The presenter of this address, Ahmed Ben Messali Hadj (1898-1974), is known as the “father” of Algerian nationalism, one of whose foremost biographies is Benjamin Stora’s Messali Hadj, 1898-1974 (2012). Having served in the French army in 1918-1921, Messali Hadj for economic reasons moved to Paris. There, he met his French wife, the leftist Emilie Busquant. In 1925, he was recruited to the French Communist Party’s (PCF) colonial commission. In June 1926, he co-founded, and became Secretary General of, the Etoile Nord Africaine (ENA), which at first demanded political and legal equality for France’s Muslim North Africans. As this text shows, demands shifted by February 1927. That month, ENA functionaries including Messali Hadj travelled to Bruxelles. Together with leftists and delegates from three dozen colonized countries, they participated in the founding conference of the League against Imperialism (LAI), which was initiated by the Moscow-headquartered Comintern and organized by the PCF and the German communist Willi Münzenberg; the experience in Bruxelles of one non-Arab delegation, India, has been analyzed in Michele Louro’s Comrades against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (2020).

It was in Bruxelles that Messali Hadj held the below address, speaking ex catedra as his notes had disappeared. The LAI was soon paralyzed by discord between communists and activists for whom allying with communists was a means to an anticolonial end; in 1936, it dissolved. Even so, it was the first truly international attempt to combat imperialism, as shown by the edited volume The League against Imperialism: Lives and Afterlives (2020). As for the ENA, it in 1928 cut its ties with the PCF, being too independent-minded and -organized and vexed that the PCF, following the Comintern line, was moving away from ENA’s ideas about self-determination. In 1929, the French government outlawed ENA. In the 1930s Messali Hadj became closer inter alia to Shakib Arslan, translated excerpts of whose work Why Muslims Lagged Behind and Others Progressed is included in this collection. Even so, in 1936 to early 1937 a rebranded ENA shortly joined the leftist French Front Populaire, but then again was closed down. Messali Hadj reacted by establishing the clandestine Parti du Peuple Algérien (PPA), which—a shift—demanded absolute Algerian autonomy within the French Republic.

Condemned by the Vichy government to hard labor in 1941, Messali Hadj returned to Algeria in 1945. He continued to play a leading political role, founding in 1946 a PPA successor, the Mouvement pour la triomphe des libertés démocratiques. But from 1954, his star declined. By 1957, the Front de Libération Nationale, the new organization that in November 1954 started the War of Independence, ravaged the Mouvement National Algérien that Messali Hadj had founded that month, too. Politically neutralized, he stayed in France. He was allowed to return to Algeria only after his death, in 1974, for burial in his hometown of Tlemcen.

In this meeting, The IKV responds to NATO discussions about a possible introduction of the 'N-bomb' [neutron bomb]. The neutron bomb would will probably be introduced; however the IKV needs to do all that it can to prevent its arrival.

This information paper announces the IKV's plans for the 1977 Peace Week campaign.The campaign is centered around three points: to "help rid the world of nuclear weapons," not just the Netherlands; to make a concrete contribution by having the Netherlands nuclear weapons free in at least 10 years; and to mobilize from the bottom up, and making sure that "ordinary" people in churches, in the local branches of political parties, in the labor unions, etc., take a stance regarding nuclear weapons.

In this letter, Faber asks Boskma to write a pamphlet for the Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) about nuclear weapons and to help think about IKV’s strategy against these weapons for an upcoming campaign. Even though direct action is the new and primary strategy for the campaign, writing publications is identified by IKV president Ter Veer as "one of the most important tasks of the peace movement."

This concept paper marks a shift toward a major anti-nuclear campaign for the IKV, planned to be launched during the Peace Week later in 1977. The Paper voices the need for unilateral action on the behalf of the Netherlands, and that the IKV will demand "the openly announced removal of all nuclear weapons from Dutch soil."

This document, prepared by IKV Secretary Mient Jan Faber, offers an overview of the work of the IKV shortly before most attention would be directed to launching the anti-nuclear campaign during the 1977 Peace Week. The council is preparing a wide range of activities for 1977, including the formulation of a new Standpoint.

This "first attempt at an outline" is the start of a process to compose a new, general vision for the IKV, first one after the Sta of 1972. Important themes other than the nuclear arms race include development cooperation and human rights.

Diplomat A.J. Meerburg writes to activist Mient Jan Faber about nuclear proliferation and disarmament issues, illustrating the amiable relations that developed between social activists and national security professionals and activists in the Netherlands.

Meeting minutes showing the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense's respective interests in the IKV and Pax Christi's "small-steps-theory," a theory on gradual disarmament through a series of small unilateral steps. Includes discussion concerning a proposal to form a study group of both interested civil servants and peace activists to formulate an alternative policy.

Philip E. Everts expresses disappointment and criticism over the Dutch government's memorandum on disarmament and security.