Speakers from various countries, including Malta, and others representing major world religions, who took part in a three-day convention in Scicli, Sicily, earlier this month, have called on heads of state and government around the world to commit themselves to include Peace Education as a subject in the curriculum of schools worldwide.
The convention was the 19th which Bruno Ficili, founder and director of the International Association for Peace Education based in Syracuse, organises every year. Prof. Ficili is a tireless promoter of Peace Education and has been nominated 13 times for the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation efforts in various international conflicts in the last two decades, including Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Appropriately enough, the convention, held in the town’s main cinema theatre, was attended by hundreds of secondary school and university students from Scicli and surrounding towns. The concluding session was held in the town hall, where the delegates’ petition to governments around the world was signed and where the mayor, Giovanni Venticinque, presented Prof. Ficili with the Premio Scicli.
The Maltese speaker, Laurence Grech, non-resident ambassador to the Baltic States, pointed out that Peace Education was already part of the Maltese curriculum of Social Studies, which had been introduced by Fr Dionysius Mintoff, OFM, then Education Officer for Religion in state schools and since 1971 director of the John XXIII Peace Lab at Ħal Far.
Addressing the convention, Mr Grech referred to the Peace Lab and its relatively recent role as shelter for asylum-seekers as an example of the solidarity being shown by Malta towards migrants fleeing war, famine and political turmoil in Africa.
He also spoke about Malta’s role in helping foreigners fleeing the Libyan civil war to return to their homelands. The convention was also addressed by, among others, Faustin Twagiramungu, former prime minister of Rwanda, who has been living in exile in Belgium since the genocide which ravaged his country in 1994; Tarek Arafat, nephew of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who is deputy secretary-general of the Palestine Red Crescent Society; and Mordechai Levy, Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See.
At the conclusion of the convention, Prof. Ficili suggested that Mr Arafat, a medical engineer who lives in Cairo, could use his influence to propose a twinning agreement between Bethlehem and Scicli. Mr Arafat said he would take up the idea, which was warmly welcomed by the mayor of Scicli.
Scicli is a Unesco World Heritage site thanks to its many splendid Baroque churches, palaces and other buildings and certainly worth visiting along with other cities in the province of Ragusa.
It is very close to Pozzallo, which is linked to Malta by catamaran.