Rondine, on the road to peace

THE APPEAL 

RONDINE, ON THE WAY TO PEACE

To those who today want to bear witness to the desire for peace, despite uncertainty and disorientation, between anguish and solidarity, we extend the invitation to join the young people, silent daily artisans of peace, who act beyond the intensity of armed conflicts, beyond the importance that the media gives to them, inserting themselves into this spirit, acting with this attitude, strengthening and developing here, in Arezzo, in Tuscany and in Italy a coherent nonviolent culture.

Working at the root of every conflict that poisons life: the construction of the “enemy”. At Rondine we live a daily commitment to dismantle the deception, that is, the belief that an entire population or a person is “the enemy”, and to acquire a new paradigm of approach to existence and therefore to war.

Keeping alive relationships born and consolidated while violence and armed conflicts grow around us is a high, courageous task. Maintaining relationships with those considered “enemies” generates pain, the pain of feelings of guilt or betrayal.

But this effort, this desire to live and go through complexity is the price to pay to keep the horizon of the future open, the need to know how to live together, the action to detoxicate hearts and abandon hatred and revenge on a global level.

Drawing on the words of Pope Francis, “war is madness, in Ukraine a river of blood and tears flows”, we understand that this tragic theater is not a conflict: it is a war. Let us not mystify language. Conflict is a positive word, it is comparison, it is lively dialogue, it is a dimension of existence, it is the encounter between differences that clash, it is unavoidable. Not addressing conflicts instead makes us slide either towards indifference and cynicism, or towards violence and war. War is always an evil. It must be avoided and prevented. With a vigilant personal and collective conscience, and with Politics.

WE INVITE

• To make a simple and ancient gesture, a sign of the will not to be indifferent; concrete demonstration of the willingness to get involved, to sacrifice something of oneself: walking together from Arezzo to Rondine Cittadella della Pace, the place where Liliana Segre, on October 9, 2020, delivered her memory of pain and peace, inviting young people and everyone not to be indifferent.
• To listen to the testimonies of young people who not only in this war, but also in others, commit themselves every day not to give in to the temptation of the enemy’s culture, and work together for reconciliation, the transformation of the conflict and the reconstruction of relations between divided communities in their countries, demonstrating that it is possible to follow nonviolent paths.
• To practice a day of dialogue in an open and protected place, a small village open to the world to express oneself freely and share anguish, hope, convictions and doubts, concrete proposals to identify together possible actions that stop the war, not soften the conscience when armed conflict seems far away, and be a commitment to reconciliation.

TOGETHER WE ASK

• to government leaders to immediately stop the war, which is always a “human folly”;
• to the international community to work to open and support every form of dialogue and negotiation between the parties, the main way to re-establish peace and, always, prevent war, stimulating the imagination in an era in which the power of communication (and, in general, of technology) is completely new;
• that school includes permanent education for peace, not relegating it to moments of international crises: today is a school day!
• to educational and cultural subjects, to citizens, to broaden their gaze to other degenerate conflicts in the world and to the different forms of war, to ask for a relaunch of all necessary negotiations, since the current situation shows that global indifference and the stalemate in the various forms of dialogue are dangerously regressing humanity towards armed conflict.

OUR POSSIBLE STEP…

• To send in written form to the Ambassadors and Governments of the countries involved the request for peace and reconciliation that is raised from Rondine through the voice of students, young Italians and internationals, intending to collaborate and contribute, as much as they can, to the best peaceful resolution of the conflict, to be brought back to dialogues in multilateral forums, without further bloodshed and worsening of potentially irreparable social and political fractures in the heart of the communities involved.
• Establish a permanent group of young people from the schools of the city and province of Arezzo, closely linked to the young people of the World House and the Quarto Anno di Rondine, intended as a garrison of peace, which takes up the baton of Liliana Segre and commits itself to soliciting the conscience of the young people of Arezzo on the issues of war and peace.
• Carry out other concrete actions that will arise from the ideas proposed at the end of this day of sharing and participation. Actions that can be implemented immediately, instead of – or before – choosing the path of military response and the use of force.

 

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The Rondine Cittadella della Pace Association was born in the midst of the Cold War, when the world was divided into blocks by the Berlin Wall and the missiles with nuclear warheads of the Atlantic Alliance and the Warsaw Pact were aimed at each other. Some young people left Arezzo in 1998 to meet their Soviet peers, “the Enemy” for the Western world. Thus was born a relationship of trust that gave rise to a new story.

The World House – International Student Residence, the heart of Rondine, was born following the Russo-Chechen war in 1995, when a small delegation made up of the same young people decided to make those relationships of trust available for a peace action. A secret mediation lasting a few months led to the first ceasefire. At the negotiating table in the Kremlin on May 27, 1995, when asked “why are you here?”, the answer was: “For the young, the weak, the poor who are dying under the bombs.”
It was the unblocking of the negotiation, in its simplicity and its strength. From that action of popular diplomacy the first young Russians and Chechens arrived at Rondine, and from there the International Student House, now World House, began.

Since that day, Rondine chooses and hosts young people from both or more sides of conflicts that have degenerated into various forms of violence and war, and holds firm to this choice: to welcome, with the young, the pain but also the hopes, the strength of the people, thanks to a structured program of creative transformation of conflicts (Rondine Method).

Young people who inherit the failures of their fathers, of politics, who do not give up, who courageously break the enemy’s deception, form a new and strong relationship, think, plan and build the future. Alongside these young people, others from societies not at war have approached over the years and, in particular, from various parts of Italy. The young people of the city and province of Arezzo are the first to be involved in this process of civil growth.