Last month, competing interests prevented agreement on a much-needed treaty that would have reduced the appalling human cost of the poorly regulated international arms trade. Meanwhile, nuclear disarmament efforts remain stalled, despite strong and growing global popular sentiment in support of this cause.

Every two years the Olympic Games come round for the world’s sports fans to be distracted from their everyday activity with a couple of weeks of competition that inspires millions of young people all over the world to participate. In Ancient Greece, the Games were always accompanied by a ceasefire in war. The UN calls on the same thing to happen in the modern era.

The signatories of Rio+20 "Disarmament for Sustainable Development" appeal demand that the governments of the world seriously address the neglected issue of peace and disarmament, and agree on a global plan for disarmament for sustainable development at the Rio Summit in June 2012. A bread tank with a garden inside will be at Rio+20 to underline the realistic possibility of eradicating hunger and extreme poverty by redirecting military spending. 

by Anne Farrell, World without Wars, Canada

In Quebec there are more than 200,000 students on strike - they are on strike saying that the student fee increase is stopping a lot of them from accessing college and university education. The students have been on strike for four months. The response of the Quebec government has been to bring Law-78 onto its statute books, to break the student union and to break the student’s strike.