Working Group Coordinator

GCAP Italy/Italian Network for Peace and Disarmament

Francesco Vignarca has operated for over twenty years in the field of peace and disarmament, and is now Campaigns Coordinator for the recently established Rete Italiana Pace e Disarmo (after being National coordinator for the former Rete Italiana per il Disarmo in the periodo 2004-2020). In this capacity, he works on the issues of military expenditures, private defense companies, military procurement, trade and arms export control, industrial reconversion, arms race and proliferation, paths towards disarmament and nonviolence holding both research and coordination’s duties in many campaigns promoted by the Italian peace movement. In this context he has great expertise in advocating the Italian Government and Parliament (and the EU Institutions, too) on the topics above, having participated in numerous hearings, discussion meetings and conferences with representatives of political institutions. As Campaigns Coordinator, he works closely with all the global networks for peace and disarmament the Rete Italiana Pace e Disarmo is part of, working and an expert and coordinator for the Italian branches of international campaigns such as Control Arms, Stop Killer Robots, International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons, the Global Campaign on Military Spending, the European Forum on Armed Drones, the European Network Against Arms Trade. Since 2014 has been in the national coordination group for the campaign “Un’altra difesa è possibile” aiming at the creation and institutional recognition of a nonviolent and non armed Civilian Defence and in the last two years he was sitting on the national steering group of the campaigns “Europe for Peace” and “Stop The War Now” (working for humanitarian aid an ceasefire plus nonviolent solution of the conflict in Ukraine) and also in the “Assisi Pace Giusta” coalition for a just Peace in Israel/Palestine. Together with Enrico Piovesana, he founded in 2017 the “Mil€x Observatory” on Italian military expenditures. Vignarca holds a University Degree in Astro-Physics and a Master Degree in the Sociological field related to human and social development. He is an author of many books regarding arms trade and production, military spending, peace and nonviolence issues, and the privatization of war.