Beijing International Peace Vigil was started in March 2003 by a group of foreigners living in Beijing, China who want to work together to build lasting peace, security and justice for everyone throughout the world. Our motivation to form the group was our shared opposition to the US-initiated war on Iraq.

However, our commitment goes beyond opposing war to the need for everyone to build a better world.

We believe that one important way to build peace and justice is to defend and strengthen existing global institutions, especially the UN family, as well as to build new institutions, both formal and informal.

A second essential way is to work for an alternative internationalist form of globalization as opposed to today’s corporate version.

The group meets every week to discuss related issues and from time to time invites guest speakers to address the group. The group is devising its own ideas on United Nations reform, a Millennium Goal for Peace and an alternative form of globalization. It seeks to link up with others thinking along similar lines to encourage debate of these issues and help create a force for change to which governments will have to listen.

As one of our members said, there is a second superpower in the world: it is the voices and action of the peoples throughout the world working together for peace and justice.