IDEA
On the 25th of February 2003 a group of young students from several high-schools in Heidelberg, Germany, started to build a symbolic “protection wall for the international law”. Demonstrating on the streets, many students expressed their protest against the military intervention in Iraq that happened without the mandate of the UN Security Council.
The Heidelberg group went beyond that. In a public letter, they have called for the respect of the international law, as it was elaborated after the experiences of two devastating World Wars, as well as for a general disarmament of nuclear weapons by 2020. With so far 91.366 collected signatures and the award of the reputated Dag Hammarskjöld medaillon of the German Society for the United Nations in 2004, the intiative was a large success.
All the more inspiring was the presence of Felix Fellmer, a representative of the Aktion Völkerrecht and the Citizens of the United Nations (C-UN) initiative, at the Student Days “One World” 2004 in Karlsruhe. After having participated in his workshop, some members of the local WYC group in Karlsruhe decided to join the initiative and to collect signatures in their schools.
REALISATION
In order to inform their fellow students about the initiative and to invite them to participate, notably Nadja Eiselin, Alex Krachmaljow, Stefan Lamb and Sainab Nohzat offered regularly an information stand at the Gymnasium Neureut. The signatures were given on a piece of paper as well as on a small piece of wood that formed a progressively more impressive “protection wall” for the international law. The Fichte Gymnasium (organised by the AK One World), the Helmholtz Gymnasium (mainly led by Pina Kühr) and the Otto-Hahn-Gymnasium (Birgit Manz and Charlotte Bradke) adopted this strategy.
Following the intention to also invite a broader public to sign, the WYC group in Karlsruhe organised a common information stand at the central market place in Karlsruhe on the 9th of July 2005. The so far collected signatures and the respective wall were presented to interested citizens. The same was done at the end of July 2005 during the FEST, a big public festival in Karlsruhe. Furthermore, WYC Karlsruhe send a letter of invitation to the mayor of Karlsruhe to invite him to join the international initiative “Mayors for Peace” that is cooperating with the Aktion Völkerrecht pursuing the same objectives. Unfortunately, the mayor of Karlsruhe decided not to follow the invitation to join the initiative “Mayors for Peace” as we learnt from a press release.
ACHIEVED RESULTS
Altogether, around 800 signatures (461 alone at the Gymnasium Neureut) were collected between April and July 2005 in Karlsruhe what means that at least 800 people have started to think about the issue. The so achieved awareness is certainly to be considered as one of the two main results. The second main result was the presentation of the Aktion Völkerrecht at the UN headquarters in New York on the 25 Mai 2005 and during the commemorative ceremonial in Hiroshima on the occasion of the airdrop of the first atomic bomb sixty years ago.
CONTACT
Website of Aktion Völkerrecht/International Law Campaign: www.a-vr.org
Principal project coordinator from WYC Karlsruhe was Stefan Lamb (stefan.lambatgmx.de)
The principle contact persons of Aktion Völkerrecht were Felix Fellmer and Nina Eisenhardt
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