French organisations prepare the World March for Peace

On Tuesday, on the barge "La Balle au bond", in the heart of Paris, the first meeting took place among endorsers and promoters in France of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence.

The meeting was attended by Danielle Mitterrand and other national personalities and organisations from Abolition 2000, Citizens Action for Nuclear Disarmament, Colibri, Gandhi International and thirty other local organisations.

Mrs Mitterand said that violence is a natural phenomenon but the human being is born with intelligence, endowed with reason and is therefore capable of organising actions like this March.

Alain Ducq, spokesperson for the World March in France, underlined the urgent need, in this moment of crisis and nuclear weapons' proliferation, to produce a leap in global and planetary consciousness in favour of peace, but that it would be naive to believe that peace could be built without the methodology of active nonviolence.  The historical moment is of convergence of diversity and the great number of personalities and organisations of such a broad scope that have endorsed it constitutes a perfect illustration of this: the organisation of Nobel Peace Prize winners, Mayors for Peace, Amnesty International in various countries, various heads of states, artists such as Daniel Barenboim, the singer Juanes and in France; Christiane Taubira, Stéphane Hessel, Susan George, Graeme Allwright...

Ducq equally insisted on the importance of concrete daily action giving the floor to the organisations and associations to express their initiatives in the frame of the March.  Among the most significant: a campaign to create a convention for the elimination of nuclear weapons, the march of European Suburbs, courses on nonviolence included in school curricula, artistic and cultural events.  At the end of the gathering, the singer Graeme Allwright sang his non-violent version of La Marseillaise to those present.

To conclude, Alain Ducq - pictured together with Danielle Mitterand - reminded everyone of the general objective beyond the March: the construction of a Universal Human Nation.