Witness for Peace

Witness for Peace (WFP), U.S. nonprofit organization founded in 1983 by faith-based activists in response to the U.S. government’s funding of the contras, the counterrevolutionaries fighting to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government of Nicaragua. WPF sought to change U.S. policies toward Latin America, and it promoted human rights, nonviolence, social and economic justice, and sustainable development. To increase understanding of the realities of life in Nicaragua and other Latin American countries, WFP engaged in intensive campaigning across the United States and conducted fact-finding visits for students and others to Latin America. In addition to its protests against the government’s activities in the Iran-Contra Affair, WPF opposed other acts that it perceived as injustices committed by the administration of Pres. Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Under successive U.S. presidential administrations, WFP remained close to its original goals and practices; in later years, for example, it worked to show the effects of the federal government’s “war on drugs” on the lives of people in Latin America.

People and groups participating in WPF came from a broad range of spiritual and religious backgrounds; those included, notably, Quakers, Gandhians, Anabaptists, and Roman Catholics—especially Franciscans, Pax Christi members, and Catholic Workers as well as retired and active clergy. WFP also joined broader alliances, such as the Latin America Working Group, a coalition of more than 60 organizations that advocated improvements in U.S. policy in Latin America.

WFP’s work attracted attention early on when contras kidnapped a WFP activist in 1985. Ten years later a WFP group organized one of the first nonviolent protests ever at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., setting an important precedent for later social justice and peace movements by linking development policies directly with antiwar and peace campaigning. During the 1990s the World Bank became a more frequent focus of WFP attention as such multilateral institutions promoted neoliberal policies (those leading to a free flow of trade and investment and a reduction in the role of the state). In the early 21st century the organization also protested against the increasing militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border.