by Raffaele Crocco.
So here we go!
I know, it’s not very formal, but to finally have our newspaper, our website, in English really is a great emotion.
Since 2009, the Italian version of this new site – www.atlanteguerre.it – has been active with news on conflicts, human rights violations and humanitarian crises. The website is the offspring of our core project: the yearly volume, the Atlas of Wars and Conflicts in the World, which every year reports to thousands of people the reasons behind the too many wars taking place on the planet.
We do this in the conviction that describing the causes of wars, unveiling the reasons linked to injustice, inequality, and rights violations, means explaining to the people what we can do concretely to avoid it. It also means building knowledge and consciousness, setting in motion what is needed to become better citizens and to build peace together.
Illusions? No, concrete steps towards a possible alternative.
We know that peace is not a matter of being better, it’s a matter of being more intelligent. With our resources, with our priorities, and with our planet. We know that peace is made of concrete and possible choices, achievable – precisely – only through information and knowledge. So, after 12 years of work in Italy, we have decided to expand our contribution, to confront ourselves with the World. We have decided that the time has come to really try.
Ours is an experiment that has no end goal: we do not have a publisher. We are a group – journalists, social workers, researchers – who got together and every year – I would like to say every day – look for and, for now, find, the resources to go on with our divulgative work. We call it “bottom-up publishing.” We are transversal in gender, generations, backgrounds. We are different, but united by the idea that it’s worth trying. Over the next few weeks, it will be you, who read our work, to will tell us if we are right.
Welcome aboard. The adventure begins.
Cover picture: making one of the very first editions of the Atlas of Wars as a small, independent project.
Profile image: Our fonder and director, Italian journalist and traveller Raffaele Crocco
