Region

Four members of the base team of The World March for Peace and Non-Violence were hosted by the Humanist Movement of Kerala on October 14th ,the anniversary of Gandhi’s visit in 1927. The team members attended various functions interacting with post graduate students, youth, socio-political leaders, and the press club.

Base team members did not travel to South Korea in vain. Thanks to their visit to this country known as the “Land of Morning Calm”, this is the first time that foreigners have set foot in the zone marking the border between the two countries, called the “demilitarized zone” or “DMZ”, a buffer zone surrounded by the highest concentration of armed forces in the world.

This Friday, October 16th, marks the celebration World Food Day 2009, started and sponsored by the United Nations. This year’s theme “Achieving food security in times of crises” seeks to highlight the seriousness of the problems facing food supplies in the world, as well as the effects of biofuel production and climate change.

The organization “Circulo Latinoamericano de Estudios Internacionales”, part of Abolition 2000, is pushing for the signing of a letter requesting the withdrawal of all US bases from Latin America. Until now, the signatories are artists, politicians, and professionals from Mexican civil society, but they are looking to extend the initiative to signatories from the entire region.

As Nobel Peace Laureates and Nobel Peace Laureate Organizations will meet on November 10th and 11th in Berlin, Germany, they are preparing the open letter we publish here in order that it can be signed by all individuals and organizations who agree on its content and on the concept that “Violence is a preventable disease”.

The Project involves the planting of trees along a 7000 kilometer east-west extension from Dakar, the capital of Senegal, to Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, to reduce the impact of desertification. Senegal has called upon the international community to support the “Great Green Wall” project that will contribute to environmental protection.

The 20 marchers arrived in New Delhi on October 12 to honour several meetings in various provinces of India. After a long march to New Delhi, where the base team was received by Tara Gandhi Bhattacharji, Ghandi’s grand-daughter, the group split up to go to Bombay, Amritsar, Chennai and Trichur (in the province of Kerala).

From October 8 to 11 the island of Rhodes (Greece) hosted the Seventh Annual Session of the World Public Forum, ‘Dialogue of Civilizations’. The World Center of Humanist Studies gave a talk on the theme of nonviolence as the only way out of the current crisis, presenting the World March for Peace and Nonviolence initiative.

The Nobel Peace prize to a president for rhetoric, with no real achievement, is like a peace prize for a movie to a former vice-president, with no real achievement either. People are touched by a rhetoric everybody has heard, but that it does not meet the criteria Nobel states in his will: understanding among nations, reduction of standing armies, and peace conferences.

Both parties to the Honduras dispute say progress was made during crisis talks. The delegations reportedly reached partial agreement on a proposal submitted by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias. His proposal involves the formation of a government of national unity and elections to be held at the end of next month, as they were planned.