Let's convert military spending into Peace policies
LET'S CONVERT MILITARY SPENDING INTO PEACE POLICIES
The Spanish military spending in 2015, according to SIPRI's annual report on global military spending has reached 12,852 billion €, representing 1.3% of Spanish GDP. The Centre Delàs for Peace Studies, whose incorporate other elements, considers that the budget stands at more than 17.5 billion euros.
In the context of dismantling the welfare state and continuing cuts in social policies, there is still a huge amount of public money invested in the military sector. From the Centre Delàs for Peace Studies and in the framework of the Global Campaign on Military Spending (GCOMS), we believe that we must stop allocating public resources to weapons and wars: we have to reduce military spending!
We ask, therefore, political parties and leaders of Spain to implement real policies promoting a culture of peace based on the promotion of social justice, welfare and conflict prevention. No to the militarized and militaristic conflict management, which are cause and consequence of high military spending!
Because security must be understood in a more comprehensive way under the paradigm of human security (that includes environmental, economic security, access to education, health ...) and not only from the perspective of the State which consider it militarily. Facing threats to our security as may assume the terrorist attacks, it has been shown that militarized responses have not provided solutions, but rather the opposite, creating more insecurity, restricting freedoms that have aggravated the internal European situation. The bombings and military attacks have generated innocent deaths, more hatred and terror, favoring the increase of military spending; in which Spain has wasted billions of euros.
Every euro we spend to military spending would be more productive to invest in the real economy to create jobs or reserve it for social policies, culture, pensions, education, science and above all, every euro allocated to military spending is a step backwards in building conditions for peace. If we want peace, we should not prepare for war, if we really want a peaceful world, we must invest in peace policies. Let’s reduce military spending, let’s invest military spending in social spending. Let’s allocate military spending to build peace!
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