Kelly, Kathy

Kelly, Kathy

Kathy Kelly

1 October 2023Feature

US policy towards Saudi Arabia ensures continued bloodshed, hunger, division and destabilisation

As the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), is poised to visit London, a leading US peace activist helps us to take a look at one aspect of Saudi foreign policy. The war in Yemen is also a British responsibility, as Britain continues to supply weapons and both diplomatic and technical support to the Saudi war effort there.

There’s a refugee trail from the Sahel drought region in Africa, into war-ravaged Yemen, and up through Saudi Arabia towards…

1 June 2023News

Appeal for £274,000

The remarkable generosity of activists around the world has enabled 40 young Afghans, some with families, to find safe refuge in countries including Portugal, Germany, Brazil, Canada, and the Netherlands.

We’re especially impressed by projects in Portugal where communities in two cities (Mértola and Leiria) have welcomed 25 young Afghans.

Our team of internationals now works closely with Asociación Yaran, a group of social workers, educators, and youth leaders in…

2 April 2023News

Internationals assist over 40 activists

Following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, an ad hoc team of internationals began regular Zoom meetings, co-ordinating efforts to assist Afghan activists who, for security reasons, have asked that we not name them or their group.

The inspiring efforts of young Afghans to share resources, seek equality, protect the planet and abolish all war, along with their willingness to host Western visitors, has sadly jeopardised their lives.

Mutually beneficial…

10 March 2023Blog

Those who have an insatiable appetite for war seldom heed the wreckage they have left behind, says longtime US peace activist Kathy Kelly, reflecting on her experiences in Iraq during wartime.

Twenty years ago, in Baghdad, I shared quarters with Iraqis and internationals in a small hotel, the Al-Fanar, which had been home base for numerous Voices in the Wilderness delegations acting in open defiance of the economic sanctions against Iraq. US government officials charged us as criminals for delivering medicines to Iraqi hospitals. In response, we told them we understood the penalties they threatened us with (12 years in prison and a $1mn fine), but we couldn’t be governed by unjust…

1 December 2022News

Help needed to resettle peacemakers in Portugal

14 November:

We’re writing to ask your help for young Afghans who face deeply troubling circumstances and may be able to resettle in Portugal in the very near future.

In Kabul, they were part of a group which has now disbanded for security reasons and which cannot even be named in public documents. The group welcomed internationals to live with them and become part of their efforts for peacemaking. Onlookers watched them pursue remarkable altruism. They agreed to reject all…

1 August 2022Feature

Kathy Kelly puts the case for a new way forward

US president Joe Biden’s foreign policy advisors applauded themselves for devising a ‘sensitive’ itinerary for his mid-July trip to the Middle East.

In a Washington Post op-ed before he left, Biden defended his controversial planned meeting with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud (known as ‘MBS’), saying it is meant not only to bolster US interests but also to bring peace to the region.

Biden’s trip did not include Yemen, though if this had truly…

1 August 2022Feature

It's time for a radical change of course, argues Kathy Kelly

US president Joe Biden’s foreign policy advisors applauded themselves for devising a ‘sensitive’ itinerary for his mid-July trip to the Middle East.

In a Washington Post op-ed before he left, Biden defended his controversial planned meeting with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud (known as ‘MBS’), saying it is meant not only to bolster US interests but also to bring peace to the region.

Biden’s trip did not include Yemen, though if this had truly been a ‘…

8 July 2022Blog

Instead of using its resources to solve world poverty and homelessness at home, the US government continues to ship weapons abroad. Unexploded US weapons including cluster bombs continue to litter Afghanistan, causing casualties every day. What the world needs is a healing of the Earth – perhaps through permaculture, a US anti-war conference suggests.

'No War 2022, July 8 – 10', hosted by World BEYOND War, will consider major and growing threats faced in today’s world. Emphasizing “Resistance and Regeneration,” the conference will feature practitioners of permaculture who work to heal scarred lands as well as abolish all war.

Listening to various friends speak of the environmental impact of war, we recalled testimony from survivors of a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin,…

6 July 2021Feature

Kathy Kelly reflects on the 1991 Gulf War and its legacy

March 1:

When the US Desert Storm air war against Iraq began, 30 years ago, I was a member of the Gulf Peace Team. We were 73 people from 15 different countries, aged 22 to 76, living in a tent camp close to Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia, along the road to Mecca.

We aimed to nonviolently interpose ourselves between the warring parties.

Soldiers are called upon to risk their lives for a cause they may…

21 January 2021Blog

The Biden administration must act swiftly to prevent a Trump-administration 'death sentence' for thousands of Yemenis, argues Kathy Kelly

In 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder created The Massacre of the Innocents, a provocative masterpiece of religious art. The painting reworks a biblical narrative about King Herod’s order to slaughter all newborn boys in Bethlehem for…

1 April 2019Feature

Chelsea Manning reimprisoned

Photo: Manolo Luna [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Chelsea Manning, who bravely exposed atrocities committed by the US military, is again imprisoned in a US jail. On International Women’s Day, 8 March, she was incarcerated in the Alexandria, Virginia, federal detention centre for refusing to testify in front of a secretive grand jury. [In the US system of law, grand juries decide (in secret)…

1 February 2019Feature

Connecting war in West Asia with war preparation in East Asia

Kathy Kelly and 10 other Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV) activists were arrested on 2 January for blocking the entrance to the US mission to the United Nations in New York city. This was part of a two-week ‘Fast for Yemen’ in New York and Washington DC organised by VCNV. A British participant in the liquids-only fast in New York was VCNV UK co-ordinator Maya Evans, a Labour councillor from Hastings, England.Photo: Felton Davis

4 December: Several days ago, I joined an unusual…

3 July 2017Blog

Who carries out the works of mercy in the war-torn country of Afghanistan?

 At an April, 2017 Symposium on Peace in Nashville, TN, Martha Hennessy spoke about central tenets of Maryhouse, a home of hospitality in New York City, where Martha often lives and works. Every day, the community there tries to abide by the counsels of Dorothy Day, Martha’s grandmother, who co-founded houses of hospitality and a vibrant movement in the 1930s. During her talk, she held up a postcard-sized copy of one of the movement’s defining images, Rita Corbin's celebrated woodcut listing…

26 October 2015Blog

A young Afghan peace activist sets out his hopes for the future.

24 October 2015

Kabul - Tall, lanky, cheerful and confident, Esmatullah easily engages his young students at the Street Kids School, a project of Kabul’s “Afghan Peace Volunteers,” an anti-war community with a focus on service to the poor. Esmatullah teaches child laborers to read. He feels particularly motivated to teach at the Street Kids School because, as he puts it, “I…

15 April 2015Blog

'Our fear and isolation from each other, aiming to get a step up above our neighbours, our reluctance to live in a shared world, may be worse than the other storms we face.' Long-time US peace activist Kathy Kelly writes from inside prison.

Lightning flashed across Kentucky skies a few nights ago. 'I love storms,' said my roommate, Gypsi, her eyes bright with excitement. Thunder boomed over the Kentucky hills and Atwood Hall, here in Lexington, Kentucky's federal prison. I fell asleep thinking of the gentle, haunting song our gospel choir sings: 'It's over now, It's over now. I think that I can make it. The storm is over now.'

I awoke the next morning feeling confused and bewildered. Why had the guards counted us so many…