Politics

A report prepared by Marco Gandásegui, professor at the University of Panama and researcher associated with the CELA, demonstrates that the United States approved a military budget of 626 billion dollars in October 2009, the highest sum for a country in all of history. Alarming statistics and tendencies for a world that is on the brink of a possible nuclear tragedy.

Concluding the Third Global Forum on Migration, Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, urges governments of the world to improve living conditions and treatment of immigrants. Moon emphasizes that ‘immigrants be treated with more sensitivity in the face of these dramatic events. Protecting and promoting human rights of immigrants is fundamental, regardless of legal status’.

An important press conference with participants such as Alena Gajdusova, First Vice-president of the Senate, Rafael de La Rubia, president of World Without Wars, and Otakar Mika, expert in nuclear arms issues. They all emphasized that it is important for countries to choose to reduce armaments and assign new roles for their armies.

The spokesman for the World March in France, Alain Ducq, went to Abidjan to adjudicate the March’s mission during a conference at an Ivorian university and television station where he invited the President of the Republic, Laurent Gbagbo, to support the *Charter for a World Without Violence*, drafted by Nobel Peace Laureates.

The new conservative-liberal coalition government wants the United States to withdraw all nuclear weapons still deployed in Germany despite the fall of the Berlin Wall, end of the cold war and re-unification twenty years ago.
Observers said that Merkel would take up the issue when she travels to Washington to address the U.S. Congress on November 3.

In Stockholm, for the third time on its journey, the delegates of the World March have been welcomed by members of a National Parliament. Per Bolund, member of the Green Party, declared *“by passing through Sweden the World March has given us the real push to work on the theme of peace and nonviolence in our Parliament”*.

Finnish President Tarja Halonen received a delegation of the World March for Peace and Non-Violence that had recently arrived from Estonia in the official presidential residence in Helsinki. Halonen expressed her public support for the March, saying, “The government of Finland supports the total elimination of nuclear arms”.

As part of its 67th voyage around the world, the Peace Boat will arrive in the port of Manta in Ecuador carrying over 400 passengers and 10 Hibakusha (survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs) who are participants in the “Global Voyage for a Nuclear-Free World – Peace Boat Hibakusha Project.” The program includes a conference on peace constitutions.

From 25 to 31 October, Jamaica will be the seat of the V Ministerial Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean on Agriculture and Rural Life in the Americas. This Summit’s priority will be to encourage a reassessment of agriculture and the rural environment, in the face of development challenges and to favour urban-rural integration for improved development in those countries.

A group made up of Estonian Liberal and Green Party MPs, led by Toomas Trapido, welcomed the World March base team to Tallinn. Rafael de la Rubia, spokesperson for the march, presented the Parliament with the March Manifesto, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol and the *Charter for a World without Violence* drafted by Nobel Peace Laureates.