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Mayors for Peace now has over 7,000 member cities

by Masanori Wada, Staff Writer

On April 1, Mayors for Peace, for which Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui serves as president, announced that the number of member cities in the organization, from 161 countries and regions, has now reached 7,028. A total of 32 cities in five countries, including Iran and the Netherlands, joined the organization on April 1. It has taken two years to reach this milestone since surpassing 6,000 in April 2014.

According to the organization’s secretariat, located in the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation in Naka Ward, 19 cities in Iran newly joined the organization. The cities responded to a request for membership made by the Teheran Peace Museum. In addition, four cities in the Netherlands, one city in France, and one city in Belgium joined as well. From Japan, seven municipalities, including the cities of Akiruno in Tokyo and Naruto in Tokushima Prefecture, joined the organization. With these additional cities, 93 percent of all municipalities in Japan are now members of Mayors for Peace.

Encouraged by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mayors for Peace was founded in 1982 as the World Conference of Mayors for Peace through Inter-City Solidarity. It changed its name to Mayors for Peace in 2001. In 2013, the Japanese name of the organization was altered to “Heiwa Shucho kaigi” to include the heads of all municipalities. The total population in the member cities is about one billion, which amounts to one-seventh of the world’s population of roughly seven billion. Mayors for Peace promotes solidarity and sharing information for the abolition of nuclear weapons as well as the 2020 Vision Campaign, which urges emergency action to eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

The Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation commented, “With the goal of gaining 10,000 member cities for the organization by 2020, we will make efforts to fortify our approach toward the world’s governments and leaders.”

(Originally published on April 2, 2016)

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