Arms Conversion Reloaded: Turning Swords into Ploughshares in the 21st Century?

Veranstaltungsnummer: 208108 – als .ics herunterladen

Arms conversion, i.e. turning manufacturing for the military sector into production of non-military products, was prominently put forward especially by the peace movement in the 80's. Trade unions picked up the idea and set up working groups on company level, which came up with numerous proposals to put this into practice. However, conversion projects were mainly successful only with regard to land re-allocation, while conversion of arms production could never really be implemented on larger scale.
With rising military spending worldwide the pressure on the military sector to convert and/or diversify production is even less today. When clients are piling up in long queues to purchase the most modern weapon systems, companies seem to be less and less eager to shift to alternative civil production. Yet debates about arms exports to third countries, which is currently drawing a lot of public attention in Germany, is prove that the national military industry produces much more than is needed for meeting the demands of the Bundeswehr and NATO allies. Can this be used to revive the debate about arms conversion? What is the role of the government and the parliament in a conversion process? Would a Europeanization of the military sector also help the implementation of more conversion projects?

Speakers:
Ute Finckh-Krämer, Member of the Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, German Bundestag;
Miriam Pemberton, Director of the Peace Economy Transitions Project at Institute for Policy Studies, Washington DC;
Herbert Wulf, former Director of the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC);
Peter Wilke, CEO of wmp consult;
Philip Jennings, Secretary General of UNI Global Union.

Download Program here.