Peacebuilders, it’s time to raise our voices! ✨
Imagine a Cross Country Checkup episode dedicated to peacebuilding—highlighting the powerful stories and strategies shaping our world. Now, let’s make it happen together! 📻

🔊 What we need: Your voice! We’re calling on all peacebuilders to write a letter asking for a special peacebuilding episode. This is a chance to amplify the important work we’re all doing—across generations, across communities, and across all identities.

📝 Here’s how you can get involved:
Write a letter using our template (link located in our LinkTree). Feel free to personalize it or write your own!

Share your story—let’s make sure this call is intergenerational and intersectional. From youth activists to elders, and from marginalized communities and those directly impacted by conflict, every voice counts!

Once you’ve emailed your letter, BCC us or let us know so we can track the momentum of this campaign.

The more letters, the stronger our collective voice! Let’s work together to make peacebuilding a national conversation.

Peaceful vigils for Gaza. You don't have to be a grandmother to show your support.

Speakers:

Sophie Bolt
General Secretary of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a leading British organization for peace and anti-nuclear action
@cnd_uk @sophie4peace

Rooj Ali
Reversing the Trend (RTT) Canada Coordinator, and organizer of the Youth Nuclear Peace Summit
@reversett_

Tamara Lorincz
PhD student at the Balsillie School of International Relations, University of Waterloo. Member of Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Canada. 
@Tamara.Lorincz

Moderator: Janine Solanki
Coordinating Committee member of the Canada-Wide Peace and Justice Network (CWPJN)

Organized by Canada-Wide Peace & Justice Network (CWPJN)
https://peaceandjusticenetwork.ca
@CanadaPeaceJustice

In a world increasingly shaped by violence, militarism, and the normalisation of war, how can individuals and communities reclaim the possibility of peace? This timely online conference brings together a distinguished panel of speakers from civil society, academia, and global peace movements to explore the roots of today's conflicts and the pathways toward a more just and peaceful world. With particular attention to the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, the discussion will examine the role of grassroots movements, anti-militarism efforts, and international solidarity. The panel will be followed by a live Q&A session, inviting participants to engage directly with the speakers and contribute to the conversation.

Be part of this vital conversation as we address one of the most pressing challenges of our time: How can we work together to create a future where peace prevails over war?

This conference aims to bring together thought leaders, policy experts, and activists to address some of the most pressing global challenges and discuss pathways to peace and stability. Your participation would greatly enrich this dialogue and inspire our audience.

We are excited to announce that the next Global Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice will take place 15-21st September 2025.

• Raise public awareness of the links between war, militarism/militarisation and social and climate injustice;
• Build connections between peace, climate and justice movements;
• Build momentum for collective action and policy making against militarism and for social and climate justice.

We DO have the power to End the Genocide Now! Join the webinar to learn how and spread the word.

A super-majority of the world’s nations already support Palestine. Using a little known process - Uniting for Peace - our UN representatives have the numbers and the power to override the US veto to:

- Send a multinational protection force to Palestine providing food & medicine, ending the blockade, protecting civilians.

- Implement sanctions & a military embargo on Israel.

- Withdraw Israel’s UN credentials, establish a war crimes tribunal & more.

September 18 marks a one-year deadline set by the UN General Assembly for Israel to comply with the World Court and the UN – or face concrete measures like those listed above. The UN could vote as soon as Sept 18. If we press governments/UN reps that supported Palestine in the past to hold the line for Palestine, we can pass a measure with real teeth to end genocide.

Join the webinar to help launch this global movement, with Craig Mokhiber (International human rights attorney), Dr. Jeffrey Sachs (economist, academic) Roger Waters (musician), Miko Peled (author, advocate), Medea Benjamin (CodePink), Susan Abulhawa (novelist), Ali Abunimah (journalist, Electronic Intifada), Imam Omar Suleiman (scholar & community leader), Rev. Munther Isaac (Bethlehem pastor), Jill Stein (2024 Green Party presidential candidate).

Join us to mobilize civil society worldwide & compel our governments/UN reps to use the supermajority power we ALREADY have to end the genocide now. Together we’re unstoppable!

-Keynote speaker and Q & A: K. J. Noh, Journalist, political analyst, writer and educator specializing in the geopolitics and political economy of the asia-Pacific region. He is a member of Veterans for Peace, a co-founder of Pivot to Peace and and the co-host of the China Report on the Breakthrough News Network.

-Video update on Space issues by Dr. Dave Webb, GN board chair and retired university professor from Leeds, England

-Report on Keep Space for Peace Week (October 4th-11th)

-Open discussion with audience

-Facilitates by Mary Beth Sullivan

Fossil fuels aren't just the main driver behind the climate crisis. From Colombia to Palestine, from Mozambique to Ukraine, they are also majorly implicated in militarism, environmental destruction, systemic acts of violence, insecurity and gendered power dynamics. 

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty proposal, spearheaded by a growing bloc of 17 states, has the potential to become a climate tool for peace by explicitly addressing the supply side of fossil fuels and promoting international cooperation toward a global just transition. 

Join this webinar to explore research and analysis on the intersections of fossil fuels, militarism, and extractivism from a feminist peace perspective, conducted by WILPF Sections in Colombia, Germany, and Spain, and the International Secretariat. You will also hear from Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Treaty Champion and Global Coordinator of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Campaign, on how the Treaty could serve as a pathway for climate justice and peace. 

Interpretation to Spanish will be available.

Military spending in Canada is poised to skyrocket – the pretext being NATO’s arbitrary new commitment that member states commit a staggering 5 percent of GDP on military spending. That represents $150b/annually in Canada.

Canada’s projected increase will come at the expense of spending that working people urgently need: healthcare, education, childcare, environmental protection, housing, employment insurance and public pensions, social assistance, public transit and more.

These considerations are left out of the political discourse, as politicians of all stripes rush to endorse NATO’s demands.

To amplify the voices of communities affected by this spending, TAPS is organizing a one-day, in-person “People’s Hearing” on military spending.

What could we do with a bigger “peace” of the budget pie, if government spending was prioritized differently?

We are inviting labour, peace, housing, social justice, and other community organizations to share their perspectives.

Recognizing September 26th, 2025 as UN International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

Photos from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum of the impacts of the 1945 atom bomb (note: some images may be disturbing), as well as efforts since to abolish nuclear weapons.

NuclearAbolitionDay.org encourages individuals and organizations to join the social media action Stop Nuclear Weapons: Peace is in our Hands. The action can be done by anyone, anywhere between now and September 26, but in particular on September 26. 

A hand raised with palm facing forwards is a universal message to stop. Hands are also what we use to greet each other, create things and build cooperation. For this social media action, we use our hands to symbolically stop nuclear weapons and build cooperation for a peaceful, nuclear-weapon-free world.

The social media action is being undertaken in cooperation with Not One Nuclear Explosion, organised by Youth4Disarmament, a project of the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs. Below are some examples. For more information, please visit Stop Nuclear Weapons: Peace is in our Hands.

We undertake a 20 km walk to remember the horrors of nuclear warfare waged 80 years ago, and commit to the total elimination of these weapons.

Plan to join us for part or all of the walk, which begins in Scarborough and ends at the Peace Garden in Nathan Phillips Square.

2025 is the 80^th Anniversary of the first uses of nuclear weapons resulting in unspeakably devastating deaths of over 210, 000 persons, with many more dying later as a result of exposure to radiation. The surviving population of Japan cried out for Peace, and an end to nuclear weapons. Yet today, an estimated 12, 400 nuclear weapons remain in the possession of 9 countries; several of these countries are modernizing their present stockpile. Other countries express a desire to have nuclear weapons. The ongoing threat of nuclear war at a time of great instability and conflict involving nuclear weapons states, is totally unacceptable and immoral.

September 26 is the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, and this Walk calls for such a total elimination.

We hope to build community, and increase the number of citizens engaged in nuclear weapons abolition.

Contact Mary-Ellen for more information: sistermef@gmail.com

In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the entire annual series of the Hiroshima Appeals poster project is exhibited. 

Initiated by JAGDA Hiroshima and Hiroshima International Cultural Foundation, and currently also operated by The Hiroshima Peace Creation Fund, the series demonstrates remarkably sustained continuity and ongoing efforts of world-wide compassion (https://hiroshima.jagda.or.jp/appeals_about.html ).

The series consists of 28 posters, headed by KAMEKURA Yūsaku’s masterpiece “Burning Butterflies” 1983, continued with an unbroken sequence of works of high artistic excellence.

Selected works from The Japan Foundation, Toronto’s poster collection accompany the Hiroshima Appeals posters which share the unique nature of the design creation in being non-commercial, abstract, conceptual, and focusing on global issues and subjects.

Understanding the need for nuclear abolition, Wallis details a perfectly plausible step-by-step path to success. It's hard to imagine a more useful book.

In October, 2025, World BEYOND War will be holding a weekly discussion each of four weeks of the book Nuclear Abolition: A Scenario with the author Timmon Wallis.

When you register for the club, we will mail you a signed paperback copy of the book.

We'll let you know which parts of the book will be discussed each week along with the Zoom details to access the discussions.

When:

For one hour on October 2, 9, 16, and 23, 2025, beginning at UTC 18:30, which is 8:30 a.m. in Honolulu, 11:30 a.m. in Los Angeles, 12:30 p.m. in Mexico City, 2:30 p.m. in New York, 7:30 p.m. in Yaoundé, 8:30 p.m. in Berlin, and 10:00 p.m. in Tehran, and Friday at 7:30 a.m. in Auckland.

How do we move towards a world without wars, weapons, police, prisons, the death penalty, and borders? How can we work towards our collective liberation, recognizing that oppressions are interconnected? Come to #NoWar2025 to explore how we can join in solidarity across movements and borders to abolish these interwoven systems and build a world based on common security — “no one is safe until all are safe.”

#NoWar2025 will make the case for abolition, explore intersections between abolitionist movements, learn from successful case studies of abolition, and strategize about how we can truly move towards a world beyond war.

Nuclear weapons threaten our future. The 5th Youth Nuclear Peace Summit is a chance to enact change.

The Youth Nuclear Peace Summit is an event that bring young people to learn, discuss, and take action on the urgent matter of nuclear disarmament.

Participants will take part in educational activities, thought-provoking presentations, and inspiring workshops. These sessions will be led by both youth leaders and globally-recognized experts in the field.

The summit hopes to empower the next generation to actively contribute to the goal of a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons.

The Encampments is a 2025 American documentary film about the 2024 Palestine solidarity campus encampments at Columbia University and other university campuses during Israel-Gaza war.

The Encampments is lauded for "its sense of contemporary and historical detail, owed to both footage shot by the filmmakers, as well as by the protesters themselves." The Columbia Daily Spectator called the film a "testament to the strength of the community born within the student-led pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia, and how hope and belief can grow, even in the face of institutional backlash" and offers an "insightful and intimate look into what happened within the gates, well beyond mainstream coverage." Also, from Hyperallergic, the online arts magazine, The Encampments "extricates the movement from the grips of mainstream and conservative media narratives and places it back in the hands of its organizers."

Film will be followed by conversation / Q&A  with members from local universities.

The the first boats from the Global Sumud Flotilla started their voyage across the Mediterranean to break the siege on Gaza. Sumud (صمود) is an Arabic word meaning steadfastness.

In the spirit of the steadfast people of Gaza, flotillas from 44 countries are sailing in an attempt to break the US-Israeli siege that blocks food, water, fuel, and more from entering Gaza. This is the largest flotilla to set sail to Gaza ever. From the People's Conference for Palestine in Detroit, we send our love and support to the brave people on their way to Gaza. If governments of the world won't break the siege, the people will!

"Yesterday the mighty Coalition for the Gaza Family Reunification Program in Canada issued a letter to our Prime Minister and relevant officials.

I encouraged everyone to take a read to understand direct Canadian complicity in violence against Palestinians. It takes many forms, as do the publicity stunts that intend to convince us otherwise. Here is but one example, disguising racist policies. The Canadian program has been used to collect unprecedented and disproportionate information on families and handed over to Israel and Egypt, both surveillance run entities. It has knowingly separated families. It has also been used to justify the intrusive securitization and violations of family members. 

We know these families comprise some of the most vulnerable human beings on earth. We also know that 50% of the Gazan population was children averaging the age of 5 years old when the genocide began. 

The letter can be found below and is also available here.

For those wondering what to do, we have also created a toolkit with more detailed information and action to demand better of Canadian officials here. 

For those in Ottawa, you can go visit and hear from some families pleading for the lives of their loved ones with weekly vigils on Wednesdays in front of the IRCC headquarters downtown (300 Slater Street)."

Legacy Donations

Your legacy gift helps ensure that VOW’s critical work continues for years to come. Whether it’s advancing our disarmament education program, advocating for peace, or working to end nuclear threats, your gift will directly support the next generation of peacebuilders!