PEACEFUL – ANTIWAR MOVEMENT Peaceful-antiwar-movement-ΚΦ (1)

FOR A PEACEFUL – ANTIWAR MOVEMENT IN EUROMEDITERRANEAN AREA Athens, March 2018 One of the slogans used by the older "Friends of Peace" was "Destroy the Weapons before the Weapons Destroy Humanity." Nowadays, following the developments in Syria, the threats and tensions in the Aegean and in the Euromediterranean area, this slogan becomes more relevant than in the past and is updated: "Stop the wars now before the wars destroy the humanity." Next to the trade wars, caused by the inability for multilateral international trade agreements with fair rules, within the framework of UN and the WTO, due to US and EU neo-liberal policies that have opted for bilateral trade agreements in favor of multinational companies through TTIP, CETA, TISA , etc., there are also new forms of trade wars and regional conflicts concerning mainly the controlling of production places and hydrocarbon trade corridors. Progressive decouple from fossil fuels and switching to alternative, environmentally friendly sources of energy could help to reduce geopolitical pressures and wars led by explorations and hydrocarbon mining. Particularly, after the Arab Spring of 2011, we observe a new intensity of Regional conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Ukraine and national frictions in the Western Balkans. The new European EU's strategy towards the creation of alternative hydrocarbon supply routes from the Middle East, the South-East Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Adriatic and the Balkans, along with the US Multinationals intervention, have brought in confrontation mainly the Russia, Turkey and Iran with the US and the EU in the areas of control of hydrocarbon resources in their future paths to Europe. Instead of resolving individual differences on the basis of international law and the principles of the UN on sustainable development, respecting the National States sovereign and the Law of the Sea, we see, instead of this cooperation of the states towards a win-win strategy for the benefit of people, the disastrous regional conflicts to be developed. These include either attempts to cancel international decisions by the United States on the establishment and harmonious coexistence of an independent Palestinian State with Israel, or a revision of international treaties such as Lausanne Treaty from Turkey, which militarily invaded into Syrian and Kurdish Afrin area and with warships into the Inclusive Economic Zone of the Republic of Cyprus, or through the reshuffling of borders and through third-countries devastating warfare that continue for 7 years in Syria. The ISIS terrorist groups have been crushed in the battlefields but the war tragedy with the bombing of civilians and children continues to cause Syria hundreds of thousands of innocent dead people and millions of refugees. NATO is a residue of the cold war, which does not contribute to the consolidation of peaceful coexistence and fair cooperation in the modern world. The European Union, in all of its Member States, either refuses to accept part of the refugees and to promote integration policies, or has an institutional weakness and a lack of progressive political will and coherence to intervene towards a peaceful settlement of transnational disputes based on the principles of international law and the UN.