The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was founded in 1915 during World War I, with Jane Addams as its first president. WILPF works to achieve through peaceful means world disarmament, full rights for women, racial and economic justice, an end to all forms of violence, and to establish those political, social, and psychological conditions which can assure peace, freedom, and justice for all.
WILPF works to create an environment of political, economic, social and psychological freedom for all members of the human community, so that true peace can be enjoyed by all.
On April 28, 1915, a unique group of women met in an International Congress in The Hague, Netherlands to protest against World War I, then raging in Europe, to suggest ways to end it and to prevent war in the future. The organizers of the Congress were prominent women in the International Suffrage Alliance, who saw the connection between their struggle for equal rights and the struggle for peace. WILPF's foremothers rejected the theory that war was inevitable and defied all obstacles to their plan to meet together in wartime. They assembled more than 1,000 women from warring and neutral nations to work out a plan to end WWI and lay the basis for a permanent peace. Out of this meeting the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was born.
For more information:
WILPF United States Section website: www.wilpfus.org
WILPF International website: www.wilpf.org
PeaceWomen: The PeaceWomen Project monitors and works toward implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. www.peacewomen.org
Reaching Critical Will: Recognizing that nuclear weapons play an integral role in the militarism, ecological destruction and social injustice plaguing our world, RCW works not just for for the abolition of nuclear weapons, but also for total and universal disarmament, the reduction of global military spending and demilitarisation of politics and society: www.reachingcriticalwill.org .
About Jane Addams
Jane Addams was born in Illinois September 6, 1860. She was the founder of Hull House in Chicago and also a founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in 1915. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for her activities in the peace movement. She was the first American woman to be given that honor. For more information, visit the official Nobel Prize web site.