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The aim of the IPB World Congress 2016 is to bring the issue of military spending, often seen as technical question, into the broad public debate and to strengthen our global community of activism. The enormous global challenges of hunger, jobs and climate could be brought closer to a solution by real disarmament steps – steps that need to be clearly formulated and put into political reality.
The objectives of the World Congress go even beyond these specific challenges: they concern the connection between, on the one hand, the current global militarization and wars, and on the other, the need for a great transformation (see WBGU Flagship Report 2011 by German Advisory Council on Global Change). To put it bluntly, without overcoming militarism, a socio-ecological transformation with the goal of an equitable international social order will be a failure.
This dimension of social change has so far hardly been addressed, neither in the peace movements, nor in the transformation sciences nor in the social organizations that have such a transformation as their goal. This is the other specific challenge of the World Congress.
We expect that the impacts of the IPB World Congress 2016 will be in many fields and at several levels:
- Increasing the level of public debate,
- Broadening the community of activism,
- Requiring politicians to respond with policy proposals,
- Encouraging students and researchers to develop academic work in the areas highlighted by the Congress.