Video recordings of the individual speeches and the evenings of the peace conference
We owe it not least to you that the conference was able to take place despite all the hurdles: Your great willingness to donate and the courage to stand up together for peace, freedom of expression and dialog. There is still a small deficit in the financing of the Peace Conference 2025, so we are still looking forward to your donation. Donate HERE. Thank you
Much ado about… nothing?
In the run-up to the International Munich Peace Conference 2025 there was some media coverage of the organization of the peace conference. This mainly concerned the short-term termination of the rental contract by the Catholic Academy in Bavaria in December (partly due to fears that the “limit of what can be said” could be exceeded) and the appearance of Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. There was hardly any coverage of the actual event, except on relevant Instagram channels, and there only in fragments. So here is an overview.
Friday evening program
You can find the video recording of the whole evening HERE
The Friday evening program of the Peace Conference 2025 was entitled “Foundations of Peace – The Peace Commandment of the Basic Law, the Logic of Peace and its Challenges”. The idea was to discuss whether there are foundations in Germany on which a policy that is genuinely interested in and oriented towards peace can build.
Prof. Dr. Heribert Prantl
Prof. Dr. Heribert Prantl, legal scholar, journalist and columnist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, began with a historical excursus on the constitutional convention on Herrenchiemsee in 1948.
Heribert Prantl describes here that a foundation for peace was laid in the Basic Law, in the form of the peace commandment – but that in the following seven decades this commandment was neglected to be elaborated and practiced.
You can find the video recording HERE
Prof. Dr. Hanne-Margret Birckenbach
Following Heribert Prantl, Prof. Dr. Hanne-Margret Birckenbach, Professor of Peace and Conflict Research, spoke about ideas on how and with what content the peace commandment could be filled.
Ms. Birckenbach addresses the core idea behind the title of the event, “Foundations of Peace”. With this title and this approach, our aim was not only to show that the foundations of peace are anchored in the constitutions and institutions of nation states and also in the international system. For they are not anchored there by chance, they are not a gift from nation states to their citizens, but were fought for by people, by societies, and can only be sustainable if they are upheld by societies.
You can find the video recording HERE
Dr. Kerem Schamberger
Kerem Schamberger’s speech brings the peace conference back to the current political moment, one week before the federal elections. Schamberger describes the policies and election campaign rhetoric of almost all established parties as “declaring a war on migration”. A war against migrants and refugees that is being waged by the EU, especially at its external borders, which Schamberger reports on in detail. However, the dismantling of fundamental rights that this war entails will not be limited to migrants and refugees.
Kerem Schamberger concludes with the following words, which nicely round off the Friday evening program of the Peace Conference 2025: “We see defending the right to freedom of movement as one – perhaps the central – task in the fight against global authoritarianism. At its core, it is also about defending a democratic Europe that is based on the universalism of human rights, human rights that must apply to everyone.”
You can find the video recording HERE
Saturday evening program
The video recording of the whole evening (English original) can be found HERE.
The video recording of the whole evening (German original) can be found HERE
The title of the Saturday evening program was “Paths to Justice – International Law and Dialogue”. Similar to Friday evening, we wanted to hold a principled debate on the possibilities and reality of peace-building politics – but not just in relation to Germany and the EU, but at an international level.
However, when we were able to win Francesca Albanese and Dr. Gershon Baskin as speakers, it quickly became clear that the focus of the Saturday evening program would clearly be on the war in Gaza.
Francesca Albanese
We begin with Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
Francesca Albanese speaks, among other things, about the accusation of genocide against Israel due to the war in Gaza. She attributes the denial of this accusation – as well as the justification of Israeli warfare – by the Israeli government and its allies, above all the German government, to the fact that these governments do not recognize the past and the continued effects of exploitation, colonialism and imperialism. Even in the case of Germany, whose culture of remembrance with regard to the Holocaust Francesca Albanese emphasizes elsewhere, the historical and political reappraisal does not seem complete or sufficient to her. At the same time, the right to self-determination, in this case of the Palestinian people, is not recognized. This inability or unwillingness to recognize the fundamental relations of domination or power means that the crimes are not seen. Francesca Albanese thus places the accusation of genocide against Israel in a series of colonial crimes, e.g. the Anglo-Saxon settler colonies in North America and Oceania.
Her classification of the Gaza war, or the conflict in Palestine and Israel, is therefore far beyond the classification of the German government, the majority of the German political parties and the majority of published opinion in Germany. Unfortunately, this discrepancy is not usually taken up as an occasion for legal or political debate with Francesca Albanese – instead, her position is marginalized and even criminalized. Francesca Albanese’s experiences in Germany – intimidation by the police, the prevention of her lectures by local authorities or universities – unfortunately support her thesis that there is little interest in questioning power relations in this country.
A little later, she says: “International law should be the cure to these horrors”. In doing so, she names a conflict management strategy that differs significantly from Dr. Gershon Baskin’s strategy.
The video recording (English original) can be found HERE
The video recording (German original) can be found HERE
Dr. Gershon Baskin
Gershon Baskin is known as a peace activist and for his work as a negotiator between Israel and Hamas. In 2011, he made a decisive contribution to the negotiations between Hamas and the Israeli government, which resulted in the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Right at the beginning of his speech at the Munich Peace Conference, Gershon Baskin states: “I have zero confidence in international law.”
Due to the accusations made against Gershon Baskin for sharing a stage with Francesca Albanese, he states at the beginning of his speech that most of the criticism of the Israeli government’s actions is justified and cannot be considered anti-Semitic per se.
He goes on to regret that the means of international law, be it the UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court, have so far hardly been able to achieve anything with regard to the violence and crimes in Palestine and Israel.
Gershon Baskin is convinced that the solution must come from Palestine and Israel itself. The terrorist attack on October 7, 2023 and the war and crimes that followed show why a solution is so difficult and so urgently needed. The traumas could hardly be greater; for Israelis they tie in with the trauma of the Shoah, for Palestinians with the trauma of the Nakba.
You can find the video recording (German) HERE
Debate
The two speeches were followed by an interesting debate in which Francesca Albanese accused Gershon Baskin of normalizing the Israeli occupation. She also accused him of minimizing the importance of international law.
Gershon Baskin disagreed; he wished that international law would play a more significant role in conflict resolution, but in reality this was not the case.
The fact that Francesca Albanese primarily emphasized the asymmetry of the conflict, while Gershon Baskin emphasized that there could be no military solution to the conflict, probably also led to a heated discussion.
You can find the video recording of the debate HERE
Workshops
In addition to the two evening events, there was also a wide range of workshops on offer:
“Becoming Peace-Oriented Instead of War-Ready: How You Can Advocate for Peace ” with Sandra Klaft, Peace4Future
“Becoming peaceable. The principle of dialog compatibility ” with Prof. Dr. Hanne-Margret Birckenbach
“Samba for peace – drumming workshop for beginners” with Thomas Rödl (DFG-VK Bayern)
“Campaign: Peace-capable instead of first-strike-capable. For a Europe without medium-range weapons!” with Simon Bödecker (Ohne Rüstung Leben)
The religious prayer for peace also took place, this year on the theme of “Peace – the masterpiece of reason” (after I. Kant)
Support
The International Munich Peace Conference is organized exclusively by civil society organizations, for the most part on a voluntary basis. For some years now, this work has been made more difficult by the lack of public and church funding and the difficulty of finding reliable event locations. By making a donation, you can make an indispensable contribution to ensuring that we can hold the Peace Conference despite these adversities and thus continue to provide a critical perspective on the Munich Security Conference!
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