Disruptive diplomacy may be the only way out of the Iran-Israel nuclear crisis, the only way to pierce the hegemony of hypocrisy dominating the power politics of nuclear weapons control, of those who have them, and of those who...

What would you do with $1,738 billion (US dollars)? If you were told you had to spend it this year on making people safer, what would you spend it on?  $1, 738bn is how much was spent on the world’s military last year, according...

Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Abadi once asked:  “If a country is not involved in a war, do the people of that country live in a green peace?” For me, as the Greenpeace Peace Advisor, that is a very personal question. And one I...

What is peace? In a world at times ravaged by armed conflict, from Africa to Asia, is peace simply an absence of war? Or is there more to it than that? Today, on the International Day of Peace, it is important to reflect on some...

Today, 6th November, marks the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. In the havoc and destruction spread by war, damage to the environment is almost always regarded as a...

The exact number of nuclear weapons situated across the world is shrouded in mystery, but whatever the number, North Korea's underground test this week is a grim reminder of the devastation and destruction these weapons could unleash.

Our office in Istanbul has been under siege. It is in the heart Taksim, an area in which a brutal police clampdown has been trying to end the peaceful protest over the planned destruction of the small, and historic, Gezi Park by Taksim...

I have been living in Istanbul, in Taksim, for the last year and a half. This weekend I felt at home here for the first time. Against the tense backdrop and amidst the clouds of tear gas people are being exceptionally kind. A woman...

"Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon them." – Frederick Douglass, American ex-slave civil rights leader ============== The citizens of...

"The people finally woke up" … and they won't be going back to sleep. This phrase, heard from the four corners of Brazil this Monday, reflected a infectious sentiment felt everywhere. The hours past midnight saw thousands of people...

According to new figures released on Monday, last year a whopping  US$1747 billion was spent on armies across the world . Modest decreases in spending in austerity hit Western Europe and reduced spending in the US, which is still the...

“The day the sun rose twice”. That's how 1 March 1954 was recorded in the history of Rongelap, a tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean, part of the Marshall Islands. Early that morning, shortly after the sun rose in the east, a second sun...

The home of the last few Japanese dugongs is about to be landfilled to make way for two airstrips - part of the expansion of a US military base on the island of Okinawa. But a movement nearly 18 years old is standing up to say NO.

"Who is doing this? Who is killing us? This great evil. How did it steal into the world? We were a family. How did it break up and come apart?" – Private Witt's thoughts, The Thin Red Line, by Terrence Malick.  Records from the...

There are at least two undeniable existential threats to human civilisation - climate change and nuclear weapons. In the context of the first US military ship visit to NZ waters in 33 years happening right now, I want to reflect on...

I’m not sure we can win with logic.  How do we reverse species loss, climate change, toxins, general overshoot of Earth’s generous habitats? We have the science, but humanity at the large scale does not appear to have the political...