Francesco Vignarca has been elected as a board member in 2025.
Francesco Vignarca has worked in the field of peace and disarmament for over twenty years. Since 2020 he has been Campaigns Coordinator of Rete Italiana Pace e Disarmo (the Italian Peace and Disarmament Network), having previously served as National Coordinator of the Italian Disarmament Network from 2004.
His work spans military expenditure, private defence companies, military procurement, arms trade and export controls, industrial conversion, the arms race and proliferation, and pathways toward disarmament and nonviolence, combining research with the coordination of numerous campaigns promoted by the Italian peace movement. He has extensive experience advocating before the Italian Government and Parliament and the EU institutions, taking part in numerous parliamentary hearings, meetings and conferences.
He coordinates the Italian dimension of major international campaigns, including Control Arms, the Stop Killer Robots coalition, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize), the Global Campaign on Military Spending (GCOMS), the European Forum on Armed Drones (EFAD) and the European Network Against Arms Trade (ENAAT). He is a member of the national coordination of “Un’altra difesa è possibile,” which promotes the institutional recognition of a nonviolent, unarmed Civilian Defence, and has served in the steering groups of “Europe for Peace,” “Stop the War Now”. “Stop Rearm Europe” and the “Assisi Pace Giusta” coalition. In 2017, together with Enrico Piovesana, he founded the Mil€x Observatory on Italian Military Spending.
Vignarca holds a Master’s Degree in Astrophysics and a Master’s in Sociology focused on human and social development. He is the author of many books and articles on arms production and trade, military spending, disarmament, peace, nonviolence and the privatisation of war, and collaborates with universities and foundations on related research and events. His editorials appear in leading Italian newspapers, and he is regularly interviewed by Italian and international media.
Selected Publications
The list below is a selection of published books. In addition, Francesco Vignarca is the author or co-author of many research reports and analyses (in particular the reports of the Mil€x Observatory on Italian Military Spending and the studies published with Rete Italiana Pace e Disarmo) on arms exports, military expenditure, militarisation, nuclear weapons and autonomous weapons.
Books
- Disarmo climatico (Edizioni Ambiente, VerdeNero Inchieste, 2026; preface by Nick Buxton, afterword by Vanessa Pallucchi) — https://www.edizioniambiente.it/catalogo/disarmo-climatico
- Disarmo nucleare. È ora di mettere al bando le armi nucleari. Prima che sia troppo tardi (Altreconomia, 2023) — https://www.vignarca.net/disarmo-nucleare-il-libro/
- Pace Diritto Umano (collective volume, Padova University Press, 2025) — https://www.vignarca.net/pace-diritti-umano-il-libro/
- F-35. L’aereo più pazzo del mondo (Round Robin Editrice)
- Armi, un affare di Stato (with Duccio Facchini and Michele Sasso; Chiarelettere, 2012)
- Economia armata (Altreconomia, 2011)
- Il caro armato. Spese, affari e sprechi delle forze armate italiane (with Massimo Paolicelli; Altreconomia, 2009)
- Mercenari Spa (BUR-Rizzoli, 2004)
Selected reports
- A Militarised Union. Understanding and confronting the militarisation of the European Union (co-authored with Ainhoa Ruiz, Bram Vranken, Jordi Calvo, Laëtitia Sédou and Wendela de Vries; ENAAT / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2021) English: https://stopwapenhandel.org/app/uploads/2021/09/A-militarised-Union.pdf | Italian: https://www.milex.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/EU-MILI-IT-WWWDEF.pdf
- Mil€x Observatory on Italian Military Spending reports and documents: https://www.milex.org/report-e-documenti/
Full list of books: https://www.vignarca.net/libri-con-miei-contributi-su-pace-disarmo-nonviolenza/
