Editorial August 3, 2020

Heading to the third edition: Ciudad de México

The third edition of the World Forum on Cities and Territories of Peace aims to give continuity to the previous forums by providing important innovations.

One of the objectives of the Government of Ciudad de México, led by Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, is to contribute to the enjoyment of fundamental rights, access to justice and a life of dignity and peace for the people who live and move in the city. In this sense, the spirit that guides and from which we seek to add to the meeting is to transform cities into inclusive, safe, sustainable, plural and prosperous places.

Walking towards this vision, considering the impact of the global pandemic, and conjugating the collective reflection with the members of the IOC, it has been proposed that the third edition shifts its focus and reflects on the axis of Cities and Territories of Peace. That is why the discursive narrative of this meeting will revolve around the positive work of peace building, without leaving aside the importance of naming the violence and the educational processes from which strategies of community resilience are generated that contribute to the creation of other possible scenarios: the cities and territories of peace.

For this 3rd World Forum on Cities and Territories of Peace, it is significant to take up again the positive conception of this concept that the Spanish Association for Peace Research (AIPAZ) proposes from a global and multidisciplinary perspective:

“the positive conception of peace is to be understood not only as the absence of warlike conflicts, but also as the presence of social justice, sustainable development, the democratic exercise of citizenship, fulfilment of human rights within and between states and, therefore, opposed to any type of violence”. (AIPAZ, 2020).

Hosting this Forum in Ciudad de México is therefore in line with the priorities of the Programme for Government of the City 2019-2024 and represents an opportunity both to structure dialogue and cooperation between public, social and private actors in the construction of a culture of coexistence and peace, and to strengthen public policy on human rights.

At the same time, hosting the Forum in Ciudad de México will allow the event to be projected to the reality of Latin American countries, where the gaps between wealth and poverty coexist with social tensions and interpersonal, structural and cultural violence of various kinds.

It will also be an objective of this third edition to consolidate the roadmap of the living process that goes beyond world events, fostering initiatives of: