On the International Day of Peace

ILPS Statement
21 September 2019

Since 1981, the United Nations (UN) has been observing International Day of Peace or “Peace Day” each year on 21 September for “commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.”

Today, peace remains an elusive ideal. This is amidst the harsh reality of class, economic, political and social conflicts. This is aggravated by intensifying exploitation and oppression in a prolonged crisis of the world capitalist system. Imperialist states representing financial and corporate interests are intensifying the extraction of superprofits. They export their own crisis to less developed countries. They use increasingly fascist repressive measures at home and abroad. There is intensified wars of intervention and aggression. And, hence, there is no international peace.

This year’s “Climate Action for Peace” would only be a futile attempt to prop up the failing UN sustainable development goals. The green economy is still the greed economy, under systemic exploitation for private profit. The killing of indigenous person and human rights defender Maxciel Pereira dos Santos in the Brazilian state of Amazona last September 9 highlights just one outcome of imperialist plunder coupled with a rabid fascist regime.

The reintegration of former socialist countries into the capitalist system only worsened the global crisis.  The working peoples and nations suffer the most. They are the most interested in the struggle for peace.

The UN is helpless before the unilateral actions of the United States which remains a bellicose power despite its domestic and world decline.  The US pullout from the INF treaty has only spurred a new arms race.  Where the US has intervened, peace has come to nothing. The Korean Peninsula is still at war. NATO has expanded even after the Cold War threatening the Russian Federation. The Middle East (West Asia) is torn after the US “War on Terror” supported by US Arab allies and Zionist Israel. Renewed conflicts erupted in Central and South Asia, including Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and the Kashmir region. Latin America and Africa remain battlegrounds. And the US pivot to Asia marked growing hostilities with China, the rearming of Japan, tighter US security ties with Australia, and more fascist interventions in the Philippines and throughout the Pacific.

Only the unity among the exploited and oppressed peoples and nations can stop this imperialist and fascist offensive. The Korean people are struggling for an independent and peaceful reunification. The Kurdish and Palestinian peoples struggle heroically for liberation. Venezuela has stood up proudly against the US despite increasing sanctions. Colombia is afire after a miserable peace. The Philippines is steadfast against a cold-blooded killing regime. West Papua struggles hard for freedom against US-backed Indonesian occupation. Hong Kong is vibrant in protest.

The anti-war movements, including the anti-US bases groups, in the US, Europe, Japan, Korea, the Pacific, Latin America and Africa, all contribute to world peace. The ILPS promotes and supports all these efforts.

There is, indeed, hope for peace. It lies in the national and international struggles of entire peoples and nations against imperialism and fascism, for national freedom and democracy, for socialism onwards to a bright future for humankind. A broad popular front of the people is being built for the attainment of these goals.

LEN COOPER

Chairperson

International League of Peoples Struggles(ILPS)