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The Advancement of Peace 

International Peace Project (IPP) 

Its registration as a charity (no. 1101966) was made possible under English law by:

* The Court of Appeal judgment (28 June 2000)  concerning the Project on Demilitarisation (Prodem); based on

 

* The High Court judgment (9 October 1998) 

 

They provided the comprehensive legal foundation for the current methods of IPP to advance a state of peace and avoid war through:

 
1: The Peace Games; and

 

2: Democratic constitutions based on the rule of law.

 
These methods are intended to be exclusively educational in the legally charitable sense of that term. IPP has no political objects because ‘The final establishment of universal peace among all the nations of the earth manifestly is an object of public charity’ (Chief Justice Rugg of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in Parkhust v Burrill (1917) cited with approval by Mr Justice Carnwath in the High Court Prodem judgment.)

Notes

 

1. The case was taken up on principle and won on the only relevant principle in dispute: the promotion of peace as a legally charitable, not a political, object.

 

2. The criteria on which the plaintiffs based their case – unchallenged by any lawyer or judge – was that Prodem’s charitable status should be determined on the basis of ‘all the relevant legal cases and material facts presented’ being ‘fully and correctly taken into account’.

 

3. The Appellants accepted that the High Court judgment of Mr Justice Carnwath (later a Supreme Court judge) in rejecting Prodem’s claim to charitable status ‘had fully and correctly taken into account all the relevant legal principles.’ However, there were serious factual errors listed in the Notice of Appeal.

 

4. The Court of Appeal judgment of Lord Justice Chadwick, in rejecting Prodem’s claim to charitable status, provided the precise objects clause of what became IPP2000 to take forward the main activities of Prodem. However, he left out a legal principle the High Court had accepted (relating to Prodem Briefing A/3) and he wrongly stated, despite the error being pointed out at the draft judgment stage, that both Dr Southwood and Dr Schofield were general editors of the Prodem Briefings when it was clearly stated in those documents that only Dr Southwood was, and he alone edited Briefing no. 1. The significance of these factors may be found in his skeleton arguments which the judge described as ‘closely reasoned’ but declined to address.