Ten years after the 1st World March[i], the 2nd edition is announced.

The 2nd World March for Peace and Nonviolence (WM2) will start in Madrid on the 2nd of October 2019.  After 159 days circling the planet, it will arrive back at its starting point in the Spanish capital on the 8th of March 2020.  We expect WM2 to pass through more than 100 countries with hundreds of thousands of activities and participants in this planetary mobilisation.

WM2 was announced in the Nonviolence Conference held between the 15th and the 18th of November last year, organised by World without Wars and Violence[ii] in association with PNND[iii], The Peace Culture Foundation[iv], WILPF Spain[v], Nonviolence 2018[vi], Ecologists in Action[vii], Pressenza[viii], the Spanish Peace Research Association[ix] and others.  The conference took place in several parts of Madrid, such as the Congress of Deputies where an International Network of Parliamentarians Supporting the World March was announced.  In the Madrid City Hall, an intense and packed day of 10 panels took place with presentations by more than 30 speakers covering diverse subjects connected to the WM.  Finally in the El Pozo Cultural Centre in Vallecas practical workshops were held.

The fundamental characteristics of both the WM1 and 2 were reviewed in the “Presentation of the 2nd World March for Peace and Nonviolence” and in the workshop on “How to create the conditions for WM2”.

In the years after the 1st WM, the question remained; will there be a WM2?  “For several years now we have been studying this possibility, reaching the conclusion that it is necessary, important and even urgent, given the direction which international events have taken.  What we didn’t know was if the WM2 would reach the level of support achieved by the WM1.”

“This has been why we have been carrying out several tests, from the results of which we have obtained sufficient indications of being able to satisfactorily answer the questions.  We have the conditions for participation, support and collaboration sufficient for an endeavour of this magnitude.  What’s more, we bet that the WM2 will have greater impact than the 1st one.”

What are the characteristics of the WM2?

There will be some changes in the WM2 with respect to the WM1.

  • It will be a march that will start and finish in the same city, Madrid, circling the planet in an east-west direction.
  • The issues highlighted will be expanded from the question of nuclear weapons and wars, they will be proactive and deal with the central problems facing humanity,
  • The idea is to repeat the March every five years. In future editions, the starting and ending city will be different, and,
  • The WM will be a path in which both a social struggle and a personal search are included. Every participant will take the aspects that better resonate with them.

Interested in creating the best conditions for the launch of the WM2 in November 2017, in the workshop in Vallecas, the importance of undertaking “exemplary actions” was underlined.  To that end a review was made of activities characterised as “demonstration effects”, “scalable” and “viral”.  We also saw different kinds of marches (converging, regional, local, etc.) as well as the base teams of such marches and the WM trunk route.

The importance of organising conferences, forums or symposiums was underlined in order to converge with other organisations, fix ideas, actions, learn from experiences and weave a network.  For the creation of human symbols and formation in social activism and nonviolence, a questionnaire was created; the need to create networks and increase the presence of the WM in the virtual world was underscored; the importance of university, city councils and parliamentarians was presented.  Furthermore, several working groups studied the actions proposed by participants to add to World March 2.  The proposal invited every participant to project those activities that are already being carried out in society to a different scale with the strength of the WM.

Timetable

At the beginning of 2018, the first Promotion Teams (PT) of the WM2 will be organised by city on the basis of already existing initiatives.  In countries where several cities are working, a national PT will be organised.  These teams will arise from actions and projects that emerge from the grassroots.  “Everybody takes charge of what they propose.” With this spirit the organisers hope that just as in the WM1, a large number of initiatives will emerge and that thousands of organisations and groups will collaborate and make WM2 their own.  It is recommended to read the book of the 1st World March in which numerous examples of actions and initiatives can be found.  The book is available online here and can be downloaded here.

In July 2018, with the information coming from the Promotion Teams in different countries, all the initiatives will be pieced together and a trunk route and convergent routes for WM2 will be defined.

In November 2018, the worldwide launch of the WM2 will take place with a calendar and central elements already defined.  This launch will take place in the framework of the II World Forum on Urban Violence and Education for Coexistence and Peace[x] that will bring together mayors from more than 300 of the world’s biggest cities together in Madrid.

From November 2018 to October 2019, the WM will be launched by country and city, preferably six months before the WM2 reaches there.

At the beginning of 2019 the participants of the Base Team (BT) whose function will be to participate in the trunk route journey will be defined.

Route

The start of WM2 coincides with the International Day of Nonviolence on the 2nd of October 2019, 10 years after the start of WM1.  It will head for Africa, America North and South, Oceania, Asia and Europe and arrive 159 days later in Madrid on International Women’s Day, the 8th of March, 2020.

Provisional Calendar

EUROPE: Madrid 02/10/2019, Cádiz 06/10/2019

AFRICA: Casablanca 08/10/2019, Dakar 27/10/2019

AMERICA: New York 28/10/2019, San José, Costa Rica 20/11/2019, Bogota 21/11/2019, Santiago de Chile 03/01/2020,

OCEANIA-ASIA: Wellington 04/01/2020, New Delhi 30/01/2020

EUROPE: Moscow 06/02/2020, Madrid 08/03/2020

For more context, World without Wars and Violence invites you to watch the documentary of the 1st World March[xi].

The organisers would like to express their thanks to all those who are already collaborating and making it so that this action gains more strength, meaning and inspiration every day.

[i] World March for Peace and Nonviolence http://www.theworldmarch.org/

[ii] World without Wars and Violence http://www.worldwithoutwars.org/

[iii] PNND – Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. http://archive.pnnd.org/index.html

[iv] Peace Culture Foundation http://www.fund-culturadepaz.org/

[v] WILPF Spain https://wilpf.es/

[vi] Nonviolence 2018 http://noviolencia2018.es/

[vii] Ecologists in Action https://www.ecologistasenaccion.org/

[viii] Pressenza, International Press Agency, https://www.pressenza.com/

[ix] Spanish Peace Research Association, http://www.aipaz.org/content/

[x] I World Forum on Urban Violence and Education for Coexistence and Peace http://www.ciudadesdepaz.com/

[xi] Documentary of the 1st World March https://youtu.be/r_gyzUaHU1M