2016 Colin Archer (UK)

IPB awards Sean MacBride Peace Prize 2016 to Colin Archer

The Board of the International Peace Bureau is pleased to announce that the Sean MacBride Peace Prize will be awarded this year to our own Secretary‐General Colin Archer, who since 1990 has served the organization with outstanding commitment and competence. Colin Archer, who will retire next year and return home from Geneva to the UK, has spared no efforts over the last 26 years in the service of peace and of the IPB community in particular. He has with huge engagement, knowledge and friendliness met the concerns and demands of seven different IPB Presidents, more than 300 member organizations and an enormous number of partners from individual activists to civil society organizations, diplomats, researchers, educators, artists, media people and governments. A large number of young people are grateful for his guidance and help in the search for their own path to peace.

Colin Archer has played a decisive role, both in building the membership base and in the development and implementation of IPB’s programme over these years. He has a solid grasp of the many very varied aspects of peace work, be it disarmament, peace history, conflict transformation, peace education, gender dimensions, development or building a culture of peace. He has written a series of booklets and co‐initiated the IPB photographic exhibition Making Peace. At the same time, he is the chief administrator and fundraiser for the organisation. He has travelled widely and been involved in a very extensive range of international peace and disarmament conferences and programmes, including: the World Court Project on nuclear weapons, the Hague Appeal for Peace, the Global Campaign for Peace Education, and since 2005 Disarmament for Sustainable Development and the Global Campaign on Military Spending (GCOMS). The network around this latter campaign was important for the success of the recent IPB World Congress in Berlin: Disarm! for a Climate of Peace: Creating an Action Agenda.

Colin grew up in London and was active in the British peace, development and human rights movements from 1970 to 1990, including various roles in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. His first degree was in French and Spanish Studies, and his Master's in Development Studies. For 10 years he was the Coordinator of a Third World solidarity centre in Manchester (now Oxfam‐run). He spent 15 months teaching and visiting projects on behalf of a news agency in Latin America and the Caribbean. He later worked as an adult educator for 10 years, teaching migrants and refugees. This broad background was very relevant when he was invited to take up the position of Secretary‐General at the IPB, just as the world was emerging from the Cold War period. At the award ceremony we will hear more about the IPB Action Agenda and how it will be followed up.

Reiner Braun and Lisa Clark (IPB Co‐Presidents) - IPB Press Release 10/16 (Archive)

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