The world’s governments spend nearly two trillion dollars a year on the military, while people go hungry, suffer poverty and disease, and lack the most basic public services. The peace dividend - the better uses to which military spending could be put - is a key component of the people’s case for common security. But we must hold out for workers in the industry the realistic prospect that a just conversion from military to social expenditure will provide them with the wages and use the skills that they currently have. If the world is to emerge from the COVID19 pandemic with a more resilient, human-centred recovery, we will need the funding and skills that have been squandered for decades on nuclear and other weapons to be redirected to life-saving medicines and equipment and the development of climate-friendly technologies.

This webinar will assess the money currently wasted on weapons, the uses to which it could be put and the case for a socially just peace dividend, using practical examples to secure popular support for reallocating military expenditure, and especially the billions spent on nuclear weapons, to social goods.

Speakers

• Hilary Wainwright, author of “The Lucas Plan - A New Trade Unionism in the Making?”, and associate of the Transnational Institute and the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University. She will speak about just conversion from military production to socially useful and environmentally sustainable production
• Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Special Envoy on Financing 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and an Executive Director of the IMF, who will speak about what could be done to promote the Sustainable Development Goals with the money saved by not spending it on weapons
• Dr Michael Brozska, Associate Senior Researcher, SIPRI who will outline just how much money is spent on weapons of war
• Owen Tudor, Deputy General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), who will speak on how unions would like to see current military spending redirected to a new social contract – education, health, tackling climate change, and investing in the care economy.
• Chair: Winnie Byanyima, Head of UNAIDS and former Head of Oxfam International (acting in her personal capacity)