Preamble

We, the 59 participants of the 6th Hiroshima Junior International Forum, held from August 17th to 20th 2021, collaborated together online from 14 countries around the world. Our aim was to learn about and discuss the abolition of nuclear weapons as well as peacebuilding.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) came into force in January of this year. This will be an integral and essential step towards the abolition of nuclear weapons. However, the division between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states has yet to be overcome. In addition people around the world continue to be displaced by prolonged civil wars, terrorist attacks as well as natural disasters and diseases.

Under such circumstances, we believe that it is our time to take this matter into consideration and together strive for the best solutions. With the strong support from the Hiroshima community, we have learned from experts in this field, shared our knowledge and gained inspiration from each other.

In this Hiroshima Declaration, we have compiled the results of our learning and discussion in this declaration which is a proposal to local and national government leaders, business leaders around the world, as well as an action plan for us, the participants.

<Challenges and Solutions for Abolition of Nuclear Weapons　>

✧ Toward nuclear weapons abolition, we recognize 4 issues/challenges that we must overcome to abolish the Nuclear Abolition:

⮚ People’s low interest in abolition of nuclear weapons
⮚ Diplomacy
⮚ Discrimination
⮚ Lack of exposure to international relationship

 

✧ For this challenge, we suggest that :

⮚ First of all, in order to increase people’s interest and broaden their knowledge regarding the topic of nuclear weapons abolition, each country, not just Japan, should host more events and programs where the issue of nuclear weapons can be studied and discussed regardless of age and nationality.
⮚ Secondly, we strongly suggest that international agreements and policies regarding this issue should be improved and strengthened by increasing the penalty for parties that break such agreements or policies, develop nuclear weapons or support them illegally. Moreover, political leaders should consider the risks and bad impacts of nuclear weapons before going to war with each other and try to settle conflicts by mediation rather than by force and violence.
⮚ We also recommend that each country should slowly no longer rely on “sole-authority” or absolute orders given by only one significant figure in power without any diplomatic discussion on the issue of using nuclear weapons. It is far better that any decision regarding nuclear weapons is carefully discussed among a group of trust-worthy people who have peace and happiness of citizens foremost in mind.

 

<Our Role for Abolition of Nuclear Weapons　>

We, the young people, commit ourselves to spreading awareness of the terrible impacts nuclear weapons have on humanity and the world. In addition, we must commit to build a world with peace and empathy where we are encouraged to resolve conflicts without the presence of violence and brute force and put peace and happiness of all citizens first. Moreover, we believe that we should spread the message to every part of the world, and encourage everyone to join this discussion where we can voice our opinions and share our ideas with each other and form a bond with and learn from one another. Last but not least, we commit ourselves to become the future leaders that will lead with empathy and will prioritize people’s lives more than luxury goods. We are determined to become global citizens that will oppose injustice and any unreasonable decision that can affect humanity and the world.

 

 

<The Role of Hiroshima for Abolition of Nuclear Weapons>

⮚ As we all know, Hiroshima prefecture is a symbol of peace and has a lot of organizations that are currently working on this topic. Therefore, we believe that Hiroshima can spread this knowledge and information to other parts of Japan and the world to encourage people to visit and learn more about its history.
⮚ We also believe that Hiroshima should provide more opportunities for people from various backgrounds to share their opinions and learn from the discussion about this topic in hosted events and forums (such as this one).
⮚ Last but not least, we hope that Hiroshima will also be able to send out their survivors’ testimonies to people all over the world to watch via accessible platforms like social media or the internet and translate it into global languages such as English, Chinese, Spanish and French, so that everyone can learn and understand it as well.

 

<Challenges and Solutions for Peacebuilding>

✧ Towards peacebuilding, we recognize 4 big issues/challenges:

⮚ Violent conflicts
⮚ Racism/Discrimination
⮚ Trust
⮚ Poverty

 

✧ For these addressed challenges, we have come up with a few solutions. Firstly, we suggest that each country should work on the law against violence conflicts within each community and family, especially, violence against children and women or any kinds of harassment towards those in lower position. In addition, racism and extreme discrimination toward some communities such as the LBGTQ community, gender inequality, etc, should be considered as a crime, to prevent further conflicts and issues. We believe that international relationships and bridges between countries should be made, especially among the younger generations, as we are the future leaders of our nations. Moreover, the peace agreement between countries should also be strengthened or made, to ensure the trust and relationship for one another and prevent conflicts or war from happening.

 

<Our Role for Peacebuilding>

We, the young people, must hold a strong sense of our responsibility as global citizens. In order to build a peaceful world, we must learn to overcome stereotypes and discrimination.
Secondly, we should learn to compromise and give to those in need and make a rational and fair decision when we encounter conflict or argument and we must do our best to avoid violence as much as possible.
Thirdly, we believe that education is, without a doubt, the most important thing, especially for us, the young adults and teenagers in the society. We must do our best to accumulate and broaden our knowledge about peacebuilding in the world by being active in discussion and decision making and many other events in the community, to gain more understanding and information about our surroundings.
Fourthly, as global citizens, we must learn to live and think globally. This means we must learn to work on global issues alongside others from different parts of the world because as we are living on the same planet, we are equally responsible for the safety and well-being of our planet, not just our country.

 

<The Role of Hiroshima for Peacebuilding>

We strongly believe that, as the symbol of peace, Hiroshima should continue to hold a strong belief in peacebuilding and peacekeeping, as well as the memory of what happened in the past, to remind the next generation the importance of peacebuilding for humanity.
Following that, Hiroshima should slowly but surely spread the knowledge and opportunity for everyone in other parts of Japan and the world, for them to have a chance to engage and share their opinions through discussions and express their thoughts through their own declaration as well. In addition, we recommend that Hiroshima produces engaging and insightful content about peacebuilding on social media platforms such as anime, manga, and other kinds of interactive learning.
Last but not least, we also believe that testimonies from survivors are really valuable resources and can be a really important social proof-contents that should be translated and shared for the whole world to see and learn from. We also encourage Hiroshima to continue hosting events related to the museum, peace memorial park, or the story of Hiroshima for both national and international tourists, students and audiences to participate so that we all can learn and encourage more generations to come.

 

Closing

We participants are now highly aware that specialized and creative knowledge is fundamental for us to understand　the challenges that we face and to be able to propose effective solutions. We have also reaffirmed that it is important to mutually respect each other while discussing issues and deriving solutions. While we recognized the importance of opinion sharing, discussion and outreach, we also grew to realize the strategic relevance that we should spread our message by using the appropriate tools and methods.

We know that our responsibilities do not end with the announcement of the Hiroshima Declaration. We know we need to put the action plan presented here into practice. Through such efforts, we believe that we can achieve nuclear abolition, peacebuilding, and the resolution for other fundamentally vital issues.

Now all of us on earth face many challenges and difficulties. It is time for us to take decisive and concrete action. United power and the combination of ideas and opinions from various backgrounds such from this forum, will be able to make a difference to this beautiful world we live in. A single stick might break easily, but together we are unbreakable and unstoppable. Understanding the limits of our power but the importance of our responsibilities, we hereby make this declaration and stake our determination to achieve it.

 

August 20, 2021