Ljubljana has been visited by a delegation of the Balkan route of the Global March for Peace and Nonviolence.

The Global March for Peace and Nonviolence started in New Zealand on 2 October, International Day of Nonviolence and the anniversary of Gandhi's birth, and which ends on 2 January 2010 in Argentina.

The aim of the Global March for Peace and Nonviolence is to create a society free of weapons and wars and to develop awareness of the need to condemn all forms of violence regardless of belief, gender, race, religion, etc.

Marches for Peace and Nonviolence are growing throughout the world; the ‘Balkan route’ of the march set out from Istanbul on 28 October, and stopped in Ljubljana on 6 November before continuing on its way to Geneva, where they were greeted on 9 November at an official reception at the United Nations.

On Friday 6 November the delegation of the Balkan route of the Global March for Peace and Nonviolence was given a reception at the Faculty of Arts, where the keynote speaker was the Mayor of Ljubljana Zoran Janković.

In the month prior to the arrival of the delegation the NGO LOM Association for Civil Society of Slovenia, together with its partners – the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana, the Peace Institute and the Voluntariat Institute – also organized monitoring activities on the themes of peacekeepers and campaigns to combat violence.