Global peace march kicks off

Excitement had been in the air for months.  Six continents, 90 countries, 160 thousand kilometres, and all the steps of those who are about to set off. It starts today,  2 October, and it’s the International Day of Non Violence but it’s also the anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi.  The World March for Peace and Nonviolence is an unprecedented social mobilization which gathers all pacifist initiatives on a world scale.

“A global problem requires a global answer”, explains Giorgio Schultze, European spokesperson of the march, who adds: “With just 10% of what is being spent every year in the world in weapons, we could solve the problem of hunger in the world and with the remaining 90%, we could improve people’s life by investing in health, education, work”.

Why are these people setting off?

The march intends to be a call to re-awaken individual consciences, refusing all kinds of violence, both physical, economic, racial, psychological religious and sexual. An incentive to open a path which still needs to be built.

The aims:

•nuclear disarmament at a global level

•the progressive reduction of conventional weapons

• the signing of non-aggression treaties between countries

•the withdrawal of invading troops from occupied territories

•the renunciation by governments of the use of war as a means to resolve conflicts.

“It is the first march which starts inside each one of us,” explains Schultze “and it involves neighbours, work colleagues, the places we live. The march spreads as an uncontainable vibration and is the expression of a thirst for life which is able to remove that grey mantle of insecurity and loneliness which covers up men’s cities.”