City of peace

Written by Antonio Sgobba

Everything started with the death of three children, Johanna, John and Andrew, killed by an IRA fugitive who lost control of his car after being shot by the British police.

It was 1976 and Betty Williams, at the time in her early thirties, was there and saw the scene. That day she became a militant pacifist and started the activity that brought her to be awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. Thirty-five years later, children’s rights are still central to her commitment to the struggle for peace  as she showed at the Italian Unicef  National meeting, that gathered together over three thousand volunteers of the organization in Florence. “There’s no limit to what young people can do and my job now is to teach this to them.” Williams said.

Your City of Peace project is about to start in Scanzano Jonico, in the Basilicata region of southern Italy. What is it about?

It’s a revolutionary project. We have created a model in Basilicata, it will be a place to welcome minors coming from conflict zones, we will take care of their education, without separating them from their families. The first year we’ll be able to take in 25 children and their families: 75 people in total.

Why did you chose a small centre in southern Italy for this project?

Seven years ago I was in Rome for an international meeting of Nobel Peace Prize winners organized by Mikhail Gorbachev. I switched on the TV and saw a protest against the decision of opening a nuclear waste repository in Scanzano Jonico. I immediately decided to join the mobilization. I thought that a place of death could become a place of hope.

Many people say that it’s really difficult to work in Southern Italy. Is it true?

It is a commonplace. For our city we’ll have thousands of volunteers. People, especially youngsters, from Scanzano and from nearby cities, such as Matera and Sant’Arcangelo. Finding people willing to work on our project has never been a problem. We have a lot of volunteers who learn about the project through our website . With all these people we could build the city in a week. Of course, there have been bureaucratic delays, but we wanted to follow the procedures, we didn’t want to risk getting stuck right after the launch of the project.

In the meantime in Italy we’re still discussing about nuclear energy…

The use of nuclear energy is absurd, Italian people shouldn’t allow this. We shouldn’t even think of opening  a power station in a country like Italy. If I lived in one of those areas I would sit there and wouldn’t move anymore, I wouldn’t allow such destruction to be made. The earth belongs to  children, not to governments.