Region

A week has already passed since I left Punta de Vacas. I have arrived in Geneva and am going to leave my bags at home, in the Valais Mountains.
I’d love to sum up this wonderful adventure. The World March already seems like a far-away memory and a chapter has just ended. The experience and facts now belong to the past.

The subject of how to approach this “other world” that’s possible is being debated in Porto Alegre. The capital of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul is celebrating ten years of the WSF and is welcoming 30,000 delegates from different organisations that have come to participate in the opening inaugurated by Lula da Silvia, President of Brazil.

Moroccan human rights activist and peace advocate Zakaria El Hamel was appointed Ambassador for Peace by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) and the Inter religious and International Federation for World Peace (IIFWP).
The Ambassadors for Peace is a global network of leaders from religion, politics and civil society working cooperatively for the sake of world peace.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai, following his trilateral summit with Turkish president Abdullah Gül and Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, confirmed in an announcement to the media that he will ask that the *”Taliban names”* be removed from the UN sanctions list during the summit on Afghanistan being held this week in London.

With 142 member nations already signed on, the new International Renewable Energy Agency is promoting a fast, global transition to clean, safe, and renewable energy. Alice Slater explains why it’s so necessary. “Every 30 minutes, enough of the sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s surface to meet global energy demand for an entire year.”

In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian people free of charge.

Haiti is preparing for a massive relocation of survivors of last week’s earthquake out of the capital Port-au-Prince. Some 400,000 people will be moved to camps outside the city. The relief effort has now abandoned most efforts to find people trapped beneath the rubble to focus on keeping the survivors alive. The US is now leading the effort to repair Haiti’s main port.

The town hall of Fuenlabrada, south of Madrid, is exhibiting thirteen paintings made by students from several local schools. They are inspired by Pablo Picasso’s famous painting that portrays the horrors of war. This initiative is one of the activities developed by ‘World Without Wars and Without Violence’ during the World March for Peace and Nonviolence.

In three languages, Aymara, Quechua, and Spanish, Evo Morales proclaimed that in Tiwanaku, a new ray of hope was born for humanity and a new Bolivian State, after receiving the ceremonial staff of the indigenous peoples, who anointed him as a spiritual guide in the ruins of a thousand-year-old civilization, to mark the beginning of his second presidential term.

Bolivia points the way to emancipation for the world’s indigenous peoples with the consolidation of the process of change and the indigenous leader Evo Morales’ second presidential term. This was affirmed on Wednesday by the Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú, a well known human rights activist and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.