Dear friends and comrades,
We hope the upcoming holidays find you healthy, safe, and able to spend quality time with your loved ones! Thank you for your support through 2023 and for your loyalty to our newsletter!
transform! europe remains committed to a safe and peaceful future for all. The relentless military attacks on Gaza, the ongoing war in Ukraine as well as all conflicts and wars around the world must end! Only when peace is achieved can human beings flourish and live up to their full potential. We call on all of you to work within your means for a future of equality, justice, peace and safety, and to oppose and resist the drums of war that wreak havoc upon humans and nature.
We look forward to new challenges, to strengthening our work in solidarity and wish you all the best for 2024!
This year we have collected quotes from feminist peace activists and, as always, a list of initiatives and organisations you might want to support with your donations.
Messages of Peace
| “Why is it that countries which we call ′strong′ are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?” |  |
Malala Yousafzai (human rights advocate for the education of women and children, youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner) in her Nobel Peace Prize lecture in December 2014.
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“You’re not guilty for what happened back then. But you are guilty if you don’t want to know anything about that time. You must know about everything that happened—and why it happened.” |
An encouraging message by Esther Bejarano, Holocaust survivor, musician, anti-fascist, to the coming generations. At the age of 19, she was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. After her liberation, she continued to fight against fascism for the rest of her life.
| “My message to people who have suffered the atrocities of war is to believe that things can be different. Understanding that peace is possible is ultimately about standing up for your own human rights. That is why we all benefit from peaceful societies which honor those rights. This vision of peace depends on justice, healing, and support for victimized communities. We must see the reality of this, educate our children to expect it, and not be distracted by hatred.” |  |
Nadia Murad is an Iraqi (Yazidi) human rights activist and winner of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. She advocates for the recognition and international prosecution of the genocide committed by the so-called Islamic State against the Yazidis.
Our donation recommendations:
Initiatives and organisations working to support refugees and migrants, which you might want to support with your donations:
The International Centre for Civil Initiatives Our House is a well-known and locally established rights defence expert and peacebuilders network in Belarus and Lithuania and is experienced in the projects for peaceful conflict resolution and non-violence work. To make a donation, click here.
medico international has been promoting human rights in solidarity with partner organisations all over the world. As a non-profit organisation, its work is largely funded by donations and grants and shored up by the medico Foundation, guaranteeing the independence of its political work. In the increasingly hopeless Middle East conflict, medico, alongside cross-border Palestinian and Israeli initiatives, insists that the right to decent living conditions and health applies toall people between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. To make a donation, click here.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) continues to call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to allow the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid. From Palestine and Israel to Sudan and Ukraine or anywhere else, civilians and hospitals should never be a target of war. To donate, click here.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) provides assistance and protection to registered Palestine refugees. The Agency’s services include education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, microfinance and emergency assistance, including in times of armed conflict. To donate, click here.
MEDITERRANEA – Saving Humans, carries out search and rescue missions at sea, despite criminalisation and violence occurring on the Libyan coast. Mediterranea is a ship funded by Italian civil society. Find out more about Mediterranea and follow their daily activities and projects on Facebook. To donate, click here.