Bund für Soziale Verteidigung

The Federation for Social Defence (German: Bund für Soziale Verteidigung, BSV) is an independent, non-governmental organisation based in Minden, Germany, that unites people and organisations of pacifist and antimilitarist conviction. The BSV was founded in 1989 as an umbrella organisation to promote social defence and other alternatives to the military, and to work for total disarmament. Its creation was the result of a big conference on social or civilian-based defence held in Minden, Germany, a year earlier. Currently, we actively support civil rights groups in Belarus and Ukraine, are engaged in advocacy work to promote the concept of Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping (UCP), and seek to counter the militarization of youth in (German) schools through peace education.