KARACHI, Nov 22: Three civil society organisations of Pakistan, India and France have launched a joint international campaign on `Disarmament to Combat Poverty’ and are demanding 10 per cent reduction in defence budgets and redirection of military expenditures to social development in these countries.
They will press these states to immediately freeze their respective defence budgets with zero per cent increase and 10 per cent reduction by 2010.
The Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) has joined hands with the Ekta Parishad of India and the FDH of France for this purpose.
These organisations will establish a ‘Fund for Peace’, seeking Rs5 in India and Pakistan and five euros in France as monthly contribution from the public to fund their activities. They say that it is important to cut defence budgets and divert these resources to social development because thousands of people are dying in Indian and Pakistan due to lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
The executive director of PILER in a statement said that South Asian countries were spending $10 billion on buying weapons every year. “Such huge spending by countries where people die of malaria is ridiculous,” he said and urged the governments to sign a `South Asian No-War Pact’ and divert military resources to social development.Jean Pierre Dardaud, director of the FDH, a campaign partner in France, said his organisation would mobilize public opinion in France to dissuade the government from selling weapons to India and Pakistan. Both South Asian countries are major buyers of weapons from France.
Rajagopal, head of the Ekata Parishad, a partner organization from India, maintained that disarmament was the key to reducing poverty and maintained that linking defence expenditures with poverty was aimed at involving the common people in the campaign as they were the worst victims of poverty.
