1968: War in Biafra (Nigeria). Public opinion throughout the world is shocked by pictures of the misery. Two million Ibos die from hunger and war. The Soviet Union and Great Britain provide the central government with weapons and make themselves guilty. Biafra committees spring up all over the world, drawing attention to the suffering of the Biafrans.
The students Tilman Zülch and Klaus Guerke also found in Hamburg the Biafra Assistance Campaign. They coordinate campaign groups throughout the Federal Republic of Germany and try to stir up public opinion in Hamburg by squatting in the British Consulate. Tilman Zülch goes further, travelling to Biafra, where he is witness to a cruel war, in which starvation is introduced as a weapon. This experience – war, starvation and the international support for or at least toleration of genocide – leads to the founding of a human rights organisation with the aim of protecting and securing the human rights of ethnic and religious minorities throughout the world.
In 1970 the Biafra Assistance Campaign changes its name to the Society for Threatened Peoples (with its headquarters in Göttingen since 1979). The magazine “pogrom” is founded.
Since April 1993 the GfbV has had an advisory status as a non-governmental organisation (NGO) at the United Nations. Since January 2005 the International Society for Threatened Peoples has had a participatory status at the European Council.