Mayors for Peace Honored with Award
an article by Carah Ong

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is honoring the Mayors for Peace with the Foundation’s 2004 World Citizenship Award. The Award, which is presented annually for outstanding contributions to strengthening the human family, will be presented in a ceremony on Friday, October 8th, 2004 in the Memorial Hall of the Hiroshima Peace Museum in Hiroshima, Japan. Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima, President of the Mayors for Peace, will accept the award on behalf of the organization.

In August 1945, atomic bombs instantaneously reduced the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to rubble, taking hundreds of thousands of precious lives. Today, nearly sixty years after the war, thousands of citizens still suffer the devastating aftereffects of radiation and unfathomable emotional pain. To prevent any repetition of the A-bomb tragedy, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have continually sought to tell the world about the inhumane cruelty of nuclear weapons and have consistently urged that nuclear weapons be abolished.

The Mayors for Peace was established in 1982 and is composed of mayors in some 619 cities in 109 countries around the world that have formally expressed their support for a program to Promote the Solidarity of Cities Toward the Total Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.

In 2003, the Mayors for Peace launched an Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons. The goal of the campaign is to garner support from mayors around the world, to educate citizens and pressure the nuclear weapons states to begin in 2005 and conclude by 2010 negotiations for a verifiable ban on the complete elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

For more than 20 years, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been committed to advancing initiatives to eliminate the nuclear weapons threat to all life, to fostering the global rule of law, and to building an enduring legacy of peace through education and advocacy. For more information on the Mayors for Peace, please visit their website. For more information on the World Citizenship Award, please visit the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s website.

DISCUSSION

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What would mobilize people against the threat of nuclear weapons?


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MARCHES AND PROTESTS

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I don't know whether marches and protests mobilize people against the threat of nuclear weapons, but whenever I read the comments of Zia Mian, I re-dedicate myself to trying harder to raise awareness which I hope will translate to action.In an article in The News International, August 6,2005, he called attention to the Pakistan Peace Coalition, and the Indian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. "The leaders in both countries must be taught, over and over again, that the people will not allow a nuclear war to be fought. There should never be a word in any other language for hibakusha.

This report was posted on September 22, 2004. The moderator is CPPN Administrator.

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