UK groups and the local Mayors for Peace chapter welcome the Peace Boat to special events in London

October 3, 2016 [UK and Ireland Chapter]

Report provided by Sean Morris, UK & Ireland Mayors for Peace Chapter Secretary

A special symposium and reception welcoming the Japanese Peace Boat group will take place in London on October 3rd. It will directly follow on from the business meeting of the UK and Ireland Mayors, Provosts and Leaders for Peace Chapter.

Peace Boat is a Japan-based international non-governmental and non-profit organisation that works to promote peace, human rights, equal and sustainable development and respect for the environment. It also seeks to create awareness and action based on effecting positive social and political change in the world. It pursues this through the organisation of global educational programmes, responsible travel, cooperative projects and advocacy activities. These activities are carried out on a partnership basis with other civil society organisations and communities in Japan, Northeast Asia, and around the world. Peace Boat carries out these main activities through a chartered passenger ship that travels the world on peace voyages.

Peace Boat’s 92nd Global Voyage for Peace departed from Japan on 18 August 2016, and return to Japan on 30 November 2016 after visiting 26 ports in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean. This voyage will be host to the 9th “Global Voyage for a Nuclear-Free World: Peace Boat Hibakusha Project”, in which a delegation of hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) travel onboard the Peace Boat to give personal testimony and to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

We are delighted that the Peace Boat will be docking in Tilbury on October 3rd and a special afternoon and early evening event is being organised at the Friends House, Euston Road, London (across the road from London Euston Rail Station). This will allow for a business meeting of the UK and Ireland Mayors, Provosts and Leaders for Peace Chapter in the afternoon. Shortly afterwards a symposium will take place where representatives of the hibakusha, the Peace Boat, Mayors for Peace and other groups will be amongst the speaker list. A small reception will also take place. On October 4th, the Peace Boat delegation are going to a London school for an educational event allowing hibakusha to talk to local schoolchildren.

>Peace Boat and Reception Flyer for the UK and Ireland Mayors for Peace Chapter

>For more information on Peace Boat and the other places the 92nd voyage is docking at, then, please follow this link to their website