International Commission On Peace and Food

The International Commission on Peace and Food (ICPF) was formed in 1989 as a private non-governmental initiative to bring an end to the arms race and thereby redirect the monetary resources of the world for accelerating global economic development.

Though the then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tried very much to deescalate the existing arms race between the NATO and Soviet Blocs, world military spending continued to spiral upwards and reached an all-time high of 1.2 trillion dollars in the year 1988. This sparked a wave of fear that an intentional or accidental nuclear war was very much likely to occur at any time. Apart from an intensification of efforts to lessen the arms race, there was another parallel movement to augment world food supplies so that nobody in the world went hungry for even a day.

Towards the end of that year The Mother's Service Society, a social science research institute based in Pondicherry, South India approached the renowned Indian Scientist M. S. Swaminathan to explore the possibility of convening a group of experts to promote the efforts to increase food supply and also at the same time intensify efforts to bring down the arms race. The Commission was formed with Swaminathan as the Chairman and included 25 leading scientists, defense and development experts and politicians. Notable among the political members were Queen Noor of Jordan and the former First Lady of the United States Rosalynn Carter. By the time the first meeting of the Commission took place at the end of September 1989 the world political climate had changed considerably for the better. Barely six weeks later the Berlin Wall fell signaling the beginning of the end of the Cold War.