News Headlines

On May 9, SGI Europe held a general meeting at the Frankfurt Ikeda Peace Culture Centre in Germany. SGI Europe Cochairs Suzanne Pritchard and Robert Harrap gave the welcome address. They encouraged members across Europe to work for peace through the power of dialogue. Soka Gakkai President Minoru Harada and SGI General Director Yoshiki Tanigawa attended the meeting that brought together some 450 people from 31 European countries. At the meeting, new leadership appointments were announced: for the Soka Gakkai in Germany Carola De Decker as general director and Julia Lohrmann as women’s leader, and for SGI-Netherlands Gina Hameeteman as general director and Beatrice Sterna as women’s leader.

The SGI (Soka Gakkai International) co-organized two side events at the 11th Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that began on April 27 in New York.

The first event, held on April 30, was co-organized with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) and titled “Choose Hope.” Named after the dialogue between NAPF co-founder David Krieger and President Daisaku Ikeda, the event addressed nuclear disarmament through the lens of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. Atomic bomb survivor, Hideto Matsuura of Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations), gave his testimony.

The second event, titled "Preventing Nuclear Use and Escalation: Lessons from Nuclear Close Calls," was held on May 1 at UN Headquarters and was co-organized with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, in cooperation with the Permanent Mission of Austria to the UN. The discussion highlighted an urgent need to rebuild trust between nuclear-armed states and to reinforce the norm against nuclear use.

On April 25 and 26, the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue, an affiliate of the Soka Gakkai, hosted its second Educating for Peace Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Middle and high school teachers, researchers and students discussed approaches to peace education aimed at raising awareness of the threat posed by nuclear weapons. During the event, a message from atomic bomb survivor Keiko Ogura, founder of the Hiroshima Interpreters for Peace, was introduced. In the message she said, “The most important element in disarmament education is being able to imagine the pain of others.”

The event was co-organized by the Ikeda Center, the Soka Institute for Global Solutions at Soka University of America and the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) among others.