Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Reaching Critical Will Internship Programme

Summer 2008
Applications are now closed for the summer internship programme.

Our next internship will be offered from September - December 2008.
Please see the Fall Internship Programme for details.

Reaching Critical Will, a disarmament project of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, is seeking qualified interns for late-May/June - August 2008. We are looking for responsible, experienced researchers to help update some of Reaching Critical Will's critical issue fact sheets and web pages and assist with administrative tasks. The summer internship also requires attendance at a conference on small arms and light weapons in July. Qualified interns will representing Reaching Critical Will at this meeting and helping us maintain one of the largest and most relied-upon web-based resources of disarmament information available. Some administrative work will also be required.

Summer internship responsibilities include:

researching and writing for fact sheets and other research projects;
monitoring a small arms conference;
maintaining and updating the website;
basic office tasks, including scanning documents, managing the phones, etc.

Qualifications:
- Excellent writing and research skills;
- Knowledge of international relations;
- Availability of at least 12 hours a week during normal business hours; and
- Experience in political activism, basic grasp of feminist perspectives/theory and multilingualism an advantage.

How to Apply:
Email (no phone calls please) your:
- Cover letter explaining interest in the project and the organization; also indicate availability
- Resume
- 2 brief relevant writing samples (2000 words or less)
- Two references

Send materials to the Project Associate: ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org

What is Reaching Critical Will?
The Reaching Critical Will project has five aims:

•Centralize and disseminate information about intergovernmental meetings that discuss nuclear weapons and their   elimination;
•Maintain a centralized electronic repository of information, and information services through our website   www.reachingcriticalwill.org;
•Increase the quality and quantity of NGO preparation and participation in these processes;
•Increase the quality and quantity of NGO interaction with governments and the United Nations and it's family of   Specialized Agencies;
•Provide logistical support in facilitating activities before and during these fora tailored for policy-makers and the public.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom created the RCW project in 1999, in order to increase the quality and quantity of civil society at international disarmament fora, such as those that take place at the UN. We believe that nuclear disarmament will require coordinated and sustained effort on the part of governments, non-governmental organizations and the United Nations. Reaching Critical Will is WILPF's initiative to encourage people to act and contribute to a variety of international fora. For non-governmental organizations and concerned individuals to act, they need information, primary documents and analysis. Reaching Critical Will collects, packages and often translates disarmament related information into terms ordinary people can understand.

What is the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom?

WILPF is the oldest women's peace organisation in the world. It was founded in April 1915, in the Hague, the Netherlands, by some 1300 women from Europe and North America, from countries at war against each other and neutral ones, who came together in a Congress of Women to protest the killing and destruction of the war then raging in Europe.

Its aims and principles are:

•to bring together women of different political beliefs and philosophies who are united in their determination to study, make known and help abolish the causes and the legitimization of war;
•to work toward world peace; total and universal disarmament; the abolition of violence and coercion in the settlement of conflict and its replacement in every case by negotiation and conciliation;
•to support the civil society to democratise the United Nations system;
•to support the continuous development and implementation of international and humanitarian law;
•to promote political and social equality and economic equity;
•to contribute towards co-operation among all people;
•to enhance environmentally sustainable development.

Believing that under systems of exploitation these aims cannot be attained and a real and lasting peace and true freedom cannot exist, WILPF makes it one of its missions to further by non- violent means the social and economic transformation of the international community. This would enable the establishment of economic and social systems in which political equality and social justice for all can be attained, without discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, or any other grounds whatsoever.