The Global Days of Action on Military Spending start with an international appeal: “Reduce Military Spending. Defend People and the Planet”

The Global Days of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS), that will take place between April 10th and May 17th, claim “Reduce Military Spending, Defend People and the Planet”. This special period of actions is part of the International Peace Bureau’s (IPB) campaign coordinated by Centre Delàs, which aims to demand major reductions in global military spending and the redirection of these public funds to address real human needs and tackle the climate crisis.

This year, GDAMS started with an international appeal: “Reduce Military Spending. Defend People and the Planet”:

The world spent $1.92 trillion on the military in 2019, a 3.6% increase over the previous year and the highest figure since the end of the Cold War. Our governments’ ever-growing military capacities, in the name of national security, have proved themselves completely useless to defend people from the COVID-19 pandemic, nor can they keep us safe in the face of other global emergencies such as climate change. In addition, as the victims of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere can testify, militarism makes conflicts worse rather than resolving them.
Current levels of military spending not only fail to provide true security, but they actually stand in the way of just and comprehensive solutions to the problems urgently demanding our attention. Indeed, the military power our rulers are so committed to -including new great power Cold Wars – helps create and sustain the very emergencies, tensions and injustice that they claim they are protecting their populations against.
We therefore demand that governments across the globe drastically reduce their military expenditures, especially those accounting for the largest shares of the world’s total spending, and reallocate the freed-up resources to human and common security-oriented sectors, notably for confronting the coronavirus pandemic and the eco-social collapse we are now facing.
Now is the time for a reset of our priorities as societies, and a new defense and security paradigm that puts human and environmental needs in the center of policies and budgets.
We need to defund the military if we are to defend people and the planet.

You can sign the appeal here as an individual or as an organisation.

To know more about the Global Days of Action on Military Spending and check out all the action that will take place during this period all over the world, visit GCOMS’s website.