All posts by CPNN Coordinator

About CPNN Coordinator

Dr David Adams is the coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the International Year for the Culture of Peace, proclaimed for the Year 2000 by the United Nations General Assembly.

Remembering Georgi Vanyan: for peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .

An article by Onnik James Krikorian from Osservatorio balcani e caucaso transeuropa

Peacebuilder and true activist, anti-nationalist Georgi Vanyan died at the age of 58 on October 15th. He is especially remembered for the enormous effort to bring Azerbaijani and Armenians to dialogue


Georgi Vanyan © Meydan TV

The last time I spoke to Georgi Vanyan was by telephone at the end of September. The Armenian human rights and peace activist was visiting Tbilisi to meet with Emin Milli, the Azerbaijani founder and former director of Meydan TV. He had already interviewed Georgi about his peacebuilding activities and there were now plans to visit the Georgian village where many of his previous activities were held.

Georgi invited me accompany them, but there was one problem.

The 58-year-old was feeling ill and needed to test for COVID-19 before we could meet. Two days later, he sent a text message to say that he had tested positive and had to self-isolate in Tbilisi. He’d be in touch once he had recovered, but things took a turn for the worse and he was hospitalised. Eventually moved on to a ventilator, Georgi Vanyan was pronounced dead on 15 October.

The loss was a personal tragedy for those that knew him and also for a handful of committed individuals that had been working across closed borders in pursuit of regional peace.

“Now, at this stage of the Armenian-Azerbaijani reconciliation process, the peacebuilding community needed him more than ever,” tweeted Baku-based regional analyst and researcher Ahmad Alili. “Sincere Person. Genuine Peacebuilder. Great Loss. Rest in Peace, Georgi.”

For most others, however, Georgi’s passing went unnoticed.

“I am so afraid that Georgi Vanyan’s story will be left untold in Armenia as well as globally,” says Milli. “I observed social media yesterday and I saw almost no Armenians, with rare exception, talking about this [loss]. It was as if nothing happened and as if this man did not exist. It was as if this wasn’t the only courageous man in Armenia and Azerbaijan that did the things that he did.”

A controversial figure in Armenia, the silence was hardly surprising. The whole media and information space had been engaged in a coordinated campaign of public defamation against him for well over a decade. In 2007, a group of nationalist bloggers disrupted his Days of Azerbaijan event at an experimental school in Yerevan and in 2012 a nationalist mob launched an assault on his attempts to screen Azerbaijani films in Armenia’s second largest city of Gyumri.

And during the 2020 Karabakh War, while many peace-builders instead became proponents of war, Vanyan released an open letter calling for Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to stop the fighting and to enter into dialogue with Baku. His words fell on deaf ears in both countries, although the Armenian police did notice enough to threaten a hefty fine if he continued to make such calls.

But perhaps Georgi’s best-known project was his convening of regular meetings of Armenian, Azerbaijan, and Georgian activists, academics, and journalists in the village of Tekali. Inhabited by ethnic Azerbaijanis, Tekali is located in Georgia close to its borders with Armenia and Azerbaijan and was arguably one of the few genuine grassroots peace initiatives in the region.

The proximity of Tekali for those living in the regions of all three countries allowed almost anyone to participate. Bucking the usual ‘closed doors and usual suspects’ approach by other peace-building projects held in expensive hotels or holiday resorts, the local community also benefitted from the Tekali Process. Villagers, for example, would provide and earn income from the catering.

(Continued in right column)

Question related to this article:
 
Can peace be achieved between Azerbaijan and Armenia?

(Continued from left column)

And as a sign of how effective Tekali had been in facilitating people-to-people contact, one discussant on an Azerbaijan TV show warned in 2019 that Georgi Vanyan’s approach was dangerous. “For Azerbaijan there is only the enemy on the other side of the border, nobody else” the discussant said. “If an Azerbaijani soldier sees that the other side also has mothers, sisters, coffins, and tears then he won’t obey his orders.”

But this criticism was unknown in Armenia where he had been forced to live out his last remaining years in poverty close to the border with Azerbaijan. In one online meeting dedicated to his memory, Armenian activist and Tekali participant Sevak Kirakosyan remembered that Georgi still pushed NGOs to move their activities to where it really mattered – in actual conflict-affected communities.

When Georgi’s body was transferred to the Armenian capital for burial, several prominent figures did at least go to pay their last respects. There was Boris Navarsadyan, head of the Yerevan Press Club (YPC), Ashot Bleyan, the head of the school where Georgi had invited Azerbaijani intellectuals and writers in the late 2000s, and Soviet-era dissident Paruyr Hairikyan, for example.

Armenia’s Epress.am, a regular fixture at Tekali, also covered the memorial but only a few others joined them.

Mariam Yeghiazaryan was one. The 26-year-old team member from Bright Garden Voices, a grassroots cross-border initiative to bring Armenians and Azerbaijanis together online in the aftermath of last year’s 44-day war, implies that this might have been for the best.

“Before going to the funeral, I was afraid that something bad would happen in the mourning hall,” she says. “Something that would be disrespectful to him and his legacy, as had happened during and after the [film] festival. Fortunately, it didn’t․”

And even though the young activist had never met Georgi, she says that she payed more attention to his peacebuilding work following the 2020 Karabakh War and especially his death. Yeghiazaryan now compares him to other prominent Armenians, including the great Armenian writer Hovhannes Tumanyan and slain Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink.

“We honour Tumanyan, a truly great writer and a humanist,” she says, “ but I do not know how many have read his letters and articles about the Armenian-Tatar clashes. We honour Hrant Dink, not so much for his legacy and contribution, but for the chance to use and manipulate his death because he was murdered by a Turkish nationalist, forgetting that his whole life was aimed at Armenian-Turkish dialogue. What is the difference between them and Vanyan?”

She also remembers how Georgi had instead been labeled as a ‘traitor’ by those who were, in effect, opposed to a negotiated and mutually concessionary peace deal.

“Journalists played a big role in this case I note with regret,” she says. “There are terrible articles with terrible headlines, reports, and videos. How many quality articles, interviews can be found in Armenian about Vanyan? The fact that Vanyan’s death was almost not covered in the Armenian media is not about him, but about Armenia and Armenian journalism. It is extremely sad. Extremely.”

And it is this that concerns Milli the most.

“I’m very worried that his narrative could die with him,” he says. “I had seen courage that I had never seen before and I realised that there was nobody in Azerbaijan, including myself, that would dare to organise a Days of Armenian Cinema [in Azerbaijan]. Vanyan’s courage was so powerful that it impacted me profoundly. It was the moment that nationalism died in me.”

Milli, now having left Meydan TV, now has a new project, the Restart Initiative, which while primarily seeking to contribute to the development of Azerbaijan will also seek to nurture and develop dialogue with Armenia and Armenians. Some of Georgi’s former initiatives might well be resurrected for this purpose.

“I hope his Tekali project will be implemented [again],” remarks Yeghiazaryan, and I hope his approach will be the subject of discussion, debates, research, and daily conversations – both in Armenia and in Azerbaijan.”

(Editor’s note: In a new article about Georgi Vanyan in Al Jazeera, entitled Georgi Vanyan’s peace legacy must live on, Emin Milli adds that there is talk about a forthcoming meeting between Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, with increasing hope in the South Caucasus that perhaps the two countries will make some progress on peace.)

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, Europe, Mideast,

Fridays for Future: Who we are

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

Excerpts from the website of Fridays for Future

FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE or FFF, is a youth-led and -organised global climate strike movement that started in August 2018, when 15-year-old Greta Thunberg began a school strike for climate. In the three weeks leading up to the Swedish election, she sat outside Swedish Parliament every school day, demanding urgent action on the climate crisis. She was tired of society’s unwillingness to see the climate crisis for what it is: a crisis.

To begin with, she was alone, but she was soon joined by others. On the 8th of September, Greta and her fellow school strikers decided to continue their strike until the Swedish policies provided a safe pathway well under 2° C, i.e. in line with the Paris agreement. They created the hashtag #FridaysForFuture, and encouraged other young people all over the world to join them. This marked the beginning of the global school strike for climate.
(article continued in right column)

Question for this article:

Are we seeing the dawn of a global youth movement?

How can just one or a few persons contribute to peace and justice?

(Article continued from the left column)

Their call for action sparked an international awakening, with students and activists uniting around the globe to protest outside their local parliaments and city halls. Along with other groups across the world, Fridays for Future is part of a hopeful new wave of change, inspiring millions of people to take action on the climate crisis, and we want you to become one of us!

JOIN US

OUR GOALS​

The goal of the movement is to put moral pressure on policymakers, to make them listen to the scientists, and then to take forceful action to limit global warming.

Our movement is independent of commercial interests and political parties and knows no borders.

We strike because we care for our planet and for each other. We have hope that humanity can change, avert the worst climate disasters and build a better future.

Every day there are more of us and together we are strong. Everyone is welcome. Everyone is needed. No one is too small to make a difference.

OUR DEMANDS

HOW TO STRIKE

Check how you can make a difference with a strike or action.

FIND OUT HOW!

global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The Best Weapon for Peace : Maria Montessori, Education, and Children’s Rights

. EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

A book review from The University of Wisconsin Press

This book is by Erica Moretti (see below).


“Innovative and extremely well-documented. This volume reframes the life and work of Maria Montessori within the context of international peace studies. She deserves recognition as a pioneer who faced gender barriers and nevertheless almost won the Nobel Peace Prize. Moretti gracefully weaves portraits of historical topics into this narrative of Montessori’s intellectual life.”
—Mary Gibson, John Jay College and the Graduate Center–CUNY

The Italian educator and physician Maria Montessori (1870–1952) is best known for the teaching method that bears her name. She was also a lifelong pacifist, although historians tend to consider her writings on this topic as secondary to her pedagogy.

(Article continued in right column)

Question related to this article:
 
What is the best way to teach peace to children?

What is the relation between peace and education?

(Article continued from left column)

In The Best Weapon for Peace, Erica Moretti reframes Montessori’s pacifism as the foundation for her educational activism, emphasizing her vision of the classroom as a gateway to reshaping society. Montessori education offers a child-centered learning environment that cultivates students’ development as peaceful, curious, and resilient adults opposed to war and invested in societal reform.



Using newly discovered primary sources, Moretti examines Montessori’s lifelong pacifist work, including her ultimately unsuccessful push for the creation of the White Cross, a humanitarian organization for war-affected children. Moretti shows that Montessori’s educational theories and practices would come to define children’s rights once adopted by influential international organizations, including the United Nations. She uncovers the significance of Montessori’s evolving philosophy of peace and early childhood education within broader conversations about internationalism and humanitarianism.
 
Erica Moretti  is an assistant professor of Italian at the Fashion Institute of Technology–SUNY. She is the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

The book is published as part of the following series:

George L. Mosse Series in Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History
Steven E. Aschheim, Skye Doney, Mary Louise Roberts, and David J. Sorkin, Series Editors

EDUCATION FOR PEACE, global

Global Teacher Prize: Juline Anquetin-Rault

. EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

An article from The Global Teacher Prize (reprinted by permission)

(Editor’s note : Juline Anquetin-Rault came to our attention by way of a article in a local newspaper in France, Tendence Ouest, where she is quoted as being inspired by the pedagogical methods of Maria Montessori. CPNN has long maintained that this pedagogy is a good model for peace education. Montessori’s methods are usually used for young children, but Juline has adapted the methods to use with adolescents. )

She is now a candidate for the Global Teacher Prize as follows:


Video from Global Teacher Prize

Even as a child, Juline Anquetin Rault knew she wanted to become a teacher, but there was a time when she doubted whether her dream would come true. When she took the national exam to become a history and geography teacher, she ranked 607th out of 6,000 candidates, but only the top 604 were hired as public school teachers. Juline was crushed, but resolved to retake the exam the following year. In the meantime, she started working as a teaching assistant in a local school. On her first day, as she helped students with their homework and went over their lessons with them, Juline knew she had found her calling, and would become a teacher no matter what. She decided to start a tutoring agency, and also began teaching in private schools that did not require educators to pass the national exam.

(Article continued in right column)

Question related to this article:
 
What is the best way to teach peace to children?

(Article continued from left column)

Juline now splits her time between tutoring and teaching history and geography at an apprenticeship school. There, many of her students start out disliking school, having struggled in formal education, and a large portion are foreign students still learning to speak French.  

Juline believes learning should be fun, and that pupils should feel empowered to progress on their own. She has developed innovative teaching methods to engage her students, including treasure hunts and ‘pop culture’ classes using films. To help her students regain their confidence, she teaches them that failure and making mistakes are a valuable part of learning. Each class incorporates autonomous workshops, which can include internet research, online quizzes or studying maps. Juline’s methods have proven successful, with clear improvements not just in her students’ grades, but also in their mental health. In an end of year survey, 98% of students at Juline’s school said they would recommend this way of learning, and a project is in the works to apply it at national level. 

Outside of teaching, since 2017 Juline has organised yearly trips for students at her apprenticeship school. In 2020, she launched an organisation to fundraise for these outings. For Juline, travelling with students is a key way to teach them to be more tolerant. Many of her pupils have never even been to Paris, which is just 90 minutes from Rouen. She has also raised funds for children in Asia and Africa to access health and education services, and encourages regular dialogue between these children and the students at her tutoring agency.   

Juline is committed to helping her fellow teachers be the best they can be, and hosts training sessions to share her knowledge with colleagues. She teaches her peers how to use new technologies and memorisation techniques based on the latest cognitive science. She also frequently looks at what other teachers around the world are doing, and is inspired by passionate teachers. Juline runs a popular YouTube channel on which she shares learning and teaching materials with students and educators. If she wins the Global Teacher Prize, she would spend the funds on helping train even more teachers, to transform French education for the better.

(Thank you to Kiki Adams, the CPNN reporter for this articl

EDUCATION FOR PEACE, Europe

COP26: Thousands of young people take over Glasgow streets demanding climate action

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from the United Nations

“What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!” echoed throughout central Glasgow on Friday as thousands of protesters took the streets during the dedicated “Youth Day” at COP26.

Although the march was initially organized by Fridays for Future, the youth-driven movement inspired by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, people of all ages gathered at George Square to demand climate action.


UN News/Laura Quiñones

From small children waving their handmade picket signs, to older adults demanding a better future for those that will come after them, the COP26  host city saw citizen activists in unprecedented numbers rallying to get their message heard.

An even larger march is expected on Saturday. 

Welsh citizen Jane Mansfield carried around a sign that read: “Code red for humanity”, the signature phrase  UN Secretary General António Guterres used after the latest IPCC report  published earlier this year warned of a looming climate catastrophe. 

“I really care about the world that we are passing on to future generations, and what we are doing to the Global South. I live in southwest Wales and climate change is clearly happening, but we don´t even grasp what is happening in so many other parts of the world and I am scared,” she told UN News. 

Latin-American Indigenous leaders were also among today’s demonstrations. They were the ones leading the march and several of them sent a loud message to world leaders: stop extracting resources and to ‘leave carbon in the ground’. 

“Indigenous people are dying in the river; they’re being washed away by massive floods. Houses are being washed away, schools full of children inside, bridges, our food our crops, everything is being washed away”, they said at a stage in George Square. 

Meanwhile, some activists wore bobblehead masks of presidents and prime ministers and depicted them as being arrested with signs that read “climate criminals”. 

More real action, less ‘greenwashing’ 

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was the last to appear on the protest’s stage, where she criticized world leaders for their continued “blah, blah, blah” after 26 years of climate conferences and put in doubt the transparency of the commitments they have made during this COP. 

“The leaders are not doing nothing; they are actively creating loopholes and shaping frameworks to benefit themselves, and to continue profiting from this destructive system. This is an active choice by the leaders to continue the exploitation of nature and people and the destruction of presents and future living conditions to take place”, she said, calling the conference a “greenwashing event”. 

Other Fridays for Future members, speaking to UN News, asked for more participation and better youth representation in the negotiations that are underway at COP26. 

“Every year we have been disappointed by COP, and I don’t think this year will be different. There is a sliver of hope but at the same time we don’t see enough action, we can’t achieve anything with just pledges and empty promises”, said a representative of Youth Advocates for Climate Change in the Philippines  

(article continued in right column)

Question for this article:

Sustainable Development Summits of States, What are the results?

Despite the vested interests of companies and governments, Can we make progress toward sustainable development?

Are we seeing the dawn of a global youth movement?

(Article continued from the left column)

“Negotiations are happening and yet we are here in the street, because we haven’t been included. The richest people come in their private jets and take the decisions. We are here and we won’t be ignored. We will make our own space”, another climate advocate added. 

The Youth Statement 

The same call was made inside the conference’s Blue Zone, where climate activists from YOUNGO, the Children and Youth Constituency of UN Climate Change, delivered to the COP Presidency and other leaders a statement signed by 40,000 young people demanding change. 

The statement raised several points of concern, among them inclusion in climate negotiations. It also asked Patricia Espinosa, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to support young people’s efforts to have a paragraph mentioning the importance of the youth included in the final declaration that is expected to be adopted at the end of COP26. 

“We will be bringing these issues and demands to the attentions of the delegations, all of them are absolutely reasonable and justifiable,” she vowed during a panel discussion with young leaders.  

The statement, which was handed over to Ministers, also asks for action on climate finance, mobility and transportation, wildlife protection and environmental conservation. 

“Wherever I have been in the world, I have been struck by the passion and the commitment of young people to climate action. The voices of young people must be heard and reflected in these negotiations here at COP. The actions and scrutiny of young people are key to us keeping 1.5 alive and creating a net-zero future”, said Alok Sharma, COP26 President. 

Meanwhile, the UK and Italy, in partnership with UNESCO, Youth4Climate and Mock COP coordinated new global action to equip future generations with the knowledge and skills to create a net-zero world.  

As Education Ministers and young people gathered, over 23 countries put forward national climate education pledges, ranging from decarbonizing the education sector to developing school resources. 

The youth are right: the new commitments aren’t enough 

The UNFCCC published its latest updates of the national commitments  thus far to reduce carbon emissions, and although some advances have been made during the conference, they are still not enough. 

“A sizable increase, of about 13.7 per cent, in global greenhouse emissions in 2030 compared to 2010 is anticipated”, the report says. 

Before COP, the increase was calculated at 16 per cent, but for the world to be able to curb global heating and avoid disastrous consequences, emissions must be cut by 50 per cent in the next nine years. 

For Carla Huanca, a young activist who travelled all the way from Bolivia to be in Glasgow with her friend, the dinosaur “T-Resilient”, another extinction can’t be a possibility. 

“We young people will be the ones that will inherit this planet, and that is why it is so important that our voices are heard. We demand government actions so we can all have the planet we want,” she told UN News.

(Thank you to Phyllis Kotite, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

Europe, global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, United Nations, ,

Olive Trees and the movement for justice in Palestine

TOLERANCE AND SOLIDARITY .

An article by CPNN

This is the season for the olive harvest in the Middle East. According to Al Jazeera, “About 80,000 to 100,000 Palestinian families rely on the olive harvest, which takes place every year between October and November, for their income – including more than 15 percent of working women.”

CPNN has received, read and appreciated the video below in which the olive trees and olive harvest are seen as a symbol for the movement for justice in Palestine.


`A scene from the video “The olive trees are growing again in Gaza.”

Unfortunately, there are forces in Israel opposed to justice in Palestine, and for them the olive tree and olive harvest is also a symbol but one that they wish to destroy.

According to the same article in Al Jazeera, “During the 2020 olive harvest season, OCHA documented  at least 26 Palestinians injured and more than 1,700 trees vandalised. As of October 4, 2021, the UN group for humanitarian affairs recorded at least 365 settler attacks against Palestinians. This week, a 10-day campaign  to aid and protect farmers was launched in areas considered to be at high risk of Israeli settler attacks.”

The 10-day campaign mentioned by Al Jazeera is managed by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. In response on October 19, the Israeli government has outlawed this organization, along with five others, claiming that that they are “terrorist.”

Human Rights Watch , in a joint statement with Amnesty International, writes the following about the Israeli decision :

(continued in the right column)

Question for this article

Presenting the Palestinian side of the Middle East, Is it important for a culture of peace?

(continued from the left column)

“This appalling and unjust decision is an attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement. For decades, Israeli authorities have systematically sought to muzzle human rights monitoring and punish those who criticize its repressive rule over Palestinians. While staff members of our organizations have faced deportation and travel bans, Palestinian human rights defenders have always borne the brunt of the repression. This decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organizations. The decades-long failure of the international community to challenge grave Israeli human rights abuses and impose meaningful consequences for them has emboldened Israeli authorities to act in this brazen manner.

“How the international community responds will be a true test of its resolve to protect human rights defenders. We are proud to work with our Palestinian partners and have been doing so for decades. They represent the best of global civil society. We stand with them in challenging this outrageous decision.”

Despite the official Israeli position, there are are Israelis who support the Palestinian olive harvest. In another website we find the following:

“There are repeated efforts to replant destroyed trees, including by Israeli activists, who earlier this year brought 200 trees to plant in Burin.

“A week later we came [back again] and a lot of the trees were uprooted — the new trees — so we replanted them,” said Rabbi Nava Heretz.

A member of the Israeli organisation Rabbis for Human Rights, the 66-year-old has for years been harvesting olives alongside Israeli and foreign volunteers. Activists have also been attacked by settlers, including an elderly rabbi whose arm was broken in 2019.

“We are going to places where there is a threat on the Palestinian farmers,” she said, standing between olive trees in the Burin area.”

The article concludes with remarks from a Palestinian:

“Going beyond economics, Mr Abu Jiyab said olives remain an important symbol across Palestine. ‘Palestinians cherish this tree,’ he said, which has grown for hundreds of years. ‘Whether we are in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the border areas or far from the border areas, we consider this tree like one of our children.’”

Mideast, TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY

English bulletin November 1, 2021

CITIES, TOWNS FOR CULTURE OF PEACE

As we have previously remarked in this bulletin most recently in 2020 and 2016, the leadership for a culture of peace is often taken by cities and towns, since, unlike nation-states, they are not heavily invested in the culture of war and since they tend to be more responsive to the needs of their citizens.

This month, there are four articles in this regard from Mexico.

The mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, has emphasized the social programs that she has implemented during her mandate to improve security conditions. She explains that “security is also the result of social justice, that is why we address the causes of violence with programs that allow access to education, culture and sports.” She emphasized the projects that have been the foundations of her government in the capital of the country: the Points of Innovation, Freedom, Art, Education and Knowledge (Pillars), Yes to disarmament, yes to peace, Inside the Neighborhood and Wellbeing for Girls and Boys, My Scholarship to Get Started.

Mayor Sheinbaum also hosted the third World Forum on Cities and Territories of Peace in Mexico City. The Forum demonstrated the power of women and their influence in the most important positions to run large cities in the world. In the first session of the event, all the participants were women. Claudia Sheibaum (representative of Mexico City), Claudia López (mayor of Bogotá), Ada Colau (mayor of Barcelona), Manuela Carmena (former mayor of Madrid) and Reyna Rueda (mayor of Managua).

Women have also taken the lead for a culture of peace in the Mexican city of Chihuahua. Their network, the Red Mesa de Mujeres, highlights the importance of training women leaders in this area. “We started with the idea of building a group of ten women and we already have 65 of all ages.”

In the Mexican city of Saltillo, the Mano Cadena program works to create, implement and disseminate preventive strategies for conflict resolution that promote a culture of peace. Actions include more than 138 information and awareness talks on the subject of alternative justice, 30 workshops on Peace Circles, and more than 50 training courses-workshops in community, school and alternative justice mediation given to more than 1,800 participants, community representatives and teachers.

Other articles come from Spain, United States, Japan, China, United Kingdom and France.

In Spain, United States and Japan, organizations of cities are putting pressure on their national governments to join the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which so far has only been signed by non-nuclear countries. Details are provided in the newsletter of Mayors for Peace.

Also in the United States, the city of Pittsburgh is taking steps to create “a city of peace with a culture of nonviolence.” A group, which called the Black Elected Officials Coalition, announced it would begin a series of community events to promote peace in the streets.

In China, the city of Nanjing hosted the 2021 Nanjing Peace Forum, co-sponsored with UNESCO. The Forum conducted a lively and in-depth discussion on the natural environment and human destiny, sustainable development goals and green investment, environmental challenges and youth actions, global green recovery and good business, peace actions and international practices. The “2021 Nanjing Peace Consensus” was passed. This has become an annual event, as the 2020 Forum was described in CPNN.

In the United Kingdom, the city of Coventry, the current City of Culture, which is known as a city of peace and reconciliation, welcomed Little Amal, a giant puppet of a child, as she nears the end of a 5,000-mile walk from Syria to “rewrite the narrative about refugees”. Coventry is home to about 1,500 people seeking refuge.

In France, the welcome of refugees also contributes to a culture of peace. The lead in this regard is being taken by small villages that have lost population in recent years and that find a revitaliization by refugees. In Notre-Dame-de-l’Osier, the refugees have engaged in gardening and a weekly market, as well as pottery workshops, cooking and honey harvesting that have enlivened village life. In Pessat-Villeneuve, the immigrants took responsibilty for the creation and distribution of masks that were needed to combat the epidemic of COVID.

The mayor of Grigny, France, Philippe Rio was chosen as best mayor in the world by the London association “ City Mayors Foundation ”to reward his management of the Covid crisis, and his fight against poverty in his city.” He has also taken part in the welcome of refugees and the struggle to abolish nuclear weapons.

Mayor Rio spoke at the first national forum of the AFCDRP (Association of Mayors for Peace, France) that took place October 13 in Montpelier.

At the Forum I was privileged to deliver an address that described how cities can contribute to the culture of peace, with reference to the Declaration for the Transition to a Culture of Peace in the 21st Century.

WOMEN’S EQUALITY

CDMX
Mexico City successfully holds the World Forum of Cities and Territories of Peace

TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY

worldmarch
Successful start of the Latin American March for Nonviolence, Multiethnic and Pluricultural

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Thunberg
Our future, our decisions: young activists call for seat at climate table

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION

Sheinbaum
The programs of Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum to reduce violence in Mexico City

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

Nobel

The Nobel Peace Prize 2021

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY

IPB
World Peace Congress concludes in Barcelona with successful participation

HUMAN RIGHTS


abortion

USA: Women Rally for Abortion Justice Amid ‘Unprecedented Attack’ on Reproductive Rights

EDUCATION FOR PEACE

Jovenes
Chad: AJPNV training for democracy and human rights
d-democratic

Some villages in France have found a second life by welcoming refugees

. TOLERANCE AND SOLIDARITY . .

A compilation with translations by CPNN

A recent article in Liberation shows how some villages in France have found a second life by welcoming refugees.

The article says that these villages, that are “struck by rural exodus,” have decided to renew their local life with immigrants, and it mentions four villages: Luzy (2,000 inhabitants, Nièvre), Ferrette (800 inhabitants, Haut-Rhin), Notre-Dame-de-l’Osier (500 inhabitants, Isère) and Pessat-Villeneuve (650 inhabitants, Puy -de-Dôme).


At Pessat-Villeneuve, Mayor Gérard Dubois (right) with Hamidullah (center) – clip from video entitled Portrait de Hamidullah, réfugié afghan a Pessat-Villeneuve.

Here are excerpts from articles about these four villages.

Luzy in Nièvre

“In the heart of the Burgundy countryside, Luzy, a town of 2,000 inhabitants, has welcomed 45 asylum seekers of Guinean, Afghan, Sudanese or Iranian origin, etc. since the end of 2018.

For these men, women and children who fled persecution at home, Luzy is seen as a stopover on the roads of exile. For the moment, they are suspended from the response that the French authorities will give to their asylum requests.

For the past fifteen years, Luzy has been losing inhabitants. But, for three years now, it has gained and the village has been reborn, in particular thanks to the arrival of these new Luzicans, from all over the world.

Committed to receiving them as best as possible, the inhabitants of Luzy have mobilized to give meaning to their reception and living together, including football games, French lessons, pétanque tournaments and ball trap competitions.

Ferrette in Haut-Rhin

Since 2016, Ferrette has welcomed around 80 asylum seekers – half of whom are children – from places as far away as Afghanistan, Sudan and Armenia.

They all hope to be recognized as refugees – or at the very least, that France will grant them “subsidiary protection”, the status granted to asylum seekers who are not qualified as refugees… ..

When the mayor of Ferrette agreed to welcome migrants, he found himself facing stiff opposition, even from members of his staff… ..

But while some protested, he also saw other locals come together to help, with the emergence of a group called “Voisins du monde” which offered them French lessons, access to a game library, cooking classes and even transport to the hospital.

Samir Beldi, director of accommodation at the Mulhouse / Ferrette branch of Adoma, the housing office that houses migrants, said things had gone well.

“The volunteers managed to repair the damage after some initial trouble. There were preconceptions but we have turned the page on that,” he said.

His assistant, Martine Kaufmann, agrees. “They are not ‘poor’, they were not necessarily poor at home,” she explains. “Some of them have important qualifications. There is diversity among asylum seekers.

(Article continued in right column)

(Click here for the French version.)

Question for this article

The refugee crisis, Who is responsible?

(Article continued from left column)

Notre-Dame-de-l’Osier in Isère

Located in Notre-Dame-de-l’Osier and belonging to the Emmaüs-France network and the Cocagne network, the Tero Loko association was created a little over 3 years ago. It offers an integration project for refugees and inhabitants of the territory. The objective is twofold, to facilitate the integration of people in precarious situations and to participate in the dynamism of this rural town of 700 inhabitants. Their slogan, “Cultivate welcome” is a reflection of this desire.

In this access to employment project, Tero Loko offers integration contracts (CDDI) in market gardening and bread production, two essential productions in everyday food, as well as marketing for the sale of their products …

Tero Loko thus supports refugees on access to employment and also works with them on access to sustainable housing or learning French.

This project can provide answers to a need for integration in rural areas. It offeris a complete project to refugees in search of stability and participates in the revitalization of rural communities. The joy of being together is evident in these markets because the exchange is reciprocal. The refugees are helped in their integration and the inhabitants find a lively village life thanks to this weekly market and various activities (such as pottery workshops, cooking, honey harvesting or even creative workshops of all kinds).

Pessat-Villeneuve en Puy-de-Dôme

In Pessat-Villeneuve (63), a village of 670 inhabitants in the Puy de Dôme, a solidarity initiative was born during the first confinement. As the masks are missing throughout the territory, Hamidullah, a refugee from the Pessat-Villeneuve temporary accommodation center, has decided to produce them. Other refugees have joined in his efforts to help with the distribution. Thanks to them, all the inhabitants were able to benefit from this essential protection. Gérard Dubois, the mayor of the village, and Isabelle Harry, deputy mayor who participated in the distribution of the masks, tell us about this adventure………

What is the origin of this reception policy?

Gérard Dubois :  In 2015, the photo of little Aylan was the trigger for my commitment. I told myself that something had to be done. At that time, we had just bought a vacation center which belonged to Air France and which was unoccupied during the winter period. It seemed logical to me to offer it to the State to accommodate families. At the end of October 2015, the prefectures could not find any center to welcome migrants from Calais, they remembered me. It all happened very quickly. We took in 48 migrants initially. They landed in our beautiful region. Our small village had 550 inhabitants at the time. Then, making the center sustainable was a real desire both personally and on the part of the municipal team…….

How did this mask creation initiative come about? Did the idea come from your side or from the center?

Gérard Dubois :  It was complicated because we were living in this confinement during the elections….. about the masks. No one had any. I tried to get some for the center through the Association of Mayors of France. We were able to do bulk orders nationwide to redistribute them, but we didn’t get exactly what we wanted. Then, one day, the director of the Cecler center calls me and tells me that a young refugee, Hamidullah, is able to sew and that he intends to make masks. I immediately accepted……His idea was really to offer them to the population, it all started with him. Our participation in the action was easy compared to his work. We provided him with the equipment: sewing machine, elastic, suitable fabric, plastic pouches for hygiene during distribution. We also created a communication to add in the masks to explain the origin of this mask and its history…….

Is it by sharing moments that we can get to know each other better?

Isabelle Harry:  It’s true that it’s not always easy to do this. They were very motivated by the idea of creating the masks and then distributing them. This gave them the opportunity to go against the inhabitants and get in touch with them. It is true that when the center was set up, there were a lot of reluctant residents. It should not be denied. They were scared and it was not easy. I was the first to ask myself questions. For a small village like ours, that’s normal. Gradually people were reassured and now the refugees are integrated. This initiative was one more step. The majority of the inhabitants were very happy and found it great to give the refugees a chance.

(Thank you to Kiki Adams, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

Europe, TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY

Cities in Spain, USA and Japan press their national governments to support nuclear disarmament

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .

Excerpts from the newsletter of Mayors for Peace

The October newsletter of Mayors for Peace includes several examples of cities pressing their governments to support nuclear disarmament.


Spain

The City of Granollers, headed by Mayor Mayoral, has invited Catalan cities to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) as well as recruited them to join Mayors for Peace. Whenever the occasion arises, Mayor Mayoral and the city staffers always promote Mayors for Peace and the TPNW to other cities. Over the last couple of months, Mayor Mayoral called different mayors in Catalonia to urge them to approve a motion in which they recognize the danger posed by nuclear weapons, to show solidarity with the people and communities affected by their impact, and to call on the Spanish Government to sign and ratify the TPNW. The motion has been adopted by 59 localities in Catalonia, as well as the Barcelona Provincial Council, which represents more than half of the population of Catalonia.

To read the full text of the report, please visit this link.

United States

On September 23, 2021, the Back from the Brink campaign released an Open Letter signed by over 300 local, county and state officials in 41 U.S. states. The letter, directed to President Biden and the U.S. Congress, welcomes the entry-info-force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and “urge[s] bold action and U.S. leadership in the pursuit of global, verifiable nuclear disarmament and concrete policy steps to reduce and eliminate the severe danger nuclear weapons pose to each and every one of our constituents – and all of humanity.”

(Continued in right column)

Question related to this article:
 
Can we abolish all nuclear weapons?

How can culture of peace be developed at the municipal level?

(Continued from left column)

Signatories include Mayors for Peace Vice President, Mayor Frank Cownie of Des Moines, Iowa and twelve other U.S. members of Mayors for Peace. The letter signers hope to influence the Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, the document that sets U.S. nuclear policy.

The Back From the Brink campaign calls on the United States to:
Actively pursue a verifiable agreement among nucleararmed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals;
• Renounce the option of using nuclear weapons first;
• End the sole, unchecked authority of any president to launch a nuclear attack;
• Take U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; and
• Cancel the plan to replace the entire US arsenal with enhanced weapons at a cost of more than $1 trillion over the next 30 years.

The campaign has been endorsed by 53 U.S. municipalities, six state legislative bodies, and over 380 organizations including the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Read the Open Letter and full list of signatories here: Open Letter | Back from the Brink (preventnuclearwar.org)

Japan

On October 4, Fumio Kishida, a member of Japan’s lower House of Representatives representing the A-bombed city of Hiroshima, was elected as Japan’s 100th prime minister. The arrival of a new leader who advocates the realization of a “world without nuclear weapons” and calls nuclear disarmament his “life’s work” has led to growing expectations for the future. At the same time, some have voiced their concerns about how far Mr. Kishida can achieve concrete progress under the current circumstances in which Japan adheres firmly to a policy of reliance on nuclear deterrence for security.

The first touchstone is the momentous first meeting of the States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), scheduled to be held in March next year. Japan’s national government did not participate in meetings to negotiate the treaty’s establishment in 2017. At the time, Mr. Kishida was the Japan minister for foreign affairs. Even after TPNW’s entry into force in January this year, the Japanese government did not change its stance of refusing to sign and ratify the treaty. In the A-bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are forceful calls for the government to participate in some capacity in the meeting, because non-signatory nations also have the right to attend the meeting as “observers.”

Setsuko Thurlow, an A-bomb survivor living in Canada, and Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), have respectively sent Mr. Kishida a letter to the effect that they are looking forward to meeting him at the meeting’s conference hall in Vienna, Austria. Switzerland and Sweden, non-participants in the treaty for the time being, are said to have expressed their intent to attend the meeting as observers. We will continue to keep our eyes focused on the actions of “the only nation in the world to have experienced nuclear attacks in wartime.”

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, global

Mexico: Women who weave communities of peace in Chihuahua

. . WOMEN’S EQUALITY . .

An article by Eugenia Coppel in Milenio

Urbivillas del Prado and Riberas del Bravo in Ciudad Juárez illustrate how the strategy of Women Builders of Peace (MUCPAZ) operates, a federal program that by March of this year has reached 107 municipalities in 27 entities.


Until just a year ago, the Urbivillas del Prado subdivision, on the southern outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, was a group of gray houses, with streets full of rubble, tires and garbage, and without adequate public spaces for meetings between neighbors. . “It was sad because everyone was on her own,” says Mari Velázquez, a teacher who has lived in this neighborhood for 12 years with her husband and her two children.

“Right now it’s another world, it’s totally changed,” says Velázquez, one of the women leaders who has promoted the transformation of her environment, proudly. The most obvious change is the colors that illuminate the facades of about 90 percent of the buildings, which were painted by the community itself, and with special enthusiasm of the girls and boys, says Mari Velázquez.

The strength of the neighborhood organization is also reflected in cleaner streets, in a park without rubble and in the trees planted there; on the newly demarcated soccer field and on the now colorful tires that serve as games for children. Also in the kermesses, collective harvests, piñata workshops, boxing classes, mental health campaigns and initiatives for the prevention of gender violence and addictions, among other activities that began to take place this same year.

For Mari Velázquez, the most important thing that has been generated is the union between neighbors, which grows stronger every day. “Before it was just a greeting and that’s it, but now we have more communication, more friendship; We are committed to working together to seek solutions to the problems we have, working together with women, men, girls and boys, ”says the president of the newly formed Urbivillas coalition.

The former governor of Chihuahua himself, Javier Corral, recognized the efforts of Mari and the entire community in an event held in August 2021, a few weeks before she ended her term.

In front of one of the many walls transformed into multicolored murals, the politician described the subdivision as a “referential model that can serve not only many other areas of Juárez but of the country.”

Corral gave thanks personally for the design of the project, as well as for the coordination of the participating public and private actors to Eunice Rendón, expert in public policy and international consultant on security, migration and bioethics issues.

Eunice Rendón works as an external advisor to governments in the creation of strategies to prevent violence and addictions. One of the federal programs with which she collaborates is Mujeres Constructoras de Paz (MUCPAZ), of which the Urbivilla project is part.

As an activist for the rights of migrants she has implemented projects of the same program in another neighborhood of Juárez, Riberas del Bravo, as well as in municipalities of Oaxaca, Tlaxcala and the State of Mexico.

In an interview, Eunice Rendón explains that she designed a protocol based on the Women Builders of Peace program, where she detailed the step by step to achieve a successful operating experience in any municipality in Mexico. This includes a baseline, a follow-up evaluation and different possible scenarios in the process of articulating a community, in conjunction with municipal, state, federal, private sector and society actors.

Women in peace processes

In the Global Peace Index 2021, Mexico ranks 126th out of a list of 161 countries, with the latter being the most violent.

For Johan Galtung, one of the most important theorists in peace studies and director of the International Peace Research Institute, peace is not only defined as the absence of conflicts, but as the positive transformation of them. Generating positive peace means creating harmonious relationships between two or more parties to the conflict and undertaking community projects.

(continued in right column)

(Click here for the original article in Spanish.)

Questions related to this article:

Do women have a special role to play in the peace movement?

How can culture of peace be developed at the municipal level?

(continued from left column)

Also, the international community has recognized that women are agents of change and that their participation is essential in peacebuilding processes. In 2000, the United Nations Security Council approved resolution 1325, which urges women to actively participate in achieving lasting peace processes.

The MUCPAZ strategy, which starts from these bases, was launched in 2019 by the National Institute of Women (Inmujeres) and the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP). Its objective is to incorporate a human rights perspective in Mexican municipalities, promote gender equality and empower women to contribute to peace processes.

According to data from the Mexican government, as of March 2021, 217 networks of Women Peacebuilders have been implemented, with the participation of 3,510 women in 107 municipalities and 27 states, with an investment of more than 123 million pesos.

During the inauguration of the program in the Venustiano Carranza mayor’s office, in Mexico City, the head of Inmujeres, Nadine Gasman, emphasized that MUCPAZ consists of preventive work, rather than direct care for victims of gender violence, since that work corresponds to other instances. What the strategy seeks is to influence “the reconstruction of communities and the reestablishment of the social fabric,” said the official.

Some results are already visible in the two neighborhoods of Ciudad Juárez where the pilot projects were launched. Eunice Rendón talks about the various activities that have been carried out in these territories, starting with the main thing, which is the formation of networks of women, but also of men, young people, girls, boys and adolescents.

From there, courses and workshops have been offered on the basic principles of gender, on how to contact various authorities and / or report violence, or on how to carry out productive projects. Through community activities, such as soccer, hip-hop or mechanics, the theme of positive masculinities among young men is introduced.

Both in Urbivillas del Prado, as in Riberas del Bravo – one of the neighborhoods where the highest rates of feminicides and sexual violence are registered in Juárez – the most successful activities have been those that have to do with providing women with tools for their productive development, with courses, workshops, certifications and creation of cooperatives.

“You cannot ask for gender empowerment if women are financially dependent on the aggressor; that is what often slows them down. The other learning is enhanced when there is something that can give them an economic possibility, ”says Eunice Rendón.

Feminist rice pudding

A 40-second video illustrates the type of work that has been done in the Riberas del Bravo neighborhood. In it a group of girls and boys appears singing and dancing a feminist version of a popular children’s round: “Rice pudding / I want to find / a partner who wants to dream / who believes in herself / who goes out to fight / to conquer the dream of more freedom “…

“It is part of the empowerment process,” says Yadira Cortés, coordinator of the Red Mesa de Mujeres, in whose Facebook account the video can be found.

This network is a civil association that since 2004 works for gender equality and non-violence against the women of Ciudad Juárez. Since 2017, it has been present in Riberas del Bravo, where it has focused on the training of women leaders and has just joined the MUCPAZ network.

Cortés explains that the work that she and her colleagues have carried out is very similar to the proposal of the federal program, and considers that by joining this larger network, her intervention methodology has been strengthened and focused. “We were already working on violence prevention and now we are also working on peace-building issues,” says the activist and professor at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez.

Riberas del Bravo, in the description of Yadira Cortés, is a peripheral colony where there is no industry or medical services; the ambulance does not arrive and the police units almost never pass; the pavement is in poor condition, public transportation is poor and scarce, and there are high rates of drug use and violence.

For this reason, the Red Mesa de Mujeres highlights the importance of training women leaders in this area. “We started with the idea of ​​building a group of ten women and we already have 65 of all ages,” says the activist.

“They are women who are already known in the community: the lady who always talks to the police, the one who reports on support programs or the coordinator of the chapel. Other women identify them and are a point of reference ”.

Finding and activating these natural leaders and helping them continue to work in a self-managed way is the main purpose of MUCPAZ, in the opinion of the specialist Eunice Rendón. The strategy has shown that through them it can have a positive impact on different levels of daily life in the community.

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, Latin America, WOMEN'S EQUALITY