Blogs
This page features blog posts and updates from Peace SOS.
Topics include peacebuilding efforts, humanitarian concerns, and reflections on current events.
The family in Gaza: “The famine is rolling like a snowball, it is getting bigger and bigger with speed”
The family with whom we maintain contact in Gaza asked us this week if we could help with food supplies and a water truck. We wondered how they would get this, since we read in the media that everything had run out and no aid had been allowed in for two months. There...
SOS from Gaza
This morning I received an e-mail with the subject line ‘SOS from Gaza’: Gaza is being destroyed. I am [….] from Jabalia. My house was bombed over the heads of my family. They are still under rescue. Please, we beg you. We need your help. We are without food and...
Stop the attacks on Gaza, think of the children
Yesterday morning I read on the NOS Dutch news website that Israel had violated the ceasefire and carried out a large-scale attack on Gaza. More than 300 people were killed, including many children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. I asked the family in Gaza...
Securing Peace in Congo and Strategic Raw Materials for a Just Energy Transition in the World
The East of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is plunged into an armed conflict that has lasted for decades, causing immeasurable human suffering, violations of human rights, massive displacement of populations, sexual violence, etc. and hindering the development...
The Status of Persons with Disabilities in Pakistan: Nothing About us, Without us
The term ‘disability’ means one or more physical impairments such as the inability to walk or to coordinate with others. It could be the effect of a disease or accident, it may be congenital or the result of mental challenges. Pakistan follows the definition of the...
Peaceful settlements of disputes: Article 33 of the UN Charter
Most of us are familiar with the film about Robert Oppenheimer that tells how, in 1945, work was being done in the deepest secrecy to develop the atomic bomb, a weapon system that would profoundly change issues of war and peace. What many of us do not know is that...
Let Israeli and Palestinian grassroots organisations participate in peace negotiations
On Tuesday January 28th, Reem Hajajreh of the Palestinian Women of the Sun, Yael Braudo-Bahat of Women Wage Peace from Israel, and Hanna Assouline, president of des Guerrières de la Paix, were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize at the Vrije Universiteit in...
Let ceasefire in Gaza become lasting peace
On Wednesday 15 January, I received a happy message from Gaza from the family we are in touch with. ‘We don't know if we are in a dream or reality.... The ceasefire will stop... We are crying with joy... Have my wife, children and I been spared from this war.... Will...
Peace in Ukraine Needs Christmas Ceasefire and Nuclear Neutrality, Quakers Suggest
After more than a thousand days of internationally condemned Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine and more than a million casualties, the senseless war in Ukraine must end. Ukrainian Quakers proposed that a Christmas truce could be introduced to start peace talks...
Short story: A mother’s call for peace
It is a warm day and I am at home with my adolescent son. In a moment, he will leave by car to Germany for sports training and my father and I will go to Katwijk aan Zee. ‘Will you drop me off at the station?’ I ask. ‘Yes, that's fine.’ ‘Will you take a bottle of...
Memorial protest for the children and journalists killed in Gaza
On November 4 this year, Plant een Olijfboom, Free Press Unlimited and Hilversum for Palestine organised a memorial protest with thousands of children’s shoes to commemorate the Palestinian children killed in Gaza. Palestinian authorities say that around 17,000...
The need to implement the laws for child rights in Pakistan
Pakistani children are vulnerable through many forms of physical, psychological and sexual violence and exploitation, including child trafficking and child labor that is a form of modern-day slavery. Pakistan ratified the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of...