The Levant Initiative for Global Peace, presented before the Italian Senate
Between the 7th and 9th of March 2019, Emil Constantinescu, President of the Scientific Council of the IASLCC, presented the “Levant Initiative for Global Peace” before the Italian Senate. The event was organized in partnership with the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics, headed by Shoshana Bekerman and with the support of Italian Senator Lucio Malan, Deputy Chairman of the ‘Forza Italia’ fraction.
Among the event’s other partners were the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), represented by Garry Jacobs (CEO), and Dr Alberto Zucconi (Co-Chairman), the World Association of NGOs (WANGO), represented by its founding President, Dr Tagledin Hamad, the MERCL Middle East Research Center in New York, represented by Dr Richard Hellman, ‘Journeys for Peace’ Mexico, represented by Sergio Kopliovitch and the British Arab Network, represented by Dr Wafik Moustafa.
The proceedings were opened by a message from the President of Italy, following which President Emil Constantinescu read out a brief message on behalf of the President of the Romanian Senate, Călin Popescu Tăriceanu. According to the latter, “The Romanian Senate has, from the very beginning, supported the ‘Levant Initiative for Global Peace’. [...] Today’s reunion before the Italian Senate, organized with the support of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics, is a landmark on the road of this Initiative, represents another key moment in supporting the importance and the significance of the ‘Levant Initiative for Global Peace’”.
The main goal of this reunion was to promote legislative initiatives in European Union and United Nations member states, aiming to spearhead the implementation of a mandatory curriculum for education covering the culture of peace. The general debate took place in the broader context of promoting the United Nations-authored ‘Sustainable Development Goals’.
The gathering was structured along three major axes: ‘The Need and Impact of Education for the Culture of Peace’; ‘Learning from the History of the Levant to Prevent Future Conflicts’; and ‘Developing a Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and the Promotion of the Sustainable Development Goals’. President Emil Constantinescu co-chaired the panel on ‘Learning from the History of the Levant to Prevent Future Conflicts’. In this debate, he presented a general history of the ‘Levant Initiative for Global Peace’ from its launch in 2011 to present, and delivered a speech underlining the importance of creating an education for the culture of peace and the relevance of focusing on the historical area of the Levant, an area which time and again has offered numerous examples of the need for such an approach across the international educational environment.
Moreover, President Constantinescu highlighted how, “since 2011, the ‘Levant Initiative for Global Peace’ has been presented to the main debate fora worldwide. This occasion marks our second time presenting it to the Italian Senate. This is not by random choice, as the history of Italy spans across millennia, and has historically had a great influence on the history of the world. At the same time, Italy was historically a bridge between the civilizations of the Levant, those of the Far East, and those of Western Civilization”.
The reunion was brought to a close with the adoption of the Rome Declaration on Education for the Culture of Peace and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
