Migratory flows due to environmental causes and war conflicts, under debate at the V Rotary Peace Conference in Maspalomas
The 5th Peace Conference , organized by the Rotary Club of Maspalomas , will take place this Friday, December 16, on the esplanade of the Maspalomas Lighthouse , from 09:30 to 14:00, and will revolve around migration, sustainability and the environment.
Numerous studies point to climate change as the main engine that promotes forced migratory flows of people, due to the increasingly high temperatures recorded on the planet and a greater number of natural disasters. The strength of these movements already exceeds that generated by armed conflicts. At the V Peace Conference, both aspects will be contemplated and confronted, environmental migration and that caused by war, without leaving behind the economic, political, social and cultural factors.
The meeting will feature speeches by Teseida García García , delegate prosecutor for Immigration at the provincial prosecutor's office of Las Palmas; Andrés Barriales , a journalist with an extensive career, linked to Rotary International; photojournalist Alberto Hugo Rojas, who will talk about his work at the NGO Peace in Construction; and Atlán , a young man from the Canary Islands who has completed a 19-month journey in which he has walked across the 8 islands cleaning and collecting garbage, accumulating 9 tons of waste.
In parallel with the Conference, which will be inaugurated by Elena Espino , councilor of the San Bartolomé de Tirajana City Council for the area of Culture, Historical Heritage and Local Development, and by José Miguel Gonzalo , elected governor 2023-24 of District 2201 of Spain; the esplanade of the Maspalomas Lighthouse will host the 1st Solidarity Fair for Peace , in which various solidarity organizations will have their own stand and inform the public about their objectives and actions.
Both events, organized by the Rotary Club of Maspalomas, are sponsored primarily by the San Bartolomé de Tirajana City Council and the Gran Canaria Island Council.
The opening session of the V Peace Conference will be led by Teseida García García, PhD in Law from ICADE and specialist in immigration, human trafficking and international legal cooperation, who will speak mainly about how migration crises affect children, with special emphasis on unaccompanied minors.
Next, Andrés Barriales , former director of COPE radio stations in Pamplona, Valladolid, and Madrid, and who assumed the position of head of programming for the network nationwide in 1982, will discuss the importance of the tourism and travel sector in achieving greater multicultural integration. He will present Maspalomas as an example of coexistence and the potential integration of different nationalities while respecting their differences. During his term as Governor of Rotary International District 2201 (2014-2015), Barriales promoted Maspalomas' candidacy for the title of Rotary City of Peace, an award it received in March 2016.
For his part, photojournalist Alberto Hugo Rojas will discuss his work with the NGO Peace in Construction and his latest report, which focuses on documenting the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The non-profit organization he coordinates leads the educational program "Peace in Construction, Entangled with Human Rights," which involves more than 80 schools and has reached its seventh edition with the support of the Orfeón La Paz choir of La Laguna and the Canary Islands Government's Directorate General of Youth.
A member of Reporters Without Borders since 2002, Rojas has portrayed various conflicts in countries such as Palestine, Israel, Syria and Iraq, and says that “although all wars are terrible, hard…what continues to impact me is the uprooting. The migratory flows that are generated. The war in Ukraine has seemed especially painful to me because of the suffering of older people, who have survived two world wars, and who face separation from their families, or the pain of being left alone on the front lines of combat, in a heartbreaking loneliness,” he points out.
Finally, the participation of Atlán stands out , a young adventurer and naturalist from the Canary Islands, who has just finished his journey through the Archipelago after 19 months traveling the coast and interior of each of the 8 islands, alone, without money, uninterruptedly, without assistance, with only his backpack for company and cleaning all the natural spaces he has passed through.
Now, he will take stock of this adventure in which he has traveled 3.500 kilometers and collected 9 tons of garbage that could contaminate his environment. More than the feat itself, what is important is its purpose: to protect the nature and culture of the Canary Islands. "Many days I have walked with sadness, because I could not find the identity of the islands, their nature, their history," says Atlán, who will explain his experience in Maspalomas.
