Peace & Justice Project International Conference 2024: how can we build a better world?
By Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace & Justice Project
Our second international conference will continue the intensive and painstaking work of building a radical and hopeful alternative to the misery faced by millions here in Britain, as well as billions more across the world.
With countless wars raging around the world and the climate crisis threatening our very existence as a species, the need to build a progressive agenda to tackle these challenges has never been so urgent.
The recent successes of independent and Green candidates in the UK general election, as well as the resurgence of left-wing parties in the French legislative elections, show that there is both a want and a need for a different kind of politics around the globe – one that puts the needs of people and planet before profit, refuses to cede ground to the far-right and empowers all of our communities.
This conference will build on last year’s inaugural event, which laid out the Peace & Justice Project’s 5 Demands with an internationalist view, and focus on building global momentum for progressive politics against the backdrop of the rising threat of nationalism, hate and division in our society.
The leadership of the Labour Party, now in government, continues in its monumental failure to take on these challenges head on and has enabled a fertile breeding ground for far-right ideology, fear-mongering and the politics of authoritarianism. We have seen as recently as last week, with Yvette Cooper’s announcement of Home Office immigration crackdowns on car washes and beauty salons, that this Labour government has absolutely no commitment to building a society that embraces the significant benefits of migration and will embolden the likes of Nigel Farage and the Reform Party.
Further evidence of this worrying authoritarian tendency exists with the appalling sentencing of Just Stop Oil’s ‘Whole Truth Five’, each given 4 to 5 years in prison for protesting the former government’s inaction on the climate crisis. These sentences are significantly longer than the average time handed down to those convicted of many violent crimes and robbery.
Make no mistake, these insidiously harsh sentences are a completely concerted attempt by the political establishment to protect themselves and those responsible for the climate breakdown. It is telling that most Western governments, our own included, are more than happy to lock up a group of people largely in their early twenties for causing delays on a motorway but are totally unwilling to legislate or appropriately tax those literally threatening our future on this planet, such as fossil fuel giants and the wider billionaire class.
The left must mount its fight back or face the prospect of missing this genuinely once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape and rebalance the scales of power and the redistribution of wealth.
With the likes of Jeremy Corbyn being sensationally re-elected to Parliament, we have shown that grassroots action and people-powered campaigns can win against the corporate-sponsored, lobbyist-backed machine favoured by the political establishment and its depressive status quo.
Those are the building blocks that our second international conference will lay down as we unite the peace and social justice movement to create a genuinely progressive alternative to the Western political dogma that has effectively signed the death warrants of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and every corner of the world.
It is this vision and direction that will bring about the victories of the future, inspired by those that have come generations before us and those fighting for a fairer world now. Our movement is international and totally committed to the principle that an injury to one of us is an injury to all of us, no matter how many miles, oceans or borders come between us.
We stand as ferociously steadfast with the food workers of Leicestershire and Cornwall as we do the garment workers of Bangladesh. We stand as tirelessly with the displaced people of Palestine as we do with the people of West Papua. We stand with the whole world’s growing movement for climate justice and will continue to do so until we have secured our sustainable future on Earth.
With speakers such as our founder Jeremy Corbyn, ShadowWorld Investigations director and former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein and Founder of the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice & Peace, Binalakshmi Nepram, joining conference panels on the day, we are bringing together some of the most acclaimed individuals in the world on issues surrounding peace and social justice to support and equip our movement for many years to come.
We have made history before- and there is absolutely nothing stopping us from doing it again.
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