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| SIH staff with visitors Tadatoshi Akiba, Yasuyuki Yakushiji and Ole Kopreitan. (photo: K.S. Scharffscher) |
Akiba chairs Mayors for Peace, an organisation of nearly 1500 Mayors around the world who have particular concerns about the safety of their citizens. The Mayors’ main issue is the threat of nuclear attack, and they campaign for the global elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020. Ole Danbolt Mjøs had invited Akiba to Tromsoe to meet Herman Kristoffersen – the first Norwegian Mayor to join Mayors for Peace, and to hold a lecture at the Centre for Peace Studies at UiTø. At a joint press conference, Akiba, Kristoffersen and Mjøs announced further cooperation in the effort to have all nuclear arms destroyed in time for the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Klaus Melf, project manager for Medical Peace Work at SIH, welcomes the initiative of Akiba and Kristoffersen. “Nuclear arms pose the biggest threat to global health and survival”, says Melf. “Mayors for Peace revive public attention to the fact that nuclear weapons simply have to be abolished before they abolish us.”
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