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Greetings of peace and blessing from Nagasaki, Japan. I am happy to inform you that URI was represented at the 7th General Conference of Mayors for Peace. In this conference were the Mayors and Representatives of 134 cities and 26 organisations from 33 countries. The theme of the conference was Nuclear Weapons Abolition is in our Hands! The meeting took place in Nagasaki City from August 7 to 10, 2009. As you know Nagasaki is the second city to be hit by an atomic bomb. On August 9th, 1945 at 11:02 an atomic bomb was dropped over the city of Nagasaki resulting in 74,000 people killed and another 75,000 injured. In the welcoming reception I presented the Certificate of Appreciation and Medal of Peace and Golden Rule to Mayors for Peace and officially introduce URI. I also conveyed to the President of Mayors for Peace the solidarity message of Rev. Charles Gibbs.
In his solidarity message Charles said: " On behalf of the global community of the United Religions Initiative, we extend to you greetings of love, peace and gratitude for your visionary work in service to our Earth community. We express our gratitude for your courageous and visionary effort for the total abolition of nuclear weapons and to create a sustainable, just world for all. We offer our solidarity in this effort, represented by the presence at your conference by URI’s Director for Africa. Also, we stand in solidarity with you and so many others around the world in the 100 day count down for the International Day of Peace. Each year, URI members around the world observe and celebrate the IDP by promoting activities of interfaith cooperation that help create cultures of peace, justice and healing."  During the conference we discussed how we can establish more partnerships to bring into reality the abolition of Nuclear weapons by 2020. We deliberated and adopted a concrete action plan for promoting the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol. During the four days of our meeting I am happy to say that we transcended barriers of culture, creed and national origin and discussed in a spirit of cooperation, trust, and understanding every possible means of achieving the overarching goals of the conference, which is nuclear abolition and world peace. I am also happy to inform you that I was one of the speakers at the plenary session and in my address I conveyed the greetings of URI and the peace work that is being carried out by our CCs throughout the world. I also highlighted the role of the Golden Rule and religions in building peace and bringing healing and reconciliation to this world of ours and our responsibility to make it happen. I also appealed to all the Mayors to proclaim the International Day of Peace proclamation and to celebrate the IDP with us. It was quite a successful conference and I managed to share with many Mayors about URI and gave them the Golden Rule poster, copies of our charter and asked them to use it as one action to promote a culture of peace in their cities.  Background Info about Mayors for Peace On June 24, 1982, at the 2nd UN Special Session on Disarmament held at UN Headquarters in New York, then Mayor Takeshi Araki of Hiroshima proposed a new Program to Promote the Solidarity of Cities toward the Total Abolition of Nuclear Weapons. This proposal offered cities a way to transcend national borders and work together to press for nuclear abolition. Subsequently, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki called on mayors around the world to support this program. The Mayors for Peace, through close cooperation among the cities, strives to raise international public awareness regarding the need to abolish nuclear weapons and contributes to the realisation of genuine and lasting world peace by working to eliminate starvation and poverty, assist refugees fleeing local conflict, support human rights, protect the environment, and solve the other problems that threaten peaceful coexistence within the human family. The Mayors for Peace is composed of cities around the world that have formally expressed support for the program Mayor Araki announced in 1982. As of August 3, 2009, membership stood at 3,047 cities in 134 countries and regions. In March 1990, the Mayors Conference was officially registered as a UN NGO related to the Department of Public Information. In May 1991, it became a Category II NGO in "Special Consultative Status") registered with the Economic and Social Council. May Peace Prevail on Earth
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