Recently, Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado called on the World to divert military spending to health, innovation, and the fight against climate change.
“Today more than ever, history agrees with this small country that visionarily decided to invest in the welfare, education, and health of its people and not in weapons,” the Costa Rican President Alvarado pointed out when he signed the law that establishes December 1st a national holiday as the abolition of the Costa Rican Army Day.
Similarly, the Costa Rican President stressed: “Today humanity faces its most complex hours and one of the moments of greatest uncertainty and pain, in these times that we are living as a society, Costa Rica raises the voice of solidarity and union, to tell the World to invest its resources in the fight against climate change, on which the survival of human beings and animals depends.
Driving a global strategy
The Costa Rican Government, through its Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship, Rodolfo Solano, announced the commitment to promote a global strategy that seeks to divert resources invested in military spending towards innovation, health, and the fight against climate change.
“Blessed is the Costa Rican mother who knows at birth, that her son will never be a soldier”This phrase is inscribed in the Peace Monument located on the Campus of the United Nations University for Peace, which is based precisely in Costa Rica. It was said by the Japanese philanthropist and politician Ryoichi Sasakawa many years ago.
It is worth mentioning that on October 31st, 1949, the National Constituent Assembly incorporated the abolition of the Army in Article 12 of the Political Constitution and since then all military spending by Law has been transferred to public education.
Investment in Education, not Weapons
Thanks to the abolition of the Army in Costa Rica, it focuses efforts for investing budgets in education, health, and the fight against climate change. And for just over seven decades, the National Administrations that have presided in Costa Rica have opted for dialogue before resorting to war, in an attempt to bet on the real extension of peace.
It should be noted that 21 countries share together with this Latin American nation the absence of a military corps. Guam, Bermuda and the Northern Mariana Islands are some of the nations that chose not to have a standingnational Army.
Costa Rica is currently undertaking ambitious environmental projects that have been praised and recognized by international entities, such as the United Nations (UN), which awarded the country, the Champion of the Earth award in September this year, for its enhancement on the work carried out by the Costa Rican Authorities for the benefit of its natural areas. Likewise, Costa Rica has built a social heritage, backed by a battery of public policies that accredit it as one of the leading nations in the fight against climate change.
Benefits of Demilitarization in Costa Rica:
1. It fosters and invigorates the institutional and political stability, avoiding the possibility of foreign military interventions and internal coups d’état.
2. It favors social investment and allocates budgets to public policies.
3. It reinforces the civilist and pacifist attitude in the population as a value of deep social roots.
