counter-recruitment

Mennonites Against Militarism – a collaboration of Mennonite Central Committee, U.S. (MCC) and Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) – is seeking to launch an initiative to counter military recruitment of U.S. youth. The vision for the project, Alternatives to Military Enlistment Network (AMEN), is to connect young people with volunteer advisors who can help them find non-military career, service and training opportunities.

WRI's new booklet, Countering Military Recruitment: Learning the lessons of counter-recruitment campaigns internationally, is out now. The booklet includes examples of campaigning against youth militarisation across different countries with the contribution of grassroot activists.

You can order a paperback version here.

‘Countering the militarisation of youth’ is one of WRI’s major areas of work. In making this booklet, we set out to investigate one part of this activism: campaigns to counter the recruitment of young people by armed forces and armed groups.

How Rory Fanning went from Army Ranger to war resister (and counter-recruiter).

Alex N. Press / Jacobin - In a high school classroom on the South Side of Chicago, Rory Fanning is telling students about the time he and his fellow Army Rangers occupied a school in Afghanistan. “We walked in and said, ‘School’s canceled, we’re going to use this as a military base for the next six weeks.’ There was nothing they could do about it.”

Sometimes, after abducting locals for reasons as thin as not showing enough deference to soldiers, his superiors would place their detainees in separate classrooms and fire a gun somewhere out of sight so that each detainee would think the other had been shot. At that point, says Fanning, “We’d walk into the rooms where each person was and say, ‘Your friend didn’t tell us what we wanted to hear. Do you have anything we want to hear?’ This is how we got information. These are things I watched.”

On 26-28 May, activists from Greece, Israel, Russia, Turkey, and Cyprus (both south and north) gathered in Nicosia (Cyprus) for a 3-day training, Gender and Countering Youth Militarisation, organised by War Resisters' International. During the training, participants explored gendered dimensions of youth militarisation within their societies as well as discussing how to work internationally to counter these processes. We're grateful to Turning the Tide(UK), Nonviolent Education and Research Association (Turkey) and Queer Cyprus Association (Cyprus) for supporting our event.