Hiroshima, December 1st 2010 - Mayors for Peace announced today that 104 new member cities have joined during the month of November.  Mayors for Peace now counts 4,402 members in 150 countries and regions. The organization’s 2020 Vision Campaign to protect cities from the scourge of war and weapons of mass destruction also received the unanimous support for its aim to establish a nuclear-weapon-free world by 2020 in the final declaration of the Third World Congress of UCLG,* a gathering over 3,000 city representatives in Mexico City in November.

The rapid growth and support for the 2020 Vision provides increasing leverage to hold a ''Special Disarmament Conference'' in 2011 with the majority of like-minded states, local governments and NGOs who are determined to get negotiations started on the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free world.  On August 6th during the Hiroshima commemoration UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon stated that ''the 2020 Vision is the perfect vision''.  On November 18th, at a Mayors for Peace event at the UCLG World Congress, the Secretary General of OPANAL*, Ambassador Gioconda Ubeda, also expressed support for the 2020 Vision.  Increasingly, local governments are acknowledged as key stakeholders in the future security of cities and humanity.
Currently, most nuclear-armed states (France, Israel, Russia, UK & US) and their allies ignore the annual call of the UN General Assembly for an immediate negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention or a comparable framework of separate agreements.  For cities, nuclear weapons are nothing less than weapons of terror, and the nuclear weapons states and all nations must sit down and start negotiations to establish a nuclear weapons free world.

During its General Meeting in Manchester on November 4th the assembly of mayors leading the Mayors for Peace 2020 Vision Campaign decided therefore to rapidly establish closer co-operation with Associations of Local governments such as the UCLG. Last month the global network of Mayors for Peace signed agreements both with the Brazilian Association of Municipalities (ABM) and the Mexican Association of Local Governments (AALMAC) to ensure broad political support in Brazil and Mexico.  A similar agreements was signed with the Federation of Argentine Municipalities (FAM) in October.
In the agreements the associations of local governments ''openly declare their support for the Mayors for Peace 2020 Vision Campaign to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2020; and calls upon all Mayors in their country to formally join Mayors for Peace”. As concrete manifestation of said support, they ''will encourage local governments from their countries to make symbolic financial contributions to the global campaign in solidarity with the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki''. For the first 25 years mayors for Peace was solely funded by the two Japanese cities which were completely destroyed by an atomic bomb. This year already nearly 200 member cities are making symbolic financial contributions to the campaign.

On December 1st nearly half of the members are from Europe (2,111). Asia has the second largest number of members (1,267).  Mayors for Peace is, however, establishing itself swiftly in the southern hemisphere, particularly Latin America and the Caribbean (413) and Africa (243), regions  which have officially declared themselves Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones. Their fast growth is illustrated by last month’s numbers, with new members in Argentina (1), Brazil (1), Ecuador (1), El Salvador (5), Mexico (32), and Puerto Rico (2) and in Benin (2), Cameroon (2), Ghana (6),  Mozambique (2), Nigeria (1), Senegal (1), and South Africa (1).   Mayors for Peace welcomes the first two members in Mozambique, including Maputo, the 99th capital city amongst its fast-growing membership.
The further growth in Japan last month with 38 new members is due to a new initiative by the Mayors for Peace headquarters based in Hiroshima. A total of 854 Japanese Mayors have now joined Mayors for Peace, adding considerable pressure on the Japanese government to support the call of cities to start negotiations.

Note that the cities of Waitakere and Manukau were incorporated in a merger with Auckland, NZ, while Port Elizabeth in South Africa has merged into Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. Mayor Zanoxolo Wayile from Nelson Mandela Bay was among the 46 registrations gathered at the World Congress of UCLG in Mexico City by the Mayors for Peace delegation, which included Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay and representatives of Biograd na Moru (Croatia), Florence (Italy), Fongo-Tongo (Cameroon), and Zemer (Israel).

With special thanks to our volunteers who made this progress in November possible: Mr. Kafui Attipoe, 2020 Vision Campaigner (Ghana), Mr. Jorge Nunez, 2020 Vision Campaigner, Ms. Abigail Cruz and Mr. Marco Albanes (Mexico), Ms. Cinthia Heanna, 2020 Vision Campaigner (Brazil) and Ms. Aikawa, of Fundacion Sadako (Ecuador).

More information:

List member cities: http://www.mayorsforpeace.org/english/membercity/map.html

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