How did the World Conference of Mayors for Peace get started?
In the 2nd Special Session of UN General Assembly on Disarmament held at UN Headquarters in New York on June 24, 1982, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki appealed to city mayors of all nations to find a path to solidarity between the world’s cities that reached beyond national borders and worked to abolish nuclear weapons. With this appeal, he set up the Conference of Mayors for Peace. World Conferences of the organization are held every four years with the first being held in 1985. In 2001, the World Conference decided to make the organization a membership one and officially shortened its name to Mayors for Peace. The most recent World Conference was held in Hiroshima in 2005 on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing. The next will be in Nagasaki in 2009.
