17 August, 2007

Waitakere Mayor Appointed Peace Foundation President

Waitakere Mayor and lifelong peace campaigner Bob Harvey has been elected president of the New Zealand Peace Foundation.

A United Nations recognised Global Mayor for Peace, Mayor Harvey was elected at last night’s annual meeting of the foundation in Auckland.

“It is a great honour for me to be elected president of the New Zealand Peace Foundation and I feel very privileged,” says Mayor Harvey.

“The organisation has a proud history and I look forward to upholding and continuing the dedication to peace and its enriched agenda that now encompasses social change and challenges in this country.”

The election of Mayor Harvey as president comes just weeks before Waitakere’s official City for Peace initiative launch and just weeks after the first meeting of the mayor’s Mayoral Taskforce Against Family Violence which Mayor Harvey co-chairs with local kaumätua and Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples.

“I have been working towards peace for a very long time and it feels now the time is right for another surge forward in this regard,” says Mayor Harvey. “We need to get peace firmly back on the agenda of this country’s young people and I think the New Zealand Peace Foundation can do that.”

In his presidential address to the meeting Mayor Harvey, who campaigned against the Vietnam War and for New Zealand to become nuclear free, posed a number of questions and challenges.

“Is the quest for peace still about the proliferation of nuclear weapons? Do we focus on peace being the opposite of terrorism? How does this country view our place? These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves because ours is a role of leadership and wisdom.”

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