7) Promotion of the Culture of Peace by Mayors for Peace

Mayors for Peace, for which the mayor of Hiroshima serves as President, is a network to promote the culture of peace in collaboration with cities around the world while sharing in the value of peace.

Mayors for Peace

In June 1982, then-Mayor of Hiroshima, Takeshi Araki, put forth a proposal during the 2nd UN Special Session on Disarmament held at the UN Headquarters in New York. His proposal was for a program that would promote solidarity between cities to work for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. This led to the establishment of Mayors for Peace, a nonpartisan organization, and it was registered as an NGO with the UN Economic and Social Council in 1991. The mayor of Hiroshima serves as its President, and there are 11 Vice Presidents worldwide, including the mayor of Nagasaki.

As of April 1, 2023, Mayors for Peace has grown into an international network of peace cities with 8,247 member cities in 166 countries and regions around the world. Japan has a membership ratio of 99.8% with
1,738 out of 1,741 municipalities joining the network.

As a set of concrete action guidelines subsequent to the 2020 Vision, in July 2021, Mayors for Peace adopted the “Vision for Peaceful Transformation to a Sustainable World”(PX Vision for short), as well as its Action Plan for 2021-2025. In addition to two long-standing objectives, namely, “Realize a world without nuclear weapons” and “Realize safe and resilient cities,” it introduced a third objective: “Promote the culture of peace.”

Based on the PX Vision and Action Plan, Mayors for Peace, together with its member cities, their citizens, and NGOs, strives to realize lasting world peace in order to build cities where citizens act with a strong sense of
solidarity.

A: Realize a world without nuclear weapons
With cities and the citizens who live in them being their targets, and catastrophic consequences on a global scale to be inflicted by their use, nuclear weapons are the greatest threat to the safety and security of citizens’ lives. We will urge global leaders to effect peace-oriented policy change by calling on the UN and national governments, especially the nuclear-armed states and their allies, to take concrete action for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

B: Realize safe and resilient cities
In pursuit of ensuring citizens’ safety and security, we will strive to address and solve a diverse range of issues distinctive to each member’s region that are threatening the coexistence of the human race, such as starvation, poverty, the plight of refugees, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation.

C: Promote the culture of peace
We will seek both to create an environment that urges policymakers to demonstrate decisive leadership to effect peace-oriented policy changes that facilitate the abolition of nuclear weapons, and to establish a civil society in which citizens act with a strong sense of solidarity for the realization of peaceful coexistence between the whole of humanity. To that end, we will cultivate peace consciousness and cause the culture of peace—the culture in which the everyday actions of each member of the public are grounded in thinking about peace—to take root in civil society as the foundation of lasting world peace.

Mayors for Peace Supporter System
In FY 2023, Mayors for Peace will launch the Mayors for Peace Supporter System in order to create an environment to build a consensus in civil society that will urge policymakers to effect policy change by increasing the number of individuals and organizations who support our principles and initiatives.

Targeting young people in particular, we will share information in an accessible and approachable manner via social media on activities that promote the culture of peace, including our own, as well as those practiced by citizens who show their support for peace in their daily lives through art and sporting events, among others. Our goal is to acquire supporters, involve them in sharing and spreading information, and build a positive chain of events for promoting the culture of peace.

1) The Atomic Bombing and the Will of Hiroshima
2) Becoming an International Peace Culture City
3) What is the Culture of Peace?
4) The Significance of Promoting the Culture of Peace
5) Promoting the Culture of Peace is the Role of Cities
6) The Will for Peace Based on the Realities of the Atomic Bombing
Conclusion: Importance of Citizen-Led Initiatives ​

Inquiries regarding this page

Peace Promotion Division, Citizens Affairs Bureau
Tel: 81-82-242-7831/Fax: 81-82-242-7452
E-mail: peace@city.hiroshima.lg.jp