Citizens’ Ise-Shima Summit - Declaration of Citizens

Citizens’ Ise-Shima Summit - Declaration of Citizens

A number of issues such as scarcity including hunger, poverty, and economic disparity, and fear resulting from war, violence, and human rights violation exist on this earth. Environmental issues caused by human beings’ activities are becoming serious, while they give a bigger impact on vulnerable countries and regions.

In Mie where the Ise-Shima G7 summit will be held, as well as in other areas in Japan, a number of citizens are working on local issues related to children, youth, women, the elderly, people with disability, migrants and refugees, disaster, environment, education, health, regional disparity, and in other fields. However, until today we hardly had a chance to be aware that these daily life issues are linked to serious problems that are happening in this world.

The Ise-Shima G7 Summit has given us a good opportunity to think what we, the citizens living in the “developed countries”, can do. Civil society organizations that have been carrying out regional activities to improve the situation, and those organizations which have been making policy recommendations to the G7 leaders and their governments under the belief that many of the serious global issues are attributable to the “developed nations”, have joined together to hold the “Citizens’ Ise-Shima Summit”. From the preparation stage up to the opening of this Citizens’ Summit, a wide number of citizens’ activities have gathered and linked, and people have been respecting each other’s differences and worked vigorously on values to be shared.

Upon the closing of the “Citizens’ Ise-Shima Summit”, we, the citizens who have gathered here today hereby declare as follows to continue cooperating with various citizens’ activities carried out throughout the world to help solve regional issues and serious global issues that we are facing.

1. We will carry out the citizens’ activities by being aware of the connection between local and serious global issues that we are facing.
2. We will make use of the experience and knowledge gained at the “Citizens’ Ise-Shima Summit” to continuously make policy recommendations to the local and national governments and international organizations in order to create effective policies through civic collaboration.
3. We will build new systems and form a network to achieve effective policy making together with the cooperation of citizens.

May 24, 2016

Participants of the “Citizens’ Ise-Shima Summit”