With the help of Enzo Fazzino, my old colleague who has remained at UNESCO all these years, and with a new generation of activists who have joined in my little Culture of Peace Corporation, I have been able to launch or take part in new projects with the potential to dramatically advance the transition to a culture of peace.

The first project is in the context of the Luanda Biennale for a culture of peace in Africa that was directed by Enzo as his last major event before taking his retirement from UNESCO. The Biennale, that took place in October, 2022, was structured as a virtual event in dialogue with a group of 150 youth from Africa and the diaspora who come to Luanda for a week.

Enzo invited me to address the youth in a video tape and to propose a project that could be developed as an outcome of the biennale. the project I have suggested the development of a CPNN Africa with the following characteristics. 1. Relevance to the culture of peace. 2. Action, not just talk.
3. Multi-language. A CPNN Africa could do the same and could add articles in Arabic and in local African languages as well with translation into English or French, thus privileging an Africa with unity in diversity.
4. Illustrated. CPNN global includes at least one photo or graphic design with each article,
5. Dissemination through other media. The original plan of CPNN, as developed at UNESCO, was to have links to other news media, both print and electronic (radio and television). This was not possible at the time, but perhaps it could be done by a CPNN Africa, enabling it to reach a much greater audience than just the internet.
As you can see, I imagine that a CPNN Africa would be a giant step forward in the Global Movement for a Culture of Peace. It could provide the inspiration for similar initiatives in other regions of the world, and could make an important contribution to a Pan-African culture of peace, which would be an even greater inspiration.

Unfortunately, UNESCO did not support a long-term followup to the Biennale in 2022 and as of 2023 the project is on hold. This is complicated by the fact that Enzo has retired, and Edouard Matoko, responsible at headquarters, is also taking his retirement.

Roberto Mercadillo, shown here, joined the Culture of Peace Corporation in 2014, not long after we met in Rome at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Seville Statement on Violence. At that time, he translated by three books on the culture of peace and arranged for them to be published together by Herder under the title "Cultura de Paz, une utopia posible." From the beginning of our friendship, Robero had dreamed of a new declaration that would extend the previous declarations of Seville in 1986 and the United Nations in 1999. And by 2021, with my help and agreement, as well as that of Federico Mayor, a new declaration was prepared.

The Declaration for the Transition to a Culture of Peace in the XXI Century begins with a long preamble that cites the many previous declarations and UN resolutions that have paved the way to where we are now with the culture of peace. It then proposes specific actions to take at a local level for a culture of peace, and it concludes for proposals for radical changes in the system of global governance at the United Nations, including the establishment of an alternative to the UN Security Council to be run by representatives of mayors instead of nation states, because mayors have no vested interest in the culture of peace, unlike the nation states. Roberto is establishing a website for the Declaration and we are disseminating the Declaration and collecting individual and institutional signatures, much as we did following the Seville Statement now 35 years ago. It is off to a very good start in Latin America thanks to the help of Alicia Cabezudo.

In particlular we tried to get the proposal onto the agenda for the annual Executive Conference of Mayors for Peace on July 7, 2021. We managed to contact five of the 25 cities taking part in the conference with a request to introduce or support the proposal. Lorena spoke with the Mayor of Grigny, France. I wrote to the representative from Granollers, Spain. Roberto spoke with the representative from Mexico City. Herbert Lima, another member of our Corporation spoke with the representative of Santos, Brazil. And I wrote to Jackie Cabasso, the representative from Mayors for Peace in the United States. In addition, my old friend Michel Cibot spoke with his friends in the office of Mayors for Peace in Hiroshima.

Alas, although all of them took part in the video conference, none of them raised the issue.

At the end of 2022, Lorena returned from a meeting of Mayors for Peace in Hiroshima that was addressed by Anwarul Chowdhury, so we sent the proposal to him, asking him to present it to the Mayor of Hiroshima. Unfortunately, his contact with Mayors for Peace retired before Chowdhury could talk with him.

Another project with Lorena was to promote a UNESCO conference for the culture of peace. In May of 2022 we met with a colleague of Anna Maria Majlof of the Social Science department responsible for the culture of peace, and she told us they would be pleased to sponsor a conference, but since there is no budget for it, it would have to be financed and sponsored by a member state. After the election of Lula in Brazil we sent an email to Celso Amorim, Lula's advisor, suggesting such a conference. As of May 2023 we don't have any response from him, but we did have a zoom meeting with Rita Brasil de Brito of the Portuguese National Commission and discussed the proposal with her, suggesting that she involve her friends in the Natcoms of Brazil and Angola.

Another project attempted in 2022 was to use the extensive involvement of Ukrainian and Russian schools in the International Day of Peace as a point of entree for a children's initiative for peace. I first tried through the bureaucracy of UNESCO without success, then through the Association of Retired UNESCO Functionnaires with no success. Then I requested an audience with Mme Azoulay, the Directrice-General of UNESCO, and she had me meet with a young advisor, Roland Husson. Here is the exchange of letters with him. The following is an English version of my initial letter to him which was in French: 1. That the Director-General should contact, directly and confidentially, the National Commissions for UNESCO in Ukraine and Russia, proposing a peace initiative involving UNESCO Associated Schools and schools that have published their events for the International Day of Peace. Natcoms would be assured that any communication from UNESCO to schools would be agreed with them in advance. 2. If the National Commissions respond positively, UNESCO's messages to schools would be simple, asking young schoolchildren to send UNESCO their sincere and apolitical wishes for peace, in the form of creative slogans, cartoons , poems, etc. 3. These desires would then be shared with schools in both countries. Again, this would be settled in advance with Natcoms. In the short term, immediate approval should not be expected since the Natcoms would have to wait for the agreement of their national government. The important thing is to put the idea in their head. When this did not go anywhere in 2023 I tried to contact the Chinese delegation to UNESCO to involve them, but without any immediate response.

In 2024,, along with David Wick and David Hazen, we designed a new version of the Manifesto2000, which we called the Manifesto2025 as described here. With the help of Fred Arment, the director of the International Cities of Peace, we prepared a course Activating a Culture of Peace that you can take for free even if you are not a city of peace. Then, with the technical help of Dane Ramshhaw, we began to develop a means to disseminate it on social media and to develop a website that will publish the media posts as an inspiration to others. We hope that this will develop such a groundswell of support by people around the world that the culture of peace becomes the agenda for the next evolution of human history.