Philippe Francois, the President of the World Association for Training in Hotels and Tourism known as AMFORHT joined the call by the World Tourism Network to add Peace to the declaration for the upcoming announcement for the Global Tourism Resilience Day.
Yesterday the World Tourism Network (WTN) and the International Institute for Peace Through Tourism (IIPT) issued a joint statement for the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre to recognize Tourism as the Guardian of World Peace as a form of Resilience.
Amforht is a Non-Governmental Organization in special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations Organization since 2017.
More voices and critical comments are adding to the call.
Professor Geoffrey Lipman, President of ICTP and SunX Malta added:
Isn’t it time in the midst of yet another of the myriad of conflict situations and 30 years of IIPT we started to make a clear objective assessment of the real interrelationship? How can we be guardians when we are the first victim? We depend on peace, not the other way round. Human beings are fallible and peace is a victim of that fallibility – the dark side. Tourism is from the bright side but we need peace to be able to operate. We are amongst the big contributors to peacebuilding.
Also, World Tourism Network Hero Dov Kalmann from Israel added his comments in saying: “Isn’t a major reason of war and military conflicts the lack of knowing the people on the “other side” of the border, their dreams and drives, their culture and heritage as well as their natural landscapes and culinary richness? If the Russian masses would get to know the Ukrainian hospitality and tour their mountains and villages, would they then support military aggression? If the Palestinians would travel freely in Israel and take part in its festivals and eat around the same tables, would the two sides then still wish to build higher walls? I deeply believe that there is a core purpose of tourism: the recipe towards a world of peace and coexistence.
