Isabelle Bourgeois

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.

I was standing in the queue at passport control when Rafael de la Rubia took me to one side and said quietly: “We’re hoping to introduce someone to you, the governor of this department, Antonio Navarro, the former leader of the M-19 group who was indirectly involved in the operation that took your father and several other ambassadors hostage…”

The World March for Peace and Nonviolence made a stop in Geneva on Monday. Geneva Mayor, Rémy Pagani, expressed his support for the march and denounced the current global figure of 1.5 trillion dollars in military spending, as well as Switzerland’s own hypocrisy. Dani Horowitz proclaimed “We cannot justify creating employment at the expense of other people’s lives.”

After being received by the Hungarian delegation of the World March for Peace and Non-violence and its representative Balazs Szigeti, the marchers completed a section of the route that – despite the rain – was memorable and full of surprises. Fire jugglers, dancers and choristers wowed the marchers before their arrival at the forecourt of Buda Castle in Budapest.

Invited by the Danish section of the international organisation “Peace Alliance” to a conference on Peace in Copenhagen, representatives of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence acknowledged and supported the creation of a Ministry for Peace such as already exist in Costa Rica, Nepal and the Solomon Islands.

In Stockholm, for the third time on its journey, the delegates of the World March have been welcomed by members of a National Parliament. Per Bolund, member of the Green Party, declared *“by passing through Sweden the World March has given us the real push to work on the theme of peace and nonviolence in our Parliament”*.

A group made up of Estonian Liberal and Green Party MPs, led by Toomas Trapido, welcomed the World March base team to Tallinn. Rafael de la Rubia, spokesperson for the march, presented the Parliament with the March Manifesto, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol and the *Charter for a World without Violence* drafted by Nobel Peace Laureates.

Twenty members of the World March Base Team were received by the Director of the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow to whom Rafael de la Rubia handed the Manifesto for Peace and Nonviolence. The march spokesperson talked about the importance of the Base Team’s presence in Moscow, where he himself founded the association “World without Wars” in 1994.

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.

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.