The Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (SPAS) () is a

non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

, dedicated to

peace Peace is a state of harmony in the absence of hostility and violence, and everything that discusses achieving human welfare through justice and peaceful conditions. In a societal sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (suc ...

disarmament Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing Weapon, weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, ...

and

democratization Democratization, or democratisation, is the structural government transition from an democratic transition, authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction ...

. It operates by methods including

publishing Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

lobbying Lobbying is a form of advocacy, which lawfully attempts to directly influence legislators or government officials, such as regulatory agency, regulatory agencies or judiciary. Lobbying involves direct, face-to-face contact and is carried out by va ...

activism Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make Social change, changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from ...

and participating in political debates. SPAS has published an array of books and reports. The name of the organization's member's magazine is ''Pax''. SPAS' central office is situated in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

, headed by current president . However, there are about 20 local branches throughout Sweden. The society has a total of about 8500 members.

History

The Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society is the world's oldest peace organization, and

Scandinavia Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also ...

's largest today. It was founded in 1883 by 50 Swedish parliamentarians and headed by Klas Pontus Arnoldson, who was awarded the 1908

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...

. Among SPAS' notable achievements are: * Assisting the peaceful resolution of the dissolution of the union of Sweden and Norway in 1905; * Proposing alternative service for

conscientious objectors A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of conscience or freedom of religion, religion. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for ...

, which became law in 1920; * Forming an 80,000-people human chain between the U.S. and Soviet embassies in Stockholm in 1983, and * Exposing illegal and dubious Swedish arms export deals. In 2015, after a Russian submarine was spotted off the coast of Sweden, in response to Russia’s ban of LGBT propaganda, the organization designed a subsurface sonar system with a depiction of a thrusting soldier and

Morse code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...

that translated to “This way if you are gay”.

Criticism

During

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

, SPAS has been heavily criticised for its naive worldview and its position to not support Ukraine militarily. In Sweden, organisation's members are frequently called "traitors" and "Putin's useful idiots".

Surveillance by the Swedish Security Police

Swedish government has published reports revealing that SPAS was surveilled by the Swedish security police because of suspected links to Russian intelligence services.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swedish Peace And Arbitration Society Peace organizations based in Sweden 1883 establishments in Sweden Organizations established in 1883

History

Criticism

Surveillance by the Swedish Security Police

See also

References