The 2017 ICIP Peace in Progress Award recognizes Arcadi Oliveres for “his tireless dedication and commitment in the promotion of peace, social justice, human rights and disarmament, from a universal perspective”.
Linked since his young years to the scouting movement, the Christian movement Pax Christi and to the Víctor Seix Institute for Polemology, he received his first influences towards pacifist thought from Frederic Roda and Joan Botam. During the period of the Francoist dictatorship, his commitment to democracy led him to join the Assemblea de Catalunya (‘Assembly of Catalonia’), from where he started promoting the Marxa de la Llibertat (‘Freedom March’) in 1976, claiming “Freedom, Amnesty and Statute of Autonomy”.
In 1982, he joined Justícia i Pau (‘Justice and Peace’), organisation he ends up presiding and from where he boosts the first campaign for 0.7% of development aid for Third World countries. All along his trajectory, his determined activism took him to participating in campaigns of the anti-NATO movement, against arms trade, in favour of conscientious objection against compulsory military service and tax resistance, against the external debts of poor countries and against war. In his side, dedicated to global justice, he also was a fierce defender of immigrant regularisation, he was linked to the anti-globalisation movement and to the 15M protests in Catalonia.
The award ceremony took place on Tuesday, April 17, at the Parliament of Catalonia.
