International

In a closed envelope delivered to UN secretary-general with little hope, the Palestinian Authority submitted on September 23rd its demand to the United Nations to recognise Palestine as an independent State, while giving time to the Security Council to consider what it had repeatedly claimed but it will now reject due to the U.S. “veto”:

The US Air Force is standing down its plan to launch a nuclear-capable missile on the United Nations International Day of Peace. It’s a very small step, but it is a step in the right direction. It’s possible that the Air Force planners didn’t know about the International Day of Peace or even that there is such a day.

Mayors for Peace is proud to announce that its membership has surpassed the 5000 mark, making Mayors for Peace not only the fastest growing association of local governments in the world, but also, by far the largest international, direct-membership association of local governments.

Nonviolence is a beautiful theory but it doesn’t work in the real world, critics have long argued. It is—they maintain—passive, weak, utopian, naïve, unpatriotic, marginal, simplistic, and impractical. In spite of these widely-held assumptions, however, people around the planet go on building one nonviolent people-power movement after another.

Message from Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard

There are sufficient indicators to interpret that we have entered a new moment in international matters. What started in Tunisia and Egypt with the “Arab Spring” has extended to numerous countries on different continents: from the Outraged of Spain and Greece, to Chile where students are demanding free and good quality education through massive, non-violent demonstrations.

It is a year now that Silo left us in his physical body, bequeathing us and everyone a valuable message of the way of active non-violence to take mankind into a benign and adventurous yet non-harming future. We give thanks to Silo this day and carry on the good work. We watch as the protagonists of an open future take to the streets.

Thousands of students and pupils in education establishments around the world are preparing themselves for the “runthisway” project, a project getting people running to promote peace and nonviolence. Social movements around the world have sprung up this year and many have chosen non-violent means to achieve their aims. This initiative aims to support this trend.

President Rafael Correa Delgado

Carondelet Palace

Quito, Ecuador

Ecuadorean media minister Alvarado published an open letter to Reporters Without Borders on 9 September in response to the one that its secretary-general, Jean-François Julliard, addressed to President Correa three days before. RWB is posting the minister’s reply on its website. It includes an invitation to international media freedom organizations to take part in a debate.