This October, I went to Catalonia with three other representatives from Youth and Student CND (YSCND) to the International Peace Bureau (IPB) World Peace Congress in Barcelona. We were there to run a workshop, ‘“Protest and Survive”: Youth, Peace and Enduring Time’. It was an intergenerational workshop, designed to provide a space for different generations of the peace movement to learn from each other through the medium of games, discussions and pre-recorded videos.
As well as running our own workshop, we attended many interesting and important sessions over the weekend.
What will stay with me, particularly, was a workshop on the impact of nuclear testing and climate change on frontline communities.
The workshop was greeted by Marcina Langrine from the Marshallese Educational Initiative (MEI), who joined us by video from the US.
Being in her early 20s, Marcina spoke about her experience of displacement, after her grandparents were forced to flee from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific following the US nuclear weapons testing there between 1946 and 1958.
The IPB conference provided a wonderful opportunity to meet a number of young peace activists from around the world.
At the end of the conference, a young woman from Granada offered me and another member of YSCND a lift in her camper van, and we continued our discussions on peace and disarmament along the beautiful Spanish coastline.