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"The International Criminal Court promises, at last, to supply what has for so long been the missing link in the international legal system, a permanent court to judge the crimes of gravest concern to the international community as a whole:  genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes."   – KOfi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations

The Washington and Seattle demonstrations have shown the need for radical reform, for justice to oppressed peoples, and judgment on the institutions that cause the global proliferation of human misery and environmental decimation.  The International Criminal Court will investigate and prosecute violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and environmental destruction as part of war crimes. Although the US has not yet endorsed the formation of the ICC American policy makers need to hear the voice of their constituency that claims for global justice. read more

Over the past 10 years, popular and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have markedly increased their influence in global decision-making. Now these groups are coming together to forge a common agenda, put recommendations on the table, and take united action to solve our common problems.

From April 2-8, for example, the inaugural session for a permanent Global People’s Assembly (GPA) will be held in Apia, Samoa. The momentum has been building for many years. The Millennium People’s Assembly Network (MPAN) held five sessions during the Hague Appeal for Peace Conference, with some 30 delegations attending. A Provisional Delegates Council was formed to move ahead with planning between meetings of the GPA. read more

When the Pentagon’s plan to inoculate all 2.4 million US service men, women, and reservists with an obscure anthrax vaccine surfaced almost three years ago, few people anticipated the opposition that would emerge. During an environmental review period, "public comments" submitted by veterans’ rights group Citizen Soldier and others raised questions about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine, previously used by only a small number of workers, and urged that independent civilian scientists and groups be allowed to participate in studies. Typically, the Pentagon ignored these suggestions, preferring to storm ahead on its own. read more

"Our power to empower is perhaps the most important role we can play in the 21st century. The more individuals who feel empowered to work in their own systems for peace and conflict transformation, the closer the world comes to that critical mass that will allow for a massive leap of consciousness, allowing new processes for peace that were previously unimaginable to become normative, and easy." – Louise Diamond

Transformation is the name of the game with Dr. Louise Diamond. When I met her in the mid-1970s, she was Louise Lindner, a psychotherapist in Burlington, Vermont. Although her work with my mother was very important in my life, the most profound impact came when I visited her in the hospital when she had cancer. Yet, the courage and joy with which she lived her life in those stark circumstances inspired and aided me immeasurably when I was later called upon to serve as a death midwife for my father. Confronted with death, she strove to be "full of joy, full of love, full of peace." read more

It’s 120 degrees here in the Death Valley desert, where I spend my days in a trailer pouring words into my computer, mixing them up, hoping they will come out right. Outside, the sky stretches as far as the eye can see. At night, the stars cover the world like an old soft quilt and everything is quiet, except the slithery night creatures foraging for food.

Thousands of miles away, high in the Peruvian Andes, in a concrete cell where the temperature never gets above 40 degrees, a young North American woman named Lori Berenson lies awake and watches a sliver of sky through a tiny window. I think about Lori when I look at the stars. I’d give my sky to Lori if I could – just wrap it up and sneak it through that narrow window – and hope that it would comfort her. read more

In the past two years, a coalition of unprecedented international breadth and vitality has grown around the world. Known as Jubilee 2000, or J2K, it has roots in communities of faith but includes secular groups of every political stripe, all sharing a moral commitment to ensure a debt-free fresh start for the world’s poorest nations. The first international conference of Jubilee 2000 was held in November 1998 in Rome, with 38 national campaigns and 12 international organizations represented. That conference agreed to coordinate a Global Chain Reaction which will work toward a target of 22 million signatures – the biggest petition in history – scheduled for delivery as part of an international event at the June 1999 Summit of the G8 countries in Cologne. read more