Peace Cities Programme

The Peace Foundation is working with local authorities and community stakeholders to establish cities around Aotearoa-New Zealand as Peace Cities. Such cities commit themselves to the promotion of peace, conflict resolution, inter-ethnic understanding, human rights, positive relationships and the elimination of violence at inter-personal, community, national and international levels.

Peace Cities link a range of activities undertaken by local authorities, community organisations, ethnic groups and religious societies to promote peace. These include commemorative events on international peace days and other relevant days.

The Peace Foundation is also engaging local authorities in the Mayors for Peace programme, which promotes the abolition of nuclear weapons. This complements and extends the campaign in the 1980s for many cities to become Nuclear-Weapon-Free Cities, an initiative which helped make New Zealand a nuclear-weapon-free zone. The 20th anniversary of New Zealand’s nuclear free legislation was on June 2007.

The Peace Cities programme complements and links other local authority initiatives such as Sister Cities, World Health Organisation Safe Communities and Race Relations Days.