The 2025 War Abolisher Awards: Ralph Nader,
Roger Waters, and Francesca Albanese
World BEYOND War
(July 24, 2025) — The 2025 War Abolisher Awards went to Ralph Nader, Roger Waters, and Francesca Albanese. The awardees accepted their awards in an online event on July 24, 2025.
The Artistic War Abolisher of 2025 award went to Roger Waters for his incredibly powerful combination of song-writing, singing, speaking, and performing against the horrors of war. During the event, we played a new 8-minute song pre-recorded by Roger Waters called Sumud.
The David Hartsough Lifetime Individual War Abolisher of 2025 award — named for the late co-founder of World BEYOND War — went to Ralph Nader for his brilliant and relentless advocacy, educating, organizing, analyzing, and criticizing war and related crimes and abuses.
The Individual War Abolisher of 2025 award goes to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, for her fearless, incisive, and eloquent reporting on the genocide in Gaza.
World BEYOND War is a global nonviolent movement, founded in 2014, to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace. The purpose of the awards is to honor and encourage support for those working to abolish the institution of war itself.
With the Nobel Peace Prize and other nominally peace-focused institutions so frequently honoring other good causes or, in fact, wagers of war, World BEYOND War intends its awards to go to educators or activists intentionally and effectively advancing the cause of war abolition, accomplishing reductions in war-making, war preparations, or war culture. World BEYOND War received hundreds of impressive nominations. The World BEYOND War Board, with assistance from its Advisory Board and Staff, made the selections.
The awardees are honored for their body of work directly supporting one or more of the three segments of World BEYOND War’s strategy for reducing and eliminating war as outlined in the book A Global Security System, An Alternative to War. They are: Demilitarizing Security, Managing Conflict Without Violence, and Building a Culture of Peace.
ROGER WATERS
(Award presented by David Swanson.)
I am extremely excited to present the Artistic War Abolisher of 2025 award to Roger Waters for his incredibly powerful combination of song-writing, singing, speaking, and performing against the horrors of war. Roger Waters’ music and lyrics have been tremendously meaningful to many millions of people for decades.
He co-founded Pink Floyd 60 years ago this year, back in 1965, the same year in which another of our awardees published a book called Unsafe at Any Speed, and 12 years before our other 2025 awardee was born. When a wall-lover like Donald Trump starts holding fascistic weapons parades and snatching people off streets, images and concepts and the music of The Wallare part of what we recognize and resist.
A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a top selling musical artist, a performer able to fill the largest arenas, Roger Waters not only brings anti-war and pro-peace messages to that enormous audience, not only integrates brutally honest activism into his concerts, speeches, and social media posts, but it is his music, his lyrics, his satire, his multimedia performances that constitute his most powerful activism.
Roger has created music that can make one hate war, fear nuclear apocalypse, and want to celebrate and be like peace proponents. I don’t want to recite any lyrics to you, because they have to be heard in the music. But go back, or go for the first time, and listen.
For the past couple of decades, Roger Waters has made opposition to occupation and genocide a major part of his work. Following my remarks and his, we will listen to a new song that Roger calls Sumud. This is a Palestinian concept meaning steadfastness in resistance to oppression, an insistence on continuing to live in the face of an organized campaign to eliminate you. The world could use a lot more Sumud. It could also use a lot more of this new song, so it will be a public service to share this video.
In recent years we have seen a huge growth, and possibly a peak followed by decline in recent months — if I’m not being too hopeful — in the absurd practice of labeling opposition to genocide a form of bigotry, specifically anti-Semitism. This ridiculous smear has been heavily employed against Roger Waters, who has had events cancelled because of it. Protest of genocide has subsequently been labeled terrorism.
An organization called Palestine Action, which avoids harming people but does harm to weapons of mass killing, was recently banned by the British Parliament, which made it a crime to express support for Palestine Action. Roger Waters immediately expressed support for Palestine Action. He denounced the ludicrous labeling as terrorism of something that is not terrorism, namely opposing terrorizing the people of Gaza. He did this at the risk of a lengthy prison sentence.
Why, I ask you, would anyone go looking to the makers of war for heroism? If you need bravery, there is plenty of it to be found in those taking risks, like Roger Waters is, for peace.
Your work, Roger, is advancing our goals of Demilitarizing Security, Managing Conflict Without Violence, and Building a Culture of Peace. Your work is part of a culture of peace that exists together with a culture of war. We are happy to do our bit to support the peace culture over the war culture by presenting you with this award.
We’d now like to let you tell us what you are thinking, after which we will give your new song a listen. And at the end of this program there will be time for Q&A, so people can go ahead and put their questions into the chat at any time. Roger Waters, the floor is yours.
RALPH NADER
(Award presented by Edward Horgan.)
I am honored to be asked to present the David Hartsough Lifetime Individual War Abolisher 2025 award to Ralph Nader. While Ralph Nader is still doing dramatically more than most people, he has already done enough for many lifetimes.
World BEYOND War is presenting you, Ralph Nader, with this award for your brilliant and relentless advocacy, and for your work towards educating, organizing, analyzing, and criticizing war and related crimes and abuses by governments and other powerful organisations and individuals.
For decades, you have worked strategically and urgently for peace, justice, fairness, and accountability. You have opposed wars regardless of the political party of each imperial president. Indeed, you have been a leading critic and opponent of the existence of the imperial presidency, as you have pushed for taking the power of mass murder, of even planetary destruction, out of the hands of an individual.
You have worked tirelessly to organize and strategize against the crime of war. You have been a leading creator and supporter of activist organizations, having founded over four dozen nonprofits. You have organized countless coalitions around a comprehensive platform without omitting peace — in fact championing it. Unsafe At Any Speed came out 60 years ago this year, and has been followed by numerous books, many of them aimed at empowering people, but the collection covering many themes including one really wonderful cook book.
Your organizing and strategizing, combined with your ceaseless promotion and encouragement of the work of other organizations and individuals, has done wonders for those seeking to hold government and its profiteers accountable. That the war on Iraq was made at least for a time a badge of shame for its supporters, that wars on Iran and Syria were held off by public pressure, that U.S. public opinion has moved significantly against militarism — you have been a big part of this progress. Your support over the years for whistleblowers has had its impact as well. Of the many major pieces of legislation you’ve been key to passing, one was the Whistleblower Protection Act.
You’ve been a leading critic of corporate media and its governmental supporters, and a prominent debunker of propaganda. You’ve held everyone to the highest standards, including in numerous columns on Gaza, notably including powerful questioning of official death counts. And for over a decade you’ve shared voices on your radio show that could not be found elsewhere. Your columns regularly recommending lists of recent books have been invaluable as well.
Your writing and speaking have advanced our goals of Demilitarizing Security, Managing Conflict Without Violence, and Building a Culture of Peace.
We are honoring you, Ralph Nader, for your lifelong work. It is clear to us as members of World BEYOND War that this work is not at an end, nor is its far-reaching influence. Your writing has made known a great many activist success stories, through which you have encouraged us all to take on the responsibility of living as good members of society.
Your most recent book, entitled Civic Self-Respect, was published just a few months ago. I will borrow a quote from a description of your book: “Civic Self Respect argues the importance to recognize the centrality in the development of a civic personality, as distinguished from a private personality with the two co-existing for a moral life participating in the common good.”
Ralph, your lifelong work is known and respected not only in the United States but worldwide, including in Ireland where I come from.
Thank you, Ralph, for what you have achieved so far and please continue with your good work. Now it’s your turn to tell us what you are thinking.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE
(Award presented by Hanieh Jodat.)
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Today we come together not simply to present an award —
but to bear witness:
to courage,
to truth,
and to a voice that has never trembled,
even when the world has demanded silence.
Francesca Albanese’s journey began in the hills of southern Italy, where, as a young child, she sat at the dinner table listening to stories not meant for children — of Palestine, of Kurdistan, of exile and return.
She was just a little girl when the world bore witness to the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Though thousands of miles away, the shadow of that brutality stretched deep into her consciousness, planting the kind of questions only a child raised on justice dares to ask.
Francesca learned early that the struggle for dignity begins with the quiet rebellion of asking “why” and refusing the answer, “because that’s just the way it is.”
She was born into a family where the law was not only a profession, but a compass for humanity. Lessons of injustice weren’t abstract, they were blueprints that shaped the woman who would one day stand tall, not behind the safety of process and protocol, but beside the oppressed.
Where bombs fall, where hope is barricaded, where the right to exist is debated in the halls of power as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories — Francesca has spoken truths others have feared to whisper.
She has dared to call apartheid not a controversy, but a crime. She has named colonization and genocide for what they are.
And she has declared, without compromise, that life itself should never be political.
When the most powerful have sanctioned her, when propaganda campaigns have roared more loudly than the cries of Palestinian mothers and fathers, children, and those occupied in the West Bank, Francesca has reminded us: silencing those who speak of injustice does not make injustice disappear.
At a time when principles and dignity are traded for politics,
when the loudest voices echo the wrong truths,
when standing still feels safer than standing up —
and in a world that rewards indifference over courage —
Francesca has become a map,
a mirror,
and a megaphone
for the dispossessed and displaced.
Francesca,
your words have become lifelines.
Your presence, a promise.
Your defiance, a shield.
You remind us that we will not be silenced —
and we will not stand down.
And so, it is with a full heart,
deep gratitude,
and unwavering solidarity,
that we honor your courage tonight.
For your bravery,
your brilliance,
and your relentless pursuit of a world without war, where no mother and father carry pieces of their child’s body in a bag, where no child dies waiting in line for food, and where no family watches their dreams starve, we honor you.
On behalf of World BEYOND War,
and all of us who believe that peace is not passive but revolutionary,
I am proud to present you with the Individual War Abolisher of 2025 award.
Sumud:
Lyrics to a New Song from Roger Waters
There is a word in Arabic
Sumud
It means
Steadfast
Perseverance
Particularly
In Resistance
To the occupation of your homeland
I just want that thing
When voices join in harmony
And in that fleeting moment
When meaning coalesces there
All dark dissolving
Clouds the alleyways no more
And fresh bread scent of home
Pervades the air
No sandal soles
In dust of broken homes
Peep bloody from the garment hem
And all the big parades
And shock and awe
And swagger on the carrier deck
And medals jangle helpless
In the face of what is fair
Give me an Oh Yeaaaaaaaaaah!
Yeah! Give me an Oh Yeaaaaaah!
Oh yeah Oh , Oh yeah
Give me an Oh Yeaaaaaaaa
Join us, Join us in harmony
I remember you well
Where you stood where you fell
You were brutally slain
But your spirits remain.
Rachel Corrie and
Shireen Abu Akleh
Marielle Franco
Sophie Scholl
Ann Frank
Iman Al Hams
Many sisters from many lands
Oh my sisters,
Help me to open their eyes
From up in the Penthouse
We must all look like ants to them
Wake up motherfuckers
We are women and men
Well up unashamed
My bleeding heart
Give me an Oh Yeaaaaaaah.
Give me an Oh Yeaaaaaah.
Oh Yeah. Oh Yeah, Oh Yeah,
Give me an Oh Yeaaaaah!
Join us, join us,
Join us in harmony.
And then across the great divide
Come men and women unafraid
To dash in loss
Their bracelets at the wall
When voices join in harmony
And we turn the final page
When man evolves beyond the crass
And reason comes of age.
And Dogma
And Witchcraft
And Cant
And Propaganda
And Palantir
And Lockheed
And Grumman
And Chevron
And Exxon
And Pffizer
And the Oligarchs and Misers say
We’re sorry that we done it Mummy
We only done it for
The fucking money
Oh yeaaaaaah, just for the money
Oh yeaaaaaah, just for the cash.
When voices join in harmony
We will make a joyful sound
We will follow
Our own moral compass
We won’t let their sleight of hand trump us
We will find ten thousand new voices
In every crowd
And when all those new voices
Join us in harmony
Standing shoulder to shoulder
From the river to the sea
People from every nation
Will hear that joyful sound
Ordinary people
Just standing their ground
And together
These ordinary people,
Together
They will turn this ship around.
Oh Yeah
Together
Oh yeah
Together we will turn this ship around.
(Roger Waters copyright 2025)
