A CALL FOR A MEDITERRANEAN PEACE CONFERENCE FROM MEDITERRANEAN CIVIL SOCIETY ON JANUARY 1, INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE

1 January 2023, 9:00

Press Release

A CALL FOR A MEDITERRANEAN PEACE CONFERENCE FROM MEDITERRANEAN
CIVIL SOCIETY ON JANUARY 1, INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE

Rome, January 1st, 2023 – “We ask for a commitment from your governments to start the process to declare the Mediterranean a sea of peace, which unites peoples and their cultures. A nuclear-free, demilitarized, and neutral Mediterranean”, this is the request contained in the open letter sent on New Year’s day, 2023, the International Day of Peace, to the governments of the countries that surround the Mediterranean. The letter was signed by the “Convention for the rights in the Mediterranean Sea” in Palermo last March by 97 personalities and associations. As the letter recalls: “Wars are a holocaust of human and non-human lives, a waste of public goods and resources, an aggravation of environmental conditions. The presence of nuclear power plants is a danger.” And as the Convention argues: “War is the outcome of a system obsessed with economic growth that drives competition and the hoarding of resources and markets. […] The companies involved in the arms production market are getting rich by subtracting resources from the civilian economy. The war economy becomes the continuation of the market economy.” The Convention goes on to conclude: “To make Peace win, it is necessary to leverage the cultural resources, the democratic ethos, and the desire for justice that animate people and that persist even when they are oppressed.” Because “peace must be preserved through negotiations, not by seeking impossible absolute victories”. Almost all Mediterranean countries are currently involved in armed conflicts or close to being so. These conflicts, also fuelled by external interference, make the Mediterranean the area in the world with the highest number of ongoing wars.

Attached
The text of the letter
The text of the Convention

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