CITIZEN DIPLOMACY AND THE FORGING OF WORLD PEACE

By Josep Mayoral Antigas Reprint | | Print |

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GRANOLLERS, Apr 21 2010 (IPS) - All actors are necessary in the building of peace, and all must develop their particular roles. At the municipal level we are convinced that local governments, which are closest to the citizens, have a key role to play in bringing about peace and understanding among different cultures.

How do we work for peace at the municipal level? By promoting coexistence, respect for difference, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts within our own cities, while being fully committed to foreign action. Building peace at the local level means fomenting social cohesion, promoting civic values, and preventing conflicts, and at the same time working together with other cities on the formulation of a strategy for foreign relations that is in keeping with municipal policies. All of this depends on the indispensable participation of the citizenry and the articulation of policy with civil society, because the city is necessarily a collective project.

In a global world we need to think and act locally and globally at the same time. From the city level we are working to find solutions to fundamental global problems, like migration, climate change, and environmental sustainability. Such global problems manifest themselves at the local level, where local governments have addressed them, searching for creative and innovative solutions on a case-by-case basis, tailored to a range of situations.

Some of these solutions by their very nature are to be implemented by local governments, which are able to act in particular capacities in building peace whether at the city level or the international level, completing the action of other agents. Cities have the flexibility to adopt better and faster to each circumstance, because each city is different and capable of developing its own solutions. They can operate at the capillary level, allowing them to reach areas that other organisations simply cannot. And cities can operate in collaboration with one another to form regional or state policies.

An additional, essential feature is citizens’ ability to participate through their various networks, and their ability to personalise policies for cooperation to bring them closer to home and strengthen them by acting in tandem with others. The very closeness of local government to the people is another advantage, as its policies grow out of direct contact with the people in order to resolve problems that they make known. The future must base itself on this closeness. It is at this local level, and the operation of local governments, that statistics are humanised and given a human face.

Local governments’ ability to respond, together with their accumulated experience, places them in an optimum position to work with other cities and facilitates the exchange of experiences and good practices and the deepening of understanding of other realities. For this reason it is necessary that we begin to move in this direction in our search for solutions to common problems. We must begin to work together, emphasising the role of cities and setting up mechanisms to guarantee the participation of the local world in international decision-making.

In this context, municipal diplomacy offers cities and citizens the possibility of participating in a new way in international relations and opens up a space to work, together with state governments, international organisations, and civil society in the construction of peace.

One example of such cooperation is Mayors for Peace, one of the largest city-oriented organisations. Led by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it has 3600 member cities from 135 countries and regions around the world. It is an alliance of cities working for peace and disarmament at two levels: through collaboration with governments and international organisations to achieve global commitments to make the world more peaceful and just (moving closer to the Millennium Development Goals or promoting disarmament in all its forms) and working inside our own cities on coexistence, peaceful conflict resolution, and education for peace.

This May at the United Nations in New York a conference will be held on revising the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Mayors for Peace will be an active participant, representing many millions of citizens who have expressed their desire to live in a world with more justice, solidarity, and peace. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Josep Mayoral Antigas is mayor of Granollers, Spain, and vice president of Mayors for Peace.