As the coordinator of CPNN, I was invited recently to take part in peace seminars in Mexico and Brazil. Along with a conference that I attended at the end of 2015 in Colombia, it has given me the chance to appreciate the great advances being made towards a culture of peace in Latin America.

In particular I have been impressed by the Latin American advances in participative budgeting as a form of democratic participation, in mediation and restorative justice, in the struggle against violence against women, and in tourism for peace. Also, it is Latin America that has given us the World Social Forum. Of course, the peace process in Colombia has been the leading peace process in the world in the last few years. And now there is movement towards the development of networks of city peace commissions in Brazil and Mexico.

Participative budgeting allows citizens to debate and define policies, by deciding each year on the city’s budget priorities for investments and services. This stimulates the involvement of the citizenry in the public good and the city’s management. The process was started ten years ago in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre and has since spread to many cities around the world. My visit this month included the cities of Santos and Curuaru in Brazil as well as Mexico City, and CPNN this month carries articles about participative budgeting in each of those cities.

Brazil is a leader worldwide in the development of restorative justice, as we have seen last October in CPNN. This month we carry an article about progress in restorative justice in the southern region of Brazil. Similar systems of mediation as alternative justice are increasingly used in Mexico as we have seen in previous articles in CPNN in July and November, 2016, and we carry an article this month from Chiapas, the southern region of Mexico.

I was impressed during my visits by the high level of violence against women, and the increasing struggle in those countries to stop the violence. In Brazil, the struggle is carried out in the framework of a law named after one of the victims, Maria da Penha, while in Mexico, it is in the framework of the General Law for Women’s Access to a Life Free from Violence. In Colombia, one of the initiatives is being carried out in the framework of traditional indigenous rituals. In a related note, we carry an article from Colombia this month about the creation of a Council of Indigenous Women as a integral part of the peace process in that country.

Latin America is also a leader for peace tourism. This will be considered in October at the Latin American Congress of Tourist Cities, entitled “Constructing Peace through Tourism.” In this regard we carry stories this month about tourism in Puebla, Mexico, and the development of tourism as a contribution to the peace process in post-conflict zones of Colombia.

The World Social Forums, which began in Brazil, can be considered as the most important global gatherings for a culture of peace. CPNN has previously carried stories about the World Social Forum Belem (2009) in Brazil, as well as the last Forums in Canada and Tunisia. Next year the forum returns to Brazil where preparations are being made in Salvador de Bahia.

Finally, I want to mention that progress is being made in Mexico and Brazil towards networks of city peace commissions. A number of commissions were established in Brazil during the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and we carry an update on their activities, including the most city peace recent commission in Santos, which is now giving consideration to include the culture of peace activities by the youth of that city such as those previously described in CPNN. As I write this, a network of city peace commissions is being established in Pernambuco, Brazil, and the Mexican Association of Mayors is considering a proposal for city peace commissions at their annual meeting.

I would like to thank my friends in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia for inviting me to visit and take part in their development of a culture of peace, and I am sure we will hear much more from them in the future.

In recent months, we have been following the United Nations initiative for a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

On July 7, the treaty was adopted by a majority of the UN General Assermbly – 122 countries.

Although the treaty is an “important victory for our shared humanity“, its effectiveness is limited, because the UN delegations from all of the countries with nuclear weapons as well as most of their allies boycotted the conference and many of them announced their opposition.

On the other hand, last month we saw that with regard to nuclear weapons, cities do not agree with their national governments. The United States Conference of Mayors demanded that the US participate in good faith in the negotiations and they urged mayors to join Mayors for Peace, the global organization opposed to nuclear weapons with a goal of 10,000 member cities by 2020. Mayors for Peace represent many of the largest cities, not only in the United States, but also in the other countries with nuclear weapons.

And this month we see that, in this matter, parliaments do not agree with their governmants either. The Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, which includes many of the nuclear countries and their allies, adopted a Declaration which “Calls on all countries to participate in UN negotiations on nuclear disarmament and to pursue the adoption of nuclear risk reduction, transparency and disarmament measures.” The European Parliament took a similar position at the beginning of the UN negotiations last year.

We are still far from nuclear disarmament as a result of this treaty, but as Richard Falk reminds us, we have historical precedents to be optimistic: “to convert this text into an effective regime of control will require the kind of deep commitments, sacrifices, movements, and struggles that eventually achieved the impossible, ending such entrenched evils as slavery, apartheid, and colonialism.”

A key role can be played by parliamentarians. An Action Plan, which has been developed by Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament in consultation with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, includes 14 key nuclear disarmament actions that can be taken by parliamentarians. Similar actions are proposed by the organization “UNFOLD ZERO” to make the nuclear ban treaty effective.

Previously we have seen how cities are promoting a culture of peace above and beyond the policy of their national governments. This month we see the similar potential of parliaments.

In the Middle East, despite the lack of movement towards peace by the governments of Israel and Palestine and their neighbors, the parliamentarians from those countries have succeeded in working together for an agreement to share water resources in the region. This has been supported by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

In Africa, a recent meeting of the Pan-African Parliament continued working on the concept of a Pan-African passport as well as initiatives to open the borders of the countries of Africa to trade and travel by all Africans. A Pan-African union could be based on a culture of peace rather than culture of war if based on the tradition of peace-building by Nelson Mandela.

And in Mexico, the Senate-sponsored Seminar on Violence and Peace: Diagnoses and Proposals for Mexico includes several sessions on the culture of peace. One concerns the United Nations Program of Action for a Culture of Peace and another concerns Culture of Peace and Environment.

Finally, there is increasing demand for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.

For more than twenty years the European Parliament has been pushing for a UN Parliamentary Assembly, and last month in its annual recommendations to the United Nations, it repeated the request.

Last November, an international conference of around 300 chief justices, judges, legal experts and ambassadors from nearly 60 countries predominantly from the Global South adopted a declaration that called on heads of states and governments to convene a world summit “to consider the present grave global problems facing mankind” and “to work for establishment of a World Parliament to enact enforceable World Laws, a World Government, and a World Court of Justice.”

This echoes a declaration made last year by the Pan-African Parliament that called on the African Union and Africa’s governments to support the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly “to strengthen democratic participation and representation of the world’s citizens in the UN” and to “contribute to strengthening democratic oversight over UN operations, particularly in Africa.”

The potential and problems for establishing a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly is explored in a recent meeting that included representatives from regional parliaments, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly and academia.

In sum, when we listen to cities and parliaments, we realize that there is an alternative to the nation-state and its culture of war. A better world is possible!

It has been a busy month at CPNN, reflecting progress in many areas of the culture of peace (37 articles in English, 8 of which also in Spanish and 5 of which are in French).

Four of the articles follow the ongoing development of negotiations at the United Nations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. As the July 7 deadline for the vote approaches, the work has been intense by Member States and Non-Governmental Organizations. Delegations from the Member States concluded their first read-through of the entire draft on June 21, and a revision on June 27.

The nuclear states and their allies are boycotting the negotiations; hence the treaty will not affect them directly. However, there are a number of proposed elements of the draft treaty which could impact them indirectly, although agreement on these proposals is proving to be difficult to achieve. They include proposals to prohibit the transit of, threat to use, and financing of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear-armed states currently spend US$100 billion collectively on nuclear weapons programs annually and the corporations manufacturing the weapons and their delivery systems are a major driver of the nuclear arms race. If all of the States joining the nuclear ban treaty divested their public funds from these corporations, and disallowed banks from investing in them, it could radically change the economics of the nuclear arms industry. And it would give support to efforts of parliamentarians and civil society in the nuclear arms States to cut the exorbitant nuclear arms budgets and re-direct these funds to health, education, jobs, environment and sustainable development.

We see an example of this strategy in the decisions this month by the U.S. Conference of Mayors at their annual meeting. They supported two resolutions submitted by member cities urging Congress to move funding out of the military and into human and environmental needs rather than the reverse. And they adopted a new resolution which concludes as follows:

“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that The United States Conference of Mayors urges all U.S. mayors to join Mayors for Peace in order to help reach the goal of 10,000 member cities by 2020, and encourages U.S. member cities to get actively involved by establishing sister city relationships with cities in other nuclear-armed nations, and by taking action at the municipal level to raise public awareness of the humanitarian and financial costs of nuclear weapons, the growing dangers of wars among nuclear-armed states, and the urgent need for good faith U.S. participation in negotiating the global elimination of nuclear weapons.”

Meanwhile, four of this month’s articles follow the progress towards peace in Colombia. On June 26, the United Nations announced that the FARC has completed the process of turning in their weapons as called for in last year’s peace agreement. And on June 6, the Colombian Government and the other guerilla group, the ELN, announced that they reached a series of agreements, including international financing to push forward the peace process. Although violence continues in many regions of the country, there are important grass-roots initiatives to promote non-violence, including “Community Radios for Peace and Coexistence”, launched in mid-2016, with support from the European Union. This supports 400 of the 627 community radio stations in Colombia to generate a culture of peace in the most remote rural areas, those most affected by the armed conflict.

Seven articles this month reflect the ongoing progress in peace education around the world, including initiatives in the Dominican Republic, Northern Ireland, Ecuador, Mexico and Cote D’Ivoire, as well as plans for the annual meetings of the International Institute for Peace Education and the Asia-Pacific Peace Research Association.

Also three articles inform us about the continuing development of journalism and writing for a culture of peace in Africa. A regional seminar on “ The role of journalists and the media in preventing violence” was sponsored by the United Nations in Dakar, Senegal. Also in Dakar, the members of the Writers’ Union of Africa, Asia and Latin America refirmed their commitment to promote a culture of peace. “Children, adolescents and adults who read us need to read positive things that can boost their creativity, and it is in peace that we can create,” said the Special Advisor to the President of the Republic, Macky Sall. And in Uganda, traditional leaders who have been active in the peace and reconciliation efforts say that peace journalism as a tool has been “useful in mobilising people and reaching out to rebels”.

Finally, in a good surprise for the peace movements around the world, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British opposition Labour Party and former chairman of the Stop the War Coalition, led his party to a remarkable advance in the recent General Elections. It was all the more remarkable because the attacks by his opponents and much of the mainstream media against his anti-war positions seem to have backfired, and to have helped rather than hurt him and his party in the elections. It seems that British voters want peace instead of continuing their involvement with the various wars and military threats headed up by the United States and NATO.

Since women’s equality is an essential part of the culture of peace, we must appreciate the great mobilization around Women’s Day, March 8, and the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

On International Women’s Day, women around the world celebrated by marching in more than 50 countries. The photo essay republished by CPNN includes images from Ukraine, Bangladesh, Australia, Nigeria, Georgia, Palestine, Spain and USA. Especially impressive was the mobilization in the United States where millions of women took part in a “Day without a woman.” It was organized by means of social media in the same way as the women’s demonstrations January 21 in which over 2 million protested the policies of the newly inaugurated President Trump. We have not found any way to measure how many women participated by staying away from work or to what extent their refusal to shop led to decreased sales on March 8, but we provide links to many descriptions of the day in the mass media.

Women activists were featured by various international NGOs in March. The Coalition for the International Criminal Court presented women leading the fight for global justice from Colombia, Mexico, Philippines, Lebanon, Ukraine and Mali. Amnesty International celebrated the US mobilization of “Day without a woman” by publishing “eight women who are battling on the frontline to claim their rights, refusing to wait in the face of injustice.” They came from South Africa, Canada, El Salvador, China, Afghanistan, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Iran. And Nonviolent Peaceforce presented a tribute to Joan Bernstein: “Joan was the heart and soul of the U.S. and Canadian chapters of NP for many years. She helped organize the founding conference for NP, and later the annual conference of North American chapters. She provided us with vision, inspiration, resources, skills — and the endless belief that we could rise to any challenge.”

Women activists from around the world gathered at the United Nations for this year’s meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The meetings featured :

– The priority theme: Women’s economic empowerment in the changing world of work
– Review theme: Challenges and achievements in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls (agreed conclusions of the fifty-eighth session)
– Emerging issue/Focus area:The empowerment of indigenous women

They received a report from the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel (HLP) on Women’s Economic Empowerment which identified seven main drivers of transformation:

1) tackling adverse norms and promoting positive role models;
2) ensuring legal protections and reforming discriminatory laws and regulations;
3) recognizing, reducing and redistributing unpaid work and care;
4) building digital, financial and property assets;
5) changing corporate culture and practice,
6) improving public sector practices in employment and procurement; and
7) strengthening visibility, collective voice and representation.

Many of these points were addressed in the opening statement of the CSW by the Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

In one of the many side events of the CSW, the International Institute on Peace Education and the Pasos Peace Museum urged women to use important existing UN resolutions as tools for achieving equality:

– UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security
– the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
– the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Several speakers and reports pointed to Iceland as an example of a country where women’s equality is being achieved. To mark International Women’s Day, the government of Iceland announced that they will become the first country in the world to require companies to prove they pay all employees the same, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality and nationality.

We conclude with the words of Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, in her speech to the CSW: “The much-needed positive developments are not happening fast enough. . . . let us agree to constructive impatience.”

It is evident that national elections are not sufficient to guarantee democracy. As we have seen many times over the past year, the people have had to take to the streets in order to resist government corruption and/or oppressive measures.

Most recently, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Barcelona to demand that the Spanish government accept more refugees. The demonstration was supported by the new progressive mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau.

And in the Philippines capital of Manila, at least 10,000 people joined the “Walk for Life” march on February 18, to protest against President Duterte’s brutal crackdown against drug dealers and users. It marked the largest show of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church against the brutality of the government’s anti-drugs campaign, which has seen more than 7,600 mostly poor people killed in the past seven months without any judicial procedure.

In the major cities of Romania last month hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets against a decree that would have decriminalised abuses of public office. The demonstrations forced the government to withdraw the controversial law, but the protests are continuing with the demand that the government resign.

Following the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January, millions of people joined in the Women’s Marches in the major cities of the United States, to fight for a new era of civil rights. As CPNN has documented, this is part of the ample evidence that the post-election fightback to defend peace and human rights is underway.

Over 40,000 people participated in October in human chains throughout Honduras, including in the capital, Tegucigalpa and about 300 other cities, protesting against violence and homicide rates. High-ranking politicians and business tycoons have been implicated in a wave of violence against environmental activists, with at least 123 land and environmental activists murdered since a military coup d’état forced out the populist president Manuel Zelaya.

An estimated 20,000 women and men marched in Jerusalem for the final rally of the Women Wage Peace “March of Hope” in October. The March of Hope culminated in a historic rally outside the Prime Minister’s Residence, demanding a political solution to the conflict. Unfortunately, at this point, the conflict seems to be getting worse rather than better.

Tens of thousands of people marched on October 5 in at least 16 cities in Colombia demanding the government and the opposition to reach a peace agreement with the FARC, after the rejection of the agreement with the guerrillas in a plebiscite. In November the Congress of Colombia approved the agreement, but congressional opponents of the deal had walked out of the chamber in protest before the vote took place.

Also in October, massive mobilizations by women in Poland forced the government to reject a proposed amendment that would have added more restrictions to their already restrictive abortion laws.

Other massive mobilizations against government corruption took place last year in South Korea, Brazil and Malaysia. In South Korea, the President was ultimately impeached, although observers consider that the problem of government corruption persists. In Brazil, the problems continue with less than 15% of Brazilians approving the present government. And in Malaysia, despite the accusations of corruption, prime minister, Najib Razak remains “untouchable.”

So far some government changes can be seen in Romania, Poland and South Korea and the Colombian peace accord was officially endorsed, while time will tell if public pressure can lead to changes in the other situations described above.

In recent years the United States, Europe and their allies have increasingly addressed world problems without involving the UN, for example in the 2008 financial crisis, and their 2012 meeting in Washington against nuclear proliferation. In the past few days, the new US President has prepared an executive order that would radically reduce American funding of the U.N. And last month the lack of support was clearly evident in the negative votes of these countires concerning the resolutions for the human right to peace, the annual resolution for the culture of peace and the decision to hold a high level meeting on nuclear disarmament.

The resolution on the human right to peace was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 19 by 131 in favour, 34 against, with 19 abstentions. Among the negative votes were Australia, Canada, United States, Israel, South Korea, United Kingdom, and members of the European Union including France, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Spain, and many Eastern European countries. Similarly on December 23, the General Assembly adopted by consensus its annual resolution on the culture of peace that was presented by 102 sponsoring countries. None of the above countries were among the sponsors, except for Belgium, Netherlands and South Korea.

The resolution on nuclear disarmament was supported by 140 countries, but once again,among the 30 countries voting against were Australia, Canada, United States, Israel, South Korea, United Kingdom and members of the European Union including France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Spain and many Eastern European countries. While China voted for the resolution, Russia voted against.

When the culture of peace was initiated by UNESCO, it was not supported by all of the socialist countries, but that has evolved in recent years. This year the culture of peace resolution was sponsored by, among others, China, Cuba, Georgia, Russian Federation, Viet Nam and the former Soviet countries of Central Asia. In addition, the Cuban ambassador to the UN introduced the resolution for the right to peace, and the Chinese ambassador to the UN recently stated that “The United Nations should advocate a culture of peace.”

Meanwhile, despite opposition, UN continues to work for peace.

One of the first actions of the newly elected UN Secretary-General António Guterres was to chair a dialogue between the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot leaders aimed at reunifying the island that has been split in two since 1983.

The peace accords in Colombia, perhaps the most important peace agreement last year, was greatly aided by the United Nations, and the UN continues be active in its maintenance.

Tourism can make a major contribution to the culture of peace as we have shown in a previous CPNN bulletin on Peace through Tourism. Hence it is important that the United Nations has designated this year, 2017, as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development.

Another major contribution to culture of peace is the free flow of information. Here, too the UN is active. Alfred de Zayas, the UN Independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order recently welcomed the amnesty to American whistleblower Chelsea Manning He went on to call for amnesty to other whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, the Luxleakers Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet [See CPNN article] and the Israeli tax corruption whistleblower Rafi Rotem.

There are some initiatives that the United States, Europe and their allies continue to support at United Nations where they need support of all countries; for example, they voted for the recent Security Council resolution to guard against the risk that non-State actors may acquire or use nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

The UN continues to show it is our best hope for peace. We showed it’s potential to promote peace during the years of the tenure of Director-General Mayor at UNESCO in the last decade of the 20th Century. Imagine what the UN could do for peace in the future if it were being run by the people, by the cities of the world, for example!