«After the war, the birth of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions sparked the hope of a peace based on law, reaffirming a fundamental principle: the civilian population must be protected in all circumstances. The subsequent news – from Biafra to the Balkans, from Rwanda to Syria, up to Sudan, Ukraine and the Gaza Strip – shows us that the war continues to affect especially those who are not combatants. Today, according to the United Nations, over 90% of conflict victims are civilians.”
This cannot remain ignored and unpunished.” The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, said this, speaking to the German Bundestag.
«We are in this solemn Chamber – he added – to remember the fallen, the victims of war and violence. Fallen into the abyss of history, into the traps set by other men. The life of people, of peoples, of nations, is full of stumbles and tragedies. Sometimes due to individual choices, more often due to the deliberate actions of others.”
“Italian and German paper repudiates the war”
«Today we turn our gaze, our thoughts, to the victims of wars and violence. From fallen soldiers to civilians, victims of that condition – war – which the German Basic Law and the Italian Constitution repudiate, making their own the great lesson deriving from the tragic Second World War. We unite on a day of remembrance and mourning, because remembering our common history is an indispensable exercise in our inexhaustible aspiration for peace.”
“Nuclear power can erase the world’s innocence”
«Total war requires not the defeat, the surrender of the enemy, but his annihilation. An increase in cruelty. With the atomic age, a single gesture can erase a city and the very innocence of the world.”