New

Year, New Challenges

Presidents Message

2015 has arrived, bringing new opportunities and challenges for
our committee. There is growing awareness of the importance
of disarmament, peace and security issuesissues that we help
bring to light with our programming and our online and print
Disarmament Times publications.

We are noticing elevated concern over drones and other autonomous weapon
systems. We see clearly what the proliferation of the types and numbers and the
lethal effectiveness of weapons is doing to men, women and children around the
globe. Non-combatantsinnocent civilianssuffer more than anyone else from
weapons sold to enrich investors and companies in the worlds wealthiest countries,
which harm many of the worlds poorest and most vulnerable.

With renewed vigor, we commit ourselves to inform and advocate for the
elimination of all such weapons and to turn our financial and intellectual assets
towards peaceful endeavors.

The Quakers, probably more than any other faith, have consistently highlighted the
price of weapons and military spending, which clearly comes at the cost of more
peaceful endeavorslike maintaining and building our schools, hospitals, roads,
parks, museums and concert halls. As the military industrial complex continues to
reap its bloody profits and thrive, the worlds health, education, trade and cultural
institutions remain woefully underfunded.

We stand as people of faith, shoulder to shoulder with secular activists, to end war
and the commerce of weapons. We cannot allow a culture of war to rob us of the
opportunity to do whats necessary to make this a better world for generations to
come.

Lets work together to make 2015 the year we make this world a safer place.

In peace,
Bruce Knotts
President, NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security