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Bidwai, Vanaik bag international peace award

The presentation of hand-crafted silver medals will be the high point of the IPB triennial conference, 'The globalization of peace' to be held in Nanterre, Paris from October 12-14, according to an IPB press release received in New Delhi.

The awardees, Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, are both writers and journalists and fellows of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam. They are joint authors of a recent full-length study of the South Asian nuclear situation New nukes: India, Pakistan and global disarmament published in the South Asian region as South Asia on a short fuse - Nuclear politics and the future of global disarmament.

Earlier, they co-authored Testing times. The global stake in a nuclear test ban (Dag Hammarsk Told Foundation, Uppsala, 1996).

Bidwai and Vanaik have been key figures in the movement in India for nuclear disarmament, which together with many other civil organisations has articulated public outcry in the region against the decisions in May 1998 to test nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan.

Soon afterwards, the upsurge in fighting in Kargil district of Kashmir caused many to fear the escalation of the longstanding conflict between the two countries into a nuclear armageddon. This risk remains a real one and the world's geo-politics has been definitely transformed.

The 1999 military coup in Pakistan has reassured neither the general public in the region nor the wider international community.

Bidwai and Vanaik have followed this issue for many years and have also been active in international disarmament networks such as Abolition 2000. They are involved, with other activists, in organising India's forthcoming broad-based National Convention for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace in New Delhi from November 11 to 13.

Previous winners of the Macbride prize have included Mordechai Vanunu (Israel), the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers (Russia) and John Hume (N Ireland).

UNI

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