Nobel laureates to join peace march

Wende Jowsey with son Aden at the Rainbow Warrior mural on Marsden Wharf. Photo / Richard Robinson

Up to 200 world leaders and Nobel Peace Prize laureates will make a pilgrimage in September to peace monuments around Auckland which many Aucklanders have never heard of.

The group will also visit the Chatham Islands and then gather in Wellington for the start of a World Peace March that will travel to 90 countries, ending three months later at the foot of the Andes mountains in South America.

The organisers, Madrid-based World Without Wars, chose New Zealand as the starting point because of the country's nuclear-free policy and its position just west of the International Dateline, making it "the first country to see the dawn".

New Zealand co-ordinator Alyn Ware, speaking from Berlin where he is organising a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, said no names for the world leaders' group had been confirmed yet apart from six MPs from Colombia, but he expected at least two Nobel laureates.

"The ones who have endorsed the march so far are Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jose Ramos Horta, the President of Timor Leste," he said.

Mr Ware, who originally trained as a kindergarten teacher in Hamilton, is the Wellington-based global co-ordinator of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, a group of 700 MPs from more than 70 countries.

He works closely with another group called Mayors for Peace, grouping 2926 mayors in 134 countries led by the Mayor of Hiroshima in Japan, Tadatoshi Akiba.

"Mayor Akiba wants to come. If he doesn't, he'll have some of the other mayors come," Mr Ware said.

He said the march was a grassroots movement calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons at a time when new US President Barack Obama has put the issue on the global agenda.

"It's a much more realistic call now that we have the President of the United States putting forward a vision of a nuclear-free world and starting work on it."

Auckland events co-ordinator Wende Jowsey said the international group would help to launch what would become a permanent "Auckland peace walk" for locals and tourists, including a mural at Marsden Wharf where the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior was blown up by French agents in 1985.

Mrs Jowsey, an American who moved here with her Kiwi husband six years ago, said she joined the march team for the sake of her son Aden.

"I have a 10-year-old son who said, 'Why do I need to do my homework, we could blow up the world with nuclear weapons tomorrow, why does it matter?"' she said.

"You can ask any 5-year-old child what happens when there's a war and they can tell you," she said.

"But if you ask an adult how do you work for peace, they look at you blankly ... We want people to understand that they have the opportunity to speak up and make a difference."

A fundraising concert for the march featuring Moana Maniapoto will be held at St Matthew-in-the-City at 7.30pm on Saturday, July 4.

SYMBOLIC WALK

1. Ahi Kaa rock symbolising guardianship of the land, Queen Elizabeth II Square.

2. Rainbow Warrior mural, Marsden Wharf.

3. The Peace Place Pax Christi meeting room, 2F/22 Emily Place.

4. Tiananmen Square memorial plaque, by St Andrew's Church, cnr Symonds St and Alten Rd.

5. Maclaurin Chapel, Auckland University, Princes St.

6. Peace Foundation, 29 Princes St.

7. Albert Park band rotunda, site of "Jumping Sundays" peace rallies in 1960s.

8. Pioneer Women's and Ellen Melville Hall, Freyberg Place.

9. Gateway sculpture, Victoria St steps to Albert Park.

10. Suffragette mural, Khartoum Place steps opposite City Art Gallery.

11. St Matthew-in-the-City, where Auckland was declared a peace city in 2007.

www.worldmarch.co.nz