THE MAISON DE LA PAIX

 

CASA UNIVERSALE DELLE CULTURE

The Maison de la Paix - Casa Universale delle Culture is a place strongly representative, in which will convey the knowledge of the different identities and cultures, structuring permanently initiatives aimed at the spreading of peace, necessary for the shared development.

The Maison de la Paix - Casa Universale delle Culture (MdP) is a project conceived by Michele Capasso, approved by many Countries and international organizations. It is an architecture that keeps the memory of many Peace activities which created history, often more than the wars, but it is – above all – a space "to build” Peace.

The architectonical complex has an important symbolic worth: it represents the Countries of the World engaged in the Peace process and the Countries victim of the conflicts.

Proposed by the Fondazione Mediterraneo with the Maison des Alliances – together with the main adherent organizations, such as the Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, the League of Arab States, the "Anna Lindh" Euro-Mediterranean Foundation and others, the MdP represents a referent point for all the ones who dedicate their lives to peace.

The symbol of the MdP is the "Totem for Peace", an artwork by the Italian sculptor Mario Molinari which the Fondazione Mediterraneo is promoting all around the world, creating the network of the "Cities for Peace".

The first seat of the MdP was inaugurated on the 14th of June 2010 (Maison de la Paix - Casa Universale delle Culture) in the historical building of the Grand Hotel de Londres in Naples.

The action of the Maison de la Paix - Casa Universale delle Culture aims at improving the main activities of the "Universal Forum of Cultures" in: Barcelona (2004), Monterrey (2007), Valparaiso (2010) and Naples (2013).

The Maison de la Paix performs most of the initiatives jointly with the Maison de la Méditerranée.

 

On the occasion of the thirty-year anniversary of the Fondazione Mediterraneo, the Municipality of Mercato San Severino and the Center for International Studies for Migration "Pascal D’Angelo" have conferred on the president Michele Capasso the nomination of "honorary member" for "high cultural merits".
President Capasso thanked those present and reviewed the main actions of the Foundation illustrating future initiatives in view of 2050.

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President Michele Capasso has inaugurated the exhibition of articles by "Il Mattino" published by Antonio Corbisiero with other members of the municipal administration and illustrious people from Salerno.
An occasion to remember the value of Italians in the world and the importance of bringing them together to witness their successes that are a credit to Italy.

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Also this year the Fondazione Mediterraneo  takes part in the 24th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre: 8,000 young people slaughtered and over 30,000 women and girls deported.
A few scattered houses inhabited mostly by some elderly widow, a memorial to the victims of the war and around expanses of fields as far as the eye can see. Fields that could be cultivated, if only there were still the arms to do it. From here you get to Srebrenica in less than half an hour, descending along the road that Ratko Mladic and his troops of executioners traveled after the definitive fall of the city. The physiognomy of the small downtown square has recently been modified by an impressive red building that houses a hotel and a Turkish bank. Next to it, the minaret of the main city mosque is dominated by the dome of the Orthodox church. After what happened in the first half of the 1990s, the cohabitation between the Serbian community and the Muslim minority is a daily challenge. The latter, too, is now bothered by the noisy celebrations machine that is activated every year on 11 July, the annual parade of international delegations, the spotlights that come on for half a day and then go off again until the following year. "It is true, this will be the first anniversary after Mladic's conviction and the closing of the Hague Court of Justice - recognizes Bekir, who was a child during the war - but here the news of convictions come as a distant echo, which does not it shifts the daily balances of ordinary people ".
The survivors and relatives of the victims are forced to live every day with the memory of the genocide and to deal with a moral and material reconstruction that even after so many years is still struggling to take off.
"The process of reconciliation continues to be hampered by nationalist ideologies that throw salt on the wounds of a drama begun long before what the world remembers," explains Hasan Hasanovic, curator of the documentation center of the Potocari memorial, in which he is buried his father too. The siege of the Serbian nationalists in the city began on a spring day of twenty-six years ago, in 1993. "The UN had negotiated a cease-fire, the people thought they could take a breath and we children went out to play football in the schoolyard - he remembers - but suddenly, from the surrounding mountains, grenades began to rain on the city. One hit the playing field in full and exploded a few meters away from me ».
That day Hasan saved himself by miracle but saw fourteen of his classmates die. The slaughter that would have taken place two years later also marked the failure of the international community, as also recalled by the photographic exhibition set up in the premises of the former UN base of Potocari.
With the 33 burials this year, the total burial will exceed 6,900 but the long process to restore an identity to the remains of more than eight thousand victims continues, also because the woods around Srebrenica continue to return the bones buried in the mass graves.
Dragana Vucetic, a forensic anthropologist from the research center on missing persons in Tuzla, confirms that there are about a thousand victims still to be identified.
The Fondazione Mediterraneo, founded precisely to help the victims of the war in the former Yugoslavia, is at the side of these tormented populations.

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President Michele Capasso and the members of the Mediterranean Foundation and the Mediterranean Academy - Maison de la Méditerranée express deep condolences for the sudden death of prof. Pierluigi Maria Rossi, founding member of the Mediterranean Academy.
Professor of Volcanology of the Alma Mater (Bologna), Rossi was also President of the Degree Course in Geological and Environmental Sciences in Ravenna, director of the Department of Mineralogical Sciences and director of the Department of Geological and Environmental Earth Sciences.
President Capasso, moved, recalled the exchange of students between the universities of Bologna and Cadi Ayyad in Marrakech in order to study the respective mountain ranges: the Apennines and Atlas.

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President Michele Capasso, members of the Executive Board and the International Scientific Committee, the heads of the Autonomous Sections of the Fondazione Mediterraneo express deep condolences for the death of Beji Caid Essebsi, President of the Republic of Tunisia.
In particular, President Capasso recalls the affectionate association with the Tunisian statesman developed in the context of the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue based on respect for the values of solidarity and the rights of the human person
.

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