High school students meet Hiroshima mayor before visit to Vienna for first Preparatory Committee for 2020 NPT Review Conference
Apr. 22, 2017
by Kyosuke Mizukawa, Staff Writer
Mayors for Peace will send eight high school students to Vienna, Austria, timing their visit to coincide with the first Preparatory Committee for Review Conference of the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NTP), which will open in the city on May 2. On April 21, six of the students from Hiroshima Prefecture visited Hiroshima City Hall to meet Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui, who serves as president of Mayors for Peace.
Two students have been chosen from each of four schools: Hiroshima Jogakuin High School and Shudo High School, both located in the city of Hiroshima; Eishin Gakuen, located in Fukuyama, in the eastern part of the prefecture; and Okinawa Shogaku High School, in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture. The students are members of the “Nuclear Abolition Now! Signature Drive by Junior and Senior High School Students,” a group calling for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. During their stay in Vienna, between May 2 and 9, they will give presentations on the damage caused by the atomic bombing and on their peace activities at a forum organized by Mayors for Peace. They will also exchange views with other young people.
The group of students that visited City Hall delivered 65,213 signatures they have collected to Mr. Matsui, and they each expressed their determination to the mayor. Hanane Okubo, 17, a third-year student at Hiroshima Jogakuin High School, said, “I will act responsibly as a representative of people who are calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.”
The eight students have been appointed as Youth Communicators for a World without Nuclear Weapons by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The first group of high school students was sent to a meeting organized by Mayors for Peace in connection with the NPT conferences in 2014, and this is the third such group.
(Originally published on April 22, 2017)
Mayors for Peace will send eight high school students to Vienna, Austria, timing their visit to coincide with the first Preparatory Committee for Review Conference of the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NTP), which will open in the city on May 2. On April 21, six of the students from Hiroshima Prefecture visited Hiroshima City Hall to meet Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui, who serves as president of Mayors for Peace.
Two students have been chosen from each of four schools: Hiroshima Jogakuin High School and Shudo High School, both located in the city of Hiroshima; Eishin Gakuen, located in Fukuyama, in the eastern part of the prefecture; and Okinawa Shogaku High School, in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture. The students are members of the “Nuclear Abolition Now! Signature Drive by Junior and Senior High School Students,” a group calling for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. During their stay in Vienna, between May 2 and 9, they will give presentations on the damage caused by the atomic bombing and on their peace activities at a forum organized by Mayors for Peace. They will also exchange views with other young people.
The group of students that visited City Hall delivered 65,213 signatures they have collected to Mr. Matsui, and they each expressed their determination to the mayor. Hanane Okubo, 17, a third-year student at Hiroshima Jogakuin High School, said, “I will act responsibly as a representative of people who are calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.”
The eight students have been appointed as Youth Communicators for a World without Nuclear Weapons by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The first group of high school students was sent to a meeting organized by Mayors for Peace in connection with the NPT conferences in 2014, and this is the third such group.
(Originally published on April 22, 2017)
