Following a meeting with WILPF International including Lebanese members, we have written to Dame Barbara Woodward, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, to urge the UK to help end the conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza and build peace in the Middle East. We encourage you to use this letter as a template for your own advocacy and lobby – share to your local MP or news outlets to spread the call for peace and freedom.
“Dear Dame Barbara,
Working through the UK Mission to the UN to bring an end to conflict
We have this week taken part in an online meeting of Lebanese and European members of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). The experiences and testimonies of Lebanese women are heart-rending. An Italian WILPF member also told of her engagement with humanitarian support for starving children in Gaza.
Our Lebanese sisters are asking us to raise their voices to you and to call for:
1. An immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon
2. No more weapons to be supplied to Israel from the UK
3. Israel to be held to account for the wars in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, condemned by the International Court of Justice and the court of public opinion
Lebanese WILPF women see Israel as picking up the mantle of colonialism and being supported by Western countries, including the UK.
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom has over 100 years’ experience seeking out the root causes of war and conflict, working through WILPF’s consultative status at the United Nations, and using negotiation and conciliation to bring an end to conflict.
We hope that your Mission to the UN has an experienced team of conciliators, and that the UK will take a leading part in bringing an immediate end to the conflict in Palestine/Israel and the Lebanon.
WILPF women feel this action would fit your mission statement to make the UK more secure “by making the UN more effective and efficient at delivering peace, sustainable development, human rights, justice and humanitarian assistance.”
Yours in peace,
Fiona McOwan, National Secretary, for WILPF UK Executive Committee”