Armistice Day Centenary: Leaders Call For Peace

Some 84 world leaders and heads of civil society organisations meeting in the French capital, Paris, on November 13, 2018 conclude three days of discussions on how to ensure a safer world. Agency reports said they also talked multilateralism and governance issues. The meeting came on the heels of the commemoration on November 11, 2018 of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I in 1918.

An initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron, the Paris Peace Forum, which is in its first edition, is now managed by an independent charity. The forum examined concrete governance projects, though multilateralism and the urgent need for peace in the world’s flashpoints took centre stage.

Opening the meeting on Sunday November 11, 2018, President Emmanuel Macron said the world’s stability was now threatened by nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, extremism as well as by economic, environmental and migrant-related challenges. United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, warned that today’s world has several of the ingredients that led to the failure of peace after World War I. He listed trade conflicts, increasingly polarized politics, and the failure to resolve inequalities as some of these potential war catalysts.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel pleaded for world peace and cooperation, 100 years after Germany's defeat in World War I. She cautioned against taking peace for granted, saying, “We have to work for it.” Merkel called ...