Growing number of members Union of Baltic Cities support Mayors for Peace

Introduction
 
The UBC Conference was set up in the aftermath of the Cold War and gathers over 100 cities of Baltic States in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, German, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden. More information can be found on their website www.ubc.net

Today 13 UBC members are also a member of Mayors for Peace: Gdansk (Poland), Kiel (Germany), Klaipeda (Lithuania), Kristiansand (Norway), Malmo and Stockholm (Sweden), Mariehamn (Finland), Riga (Latvia), St-Petersburg (Russia), Stockholm (Sweden), Viljandi (Estonia) and Vilnius (Lithuania). The City Council of Copenhagen (Denmark) voted a resolution last month to join the Mayors for Peace. This will be formalised during a visit of the Mayor of Hiroshima and President of Mayors for Peace to Copenhagen on November 16th 2007.

Pärnu: Hosting City UBC joined Mayors for Peace

The news of the mayor of Pärnu, the hosting city of the UBC conference, deciding to join the network reached us a week before the conference. Of course an encouraging event to have the UBC Conference hosted in a new Mayors for Peace member city.

In the introduction of their statutes the UBC writes "Convinced that strengthening the cooperation between the Baltic Sea Region cities may contribute in a major way to the development of this region and foster peaceful and harmonious relations between the European nations in the spirit of, and in accordance with the provisions of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the founding cities decided to create the Union of the Baltic Cities".

In the 16 years of their existence they were able to create and Union of cities with very active involvement in thirteen commissions. They have Commissions on Business Cooperation, Culture, Education, Energy, Environment, Gender Equality, Health and Social Affairs, Information Society, Sport, Tourism, Transportation, Urban Planning, Youth Issues and a EU Coordinators Network.

The UBC gathers an interesting mix of countries: old and new NATO member with especially the former Soviet states embracing NATO following their traumatic experience with the USSR occupation (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland), and non-NATO members Finland, Sweden and Russia. Except for Germany (287) and Norway (50) membership of Mayors for Peace in these countries is very low.

Observer at UBC Conference

Our flyers and Mayors for Peace registration form on the table with Conference documents were picked up by many participants and many delegates expressed genuine enthusiasm for our presence and message of peace.
 
With our observer status and over 200 participants in the conference it was not easy to atract attention to our work. It was especially difficult to identify the participants as the cards were small and hard to read. Therefore we focussed on arranging meetings with the President of UBC, members of the Executive Board and the Secretary General of the UBC with its secretariat in Gdansk. Of course this was a challenging exercise as these were the people with a very busy agenda.

On the second day this task was helped enormously with the arrival of Mr. Toivo Riima from the Estonian Association of Cities and Municipalities. Toivo has been in Hiroshima twice and seems very much aware of the importance of the issue.

On Saturdaymorning I finally succeeded to have a break-fast meeting with the President of the UBC. Mr. Per Bodker Andersen, Mayor of Kolding (not member of MfP), showed genuine interest to have the 2020 Vision Campaign and Mayors for Peace on the agenda of the next UBC Conference scheduled for 2009 in Kristiansand, Norway. Especially the presence of Mayor Akiba Tadatoshi would be very much appreciated. He invited me to keep in touch through E-mail to prepare for MfP involvement in the next UBC conference. He also suggested to have a message of Mayor Akiba distributed by the UBC secretariat to all UBC members. Of course I also invited the Mayor to join the Mayors for Peace and gave him our literature.


ARC cities

We also had a meeting with Mr. Xosé Antonio Sanchez Bugallo, Mayor of Santiago de Compostella. He will discuss membership of MfP and was very interested to learn about us. The Mayor of Santiago de Compostella is also the President of Conference of Atlantic Arc Cities, an organisation similar to UBC. ARC has members on Atlantic coast in France, Britain, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. Would be good if they could develop an initiative as they have 2 Nuclear Weapon States in their midst. http://www.atlanticcities.eu/

Conclusions

The Baltic region offers important opportunities for Cities Diplomacy, especially because of the rich history, geographical position and diversity of political positions by the member states. The vivid stories on Soviet occupation and the sense of insecurity with its proximity to Russia offered me the insight that we need to focus more on developing Mayors for Peace in Russia. Many present at UBC shared concerns as democratic processes further slip away in Putin's Russia. We should therefore encourage the Executive Member of Russia to join us in Florence to discuss capacity building of MfP in Russia. Finnish cities might be very well placed to co-operate on developing Cities Diplomacy with Russia in the frame-work of the 2020 Vision.

It was worth to be present at the UBC Conference. It will result in increased membership in the region. We need to follow-up on this the next weeks, months and years. We need to prepare for a strong presence at the next Conference in Kristiansand, Norway in 2009. Here I wish to encourage Mayor Akiba to consider travelling to this conference personally where he could be a key-note speaker.

We should have a fact-sheet "Why join Mayors for Peace?" on the website for cities considering joining MfP. This fact-sheet should include benefits for Mayors joining and quotes of a variety of Mayors encouraging other Mayors to join and people to get involved. We might also consider having a cross-party recruitment letter signed by all the members of the Executive of MfP.

Finally I wish to thank the people of the UBC secretariat of Gdansk and the hosting City of Pärnu for the remarkable good job for all organisational aspects.

Mr. Toivo Riima from the Estonian Association of Cities and Municipalities was a great help to get better results during the conference.

Also Mr. Peep Mardiste and Mr. Matthias Luha of Friends of the Earth Estonia who arranged on very short notice a midnight pick-up at the Tallinn airport and a home-stay.