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Impacts
John Todd-Ferrier, an early
FoR member, and a
founding member of
The Order of the Cross
Since inception, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and its members have shifted well beyond their weight in the following, and many other, ways:
- Prepared a joint paper (in 1914) with other faith groups, trade unions, and others during the first world war which paved the way for a new vision of Europe - which today is recognised as the European Union
- Rescued Jews and other political refugees fleeing Nazism in the 1940's (André and Magda Trocmé, with the help of the villagers of le Chambon sur Lignon, saved thousands) (France)
- Worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Montgomery bus boycott, and held workshops in nonviolence throughout the South of the US. (FoR USA).
- Worked with the War Resisters International to make sure that conscientious objection was a legal right in most European countries. The fact that conscientious objection is a recognised civil right today in Britain, and has been since the start of the Great War, is partly due to FoR members. (You can read about this on the Peace Pledge Union website)
- Sought to reverse the Cold War and the arms race with campaigns, marches, educational projects and civil disobedience in the 1970's.
- Called (with others) for an 'ecological imperative' at its Dai Dong (Chinese for 'A world of great togetherness') conference in Stockholm and for a mass environmental movement in the 1970's
- Through training, helped end the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in the 1980's
- Led a joint campaign which saw the closure of the UK's Defence Export Services Organisation (Wikipedia entry).
- Six of our members are, or were, Nobel Peace Prize laureates [Jane Addams (1931), Emily Green Balch (1946), Chief Albert Luthuli (1960), Dr. Martin Luther King (1964), Mairead Corrigan-Maguire (1976), Adolfo Perez Esquivel (1980)].
- IFOR has observer and consultative status to the United Nations; especially its ECOSOC and UNESCO organizations.
