ROME, FEBRUARY 20 – Italy is the first country to sign the appeal launched by Rondine Cittadella della Pace to the 193 UN Member States on the 10th of December, 2018. The Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed the document in a meeting with a delegation from Rondine Cittadella. For 20 years the Rondine organization has worked to reduce the number of armed conflicts in the world, it has also prioritized sharing its own methodology that seeks to creatively transform areas of conflict to know peace.
The Prime Minister has as pledged to subtract a symbolic amount from the Defense budget to be invested in a bursary that trains new peace leaders. “I guarantee my full moral support,” said Conte, promising to revisit the organization soon.
During the signing, Rondine hosted youths from conflict-affected countries in a medieval borough in the province of Arezzo. The youths’ daily cohabitation with people that would be their enemy at home, challenges them to see humans for their worth and prepare them to become tomorrow’s leaders of peace.
The organization confirmed the relaunch of its Leaders for Peace campaign. Although the announcement is largely symbolic, the campaign has shown to produce real results. After only two years since completing her formational coursework at Rondine, Maria Karapetyan has become a true leader for peace as a protagonist in the Armenian Velvet revolution. Today, she contributes to the countries new government as a member of parliament. As a civil rights activist, Karapetyan focused on amplifying the voice of Armenian women in politics and has opened a new era for the small nation. “The velvet revolution is post-modern, fragmented, and inclusive. No one would have predicted this process. As a space that promotes the development of dreams, Rondine allowed me to realize the conditions to cement peace,” she said. Maria Karapetyan is the organizations first concrete example of producing tangible peace.
The organization’s campaign received the warm endorsement from the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella and the strong support by Pope Francis, who extended his invitation to heads of State to sustain the campaign. “The objective is to gradually extinguish conflicts from the planet by establishing a culture of pacified relations. We are proud that it is Italy, the birth country of Rondine’s method, that supports this objective,” said President of Rondine Franco Vaccari.
