Make no mistake - COP26 matters a lot. As the UN Secretary General has said “The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. Global heating …
The UK’s arms sales to human rights abusers
The Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair is taking place in London this week. The 2021 DSEI event demonstrates the need for a complete reassessment and overhaul of the UK government’s support for the UK arms industry, similar to that of 2007/2008 when the Defence …
Afghanistan – what will the future hold?
It seems that the long-running 20 year military campaign in Afghanistan has come to an abrupt end, creating huge apprehension for what might come next. Those in Afghanistan who have been active in supporting the US/UK backed governments of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani fear for the future of the …
Help forced labour go out of fashion
Shopping can be something of a minefield these days. On a rather infrequent clothes-shopping trip, I found myself unsure whether the pair of cotton trousers made in China had been manufactured using forced labour of Uyghurs. There is no easy way to tell. The Better Cotton Initiative does not give …
Security, defence, and development: an integrated review
In February of this year, the Prime Minister announced an integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy. It would be the largest review of these areas since the end of the Cold War. At JPIT we welcomed such a wide-ranging brief. The opportunities offered by an integrated …
Keep KitKat Fairtrade
Nestlé has announced that from October 2020 KitKats will no longer contain Fairtrade cocoa and sugar. Instead, Nestlé is moving to the promotion of its own Cocoa Plan and the Rainforest Alliance certification. As a result 27,000 sugar and cocoa farmers will lose the Fairtrade Premium …
“Put armed conflict on lockdown” – #GlobalCeasefire
At the beginning of April 2020, JPIT’s four partner Churches joined the UN Secretary General’s call for a global ceasefire in order that Governments can respond to the common threat of Coronavirus. “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war” Antonio Guterres said when announcing the …
Postponement of the Glasgow Climate Summit
We understand the need to postpone the Glasgow COP26 Climate Summit to 2021. It is right that, at this time, governments around the world concentrate on tackling COVID-19. COVID-19 is a huge global emergency, and rightly requires a global response. But the emergency of the …
Nine years of war in Syria – a call to pray
This weekend marks the ninth anniversary of the civil war in Syria. While Europe worries about a new wave of refugees, the humanitarian crisis around the city of Idlib goes largely unreported. Many came to Idlib from other parts of Syria when the area was relatively safe. Now shells and …
Counting the nuclear weapons money
A massive $1 trillion is being spent to maintain and modernize the nuclear arsenals of nine countries over the next 10 years. A trillion dollars is a difficult sum of money to imagine. The figure is a 1 with 12 zeros after it. To draw attention to this phenomenal spending on nuclear weapons, a group …