No More 11th of Septembers, Not In Iraq or Elsewhere
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 24 September 2002

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is alarmed at the United States of America's threats of war against Iraq. WILPF warns against such a tragic act. A war against Iraq will affect not only the country and its people, it risks further destabilization of the entire region. In addition, it threatens to put the entire international system and the UN in complete disarray.

WILPF calls on the government of the United States of America and all its allies to act as responsible member states of the United Nations. We call for the US and all countries to act within the United Nations to end the economic sanctions on Iraq, end the bombing raids, continue the embargo on arms, resume UN arms inspections, and maintain compliance with the UN Security Council resolutions. We call on the government of Iraq to comply with its disarmament commitments to the UN. We call on the United States to recognize and fulfill its international commitments to refrain from unilateral and unprovoked aggression.

It is a year since the attack of 11 September 2001 on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center - exactly 28 years after the attack against the democratically elected government of Chile on 11 September 1973. We deeply regret the death of thousands of civilians killed and maimed in both these tragedies.

We deplore the thousands of civilians killed and maimed in Afghanistan in the war on terrorism launched by the United States of America on 7 October 2001 and supported by NATO, in response to the attacks on 11 September.

During the past thirty years, terrorism, nationally and internationally, has been used more and more as a tool to achieve political objectives by each side in conflicts. Since the Gulf War in 1991, conflicts among countries, ethnic and religious confrontations among social groups that have lived together peacefully for centuries have increased many-fold. Increasingly, the majority of the victims are civilians.

We call on all governments, in particular the US government, to turn away from the military approach to resolving conflicts and instead seek to eliminate together the root causes of conflict and find their solutions by peaceful means for the common good of all.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, representing women in many countries on all continents, condemns all acts of violence and war. We call on all citizens to make their voices heard and their goodwill felt to prevent governments from taking further military actions against any country and any people, and to press them to seek through the United Nations political and economic solutions to conflicts.

The dangers to our planet and to humanity are immense. They are real and need urgently peaceful solutions. Let us insist that the world's resources, all of which belong to our common human heritage, are invested in meeting these urgent tasks and not in waging war.