The International Progress Organization (I.P.O.) has endorsed a global peace initiative launched by Afghan Peace Volunteers. The President of the I.P.O., Professor Hans Köchler, serves as coordinator of the initiative for Austria. Among the signatories of the declaration are Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire (Northern Ireland) and Professor Noam Chomsky (USA). Following is the text of the declaration:

#Enough! The People’s Agreement to Abolish War

We, the people of the human family, agree to abolish war.

Like you, we Afghans are tired of wars. War costs us everything and resolves nothing. War has increased ‘terrorism’. Wars risk spiraling into our destruction by nuclear weapons.

To abolish war, we form small, local peace circles or communities of two or more persons in which we agree to ban weapons and war and to build nonviolent systems for every aspect of life.

With autonomous alternatives, we no longer need to participate in today’s warring systems. We opt out, and we withhold support and money from any individual or group that uses war.

We begin to heal and live differently. Students learn better, laborers and farmers work better, mothers worry less, and basic human resources are better shared.

We nurture egalitarian relationships with nature and all human beings and connect to form a critical mass that’s free of borders, going beyond our separate causes and working together for a green and equal world without war. A critical mass is crucial as we can’t abolish war without reversing global warming and inequality; these are global crises driven by the same elite who rule over us by force. We abolish war person by person. We won’t wait for the elite, because they’re the ones who keep waging wars.

We make no distinction as to who wages the war, the scale of the war or the individual justifications for the war. We renounce all violence and wars and agree never to resort to war in any circumstance.

We, the people of the human family, agree to abolish war.

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