that have existed during these 70 years. The PyeongChang Agenda for Peace 2030 was also adopted during these days (February 9 to 11), proposing a collection of ideas and initiatives to promote peace and disarmament in the context of the Decade of Action of the UN SDGs.

No to War - International Peace Bureau's (IPB) Statement on the U.S. Assassination of General Soleimani

The illegal assassination of Iranian General Soleimani was an act of war by the United States that must not be tolerated. Whatever the crimes of Soleimani have been, the United States has no legal or moral right to take such unilateral action or for the recent bombings of five Iranian related facilities in Iraq and Syria. Iraq, Syria and Iran are sovereign nations and these U.S. attacks have been gross violations of international law, which prohibits such aggression. They have also humiliated and outraged the government and people of Iran. How would the U.S. respond to its military installations in Japan or Korea being attacked or to the assassination of the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

There is some concern that Soleimani’s murder may prove to be the equivalent of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 – that triggered World War I. Once the fires of war are lit, containing them is less than easy. We should have learned from the past that WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER.

The Delàs Center for Peace Studies and other European organizations, in conjunction with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and Mwatana for Human Rights, have brought a case before the International Criminal Court, in order to demand responsibility from the authorities in charge of arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who are leading the war coalition in Yemen.

As part of this complaint, on December 17th and 18th, the Delàs Center for Peace Studies invited Ali Jameel to Barcelona to visit different Catalan institutions and to raise awareness of the situation of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law in Yemen.

– Eurofighter, Tornados, MK 80 series bombs – European arms are used in the war in Yemen, there is ample and reliable evidence of this. Are therefore European arms companies' executives and licensing officials potentially aiding and abetting alleged war crimes committed by the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Yemen? This question is at the core of a ground-breaking Communication submitted to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 11 December 2019.

In a joint Communication the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), Mwatana for Human Rights, Amnesty International, the Campaign Against Arms Trade, Centre Delàs and Rete Disarmo call upon the OTP to investigate the legal responsibility of corporate and political actors from Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK.

On December 2 and 3, members of Centre Delàs of Peace Studies travelled to Brussels in order to hold several political advocacy meetings at the European Parliament, working together with members of other civil society organizations.

During the first day, Ainhoa Ruiz held meetings with advisers from political groups of the European Parliament as the author of the Centre Delàs’ report on the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), co-published by the Transnational Institute and Stop Wapenhandel. In these meetings she pointed to Frontex's criminalization of migrants and the human rights violations they suffer.

Last Wednesday, November 20, the Casa de Cultura de Sant Cugat del Vallès hosted the Conference “The arrival of the Killers Robots” by the global coordinator of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and Advocacy Director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, Mary Wareham. This conference was part of the launch of the report by the Centre Delàs d'Estudis per la Pau "New weapons against ethics and people: armed drones and autonomous drones" which was presented on the same day in collaboration with the international campaign. Pere Brunet, the report’s coordinator and researcher at the Centre Delàs and Joaquín Rodríguez Álvarez, member of ICRAC and the Stop Killer Robots Campaign, also Professor at the School of Prevention and Integral Security (EPSI) and Associate Professor at the Department of Administrative Law at the UAB; were the people in charge of accompanying Mary Wareham at the table to present the most prominent data and the main conclusions contained in this new publication.

Como entidad defensora y comprometida con la cultura de paz y los Derechos Humanos, el Centro Delàs de Estudios por la Paz nos hemos adherido al Manifiesto "Por los derechos y las libertades" que manifiesta el rechazo a la sentencia por parte de cerca de 200 entidades y organizaciones de la sociedad civil catalana. En el texto, hecho público hoy lunes por la mañana en un acto en la Plaça Sant Jaume de Barcelona, se denuncian las “consecuencias graves que esta tiene sobre los derechos políticos de la ciudadanía y los derechos de manifestación, de expresión, de libre asociación y de disidencia política, suponiendo un retroceso para la calidad democrática de nuestra sociedad”.