. DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION .
Communiqué de Press from the 9th Executive Conference of Mayors for Peace
In November 2015, 33 years after Mayors for Peace was established, the number of member cities has exceeded 6,900 from 161 countries and regions and continues to grow. Mayors for Peace has now grown into an influential global network that can impact international public opinion calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Photo from Sinotables
The 9th Executive Conference of Mayors for Peace was held on November 12 and 13, 2015 in Ypres, Belgium. The participating mayors and representatives from the executive cities shared their respective activities towards nuclear abolition and regarding other challenges that their regions face.
They also discussed how to address such pressing issues as poverty, refugees, and climate change as well as how to contribute to nuclear abolition, and resolved to take concrete action with determination, in accordance to Article 3 of the Mayors for Peace Covenant.
Based on its deliberations, this Executive Conference adopted the following seven action priorities:
The Hiroshima Secretariat will take over the 2020 Vision Campaign to further promote it in cooperation with the executive and lead cities on the foundation built up by the city of Ypres, aiming at nuclear abolition by 2020.
Intensified activities for Mayors for Peace based on the 2020 Vision were identified as follows:
1) Strategic projects to promote the start of negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention
i) Citizen outreach by member cities
– Raise awareness of the humanitarian consequences and risks posed by nuclear weapons
– Strengthen efforts to promote petition drives
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How can culture of peace be developed at the municipal level?
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ii) Actions targeting national governments and policymakers
– Call on policymakers to visit the A-bombed cities
– Actions utilizing signatures and request letters
iii) Cooperative action with the United Nations
2) Concentrated activities to strengthen the Mayors for Peace management system
i) Expand membership
– We will strengthen recruitment efforts to reach 10,000 members by 2020.
ii) Conveying the A-bomb experience to future generations through youth exchanges
– We will promote youth exchanges among member cities, share the memories of the atomic bombings with the future generations, and strengthen the network of the executive cities. iii) Invite interns from member cities to the Hiroshima Secretariat
– To cultivate human resources that could help enhance Mayors for Peace activities, we will build up our intern program and strengthen the network of executive cities.
We will continue to facilitate such activities as distributing and cultivating seeds and seedlings of A-bombed trees, sharing the Flame of Peace, holding A-bomb poster exhibitions, screening animated films, providing A-bomb survivor testimonies through Skype, and promoting Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Study Courses.
We will remove the words “by 2015” included in Objective 3 of the 2020 Vision, and continue to call on national governments to work for nuclear abolition.
Along with our activities based on the 2020 Vision to eliminate nuclear weapons, we will address such pressing issues as poverty, refugees, and climate change, in accordance with Article 3 of the Mayors for Peace Covenant.
The next General Conference will be held in Nagasaki in August 2017. To reflect requests and proposals from member cities in the conference content, the Secretariat will conduct a survey of member cities in 2016 and will consider possible content based on the results.
We will send the Resolution adopted by the Executive Conference to the nuclear-weapon states and the United Nations, among others, as a consensus of Mayors for Peace, to urge them to accelerate the momentum for a legal ban of nuclear weapons.
We will send this Final Communiqué and the Resolution to all member cities.