A Japan-based international charity has brought its ‘Peace Boat’ to Belfast in order to learn from the city’s history and future.
The non-government organisation, which is also called Peace Boat, brought its 77,000 ton passenger ship to Belfast on Saturday.
The vessel, which is named “Pacific World” carried 1,500 people onboard its current 118th Global Voyage for Peace and Sustainability, which departed from Yokohama in Japan on August 16.
On Saturday morning, the liner docked in Northern Ireland, where a group of participants have with local peacebuilders in Belfast, including the Community Relations Forum, to learn about the successes and ongoing challenges of local community peacebuilding.
Dr David Mitchell, an assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin, travelled onboard the ship as a guest educator from September 30, where he got on in Portugal.
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He has been presenting lectures regarding Northern Ireland’s experience to the community onboard.
A delegation from the university, together with other community peacebuilders, visited the ship at 2pm on today, and a welcome gathering for a delegation from the Peace People took place onboard at 6:30pm.
The ship will leave again for the seas at 11pm on Saturday night.
Peace Boat travels the world on educational voyages to promote peace and sustainability.
Since the 1990s, the organisation has visited Belfast to carry out educational exchange programs and hosted groups from Northern Ireland onboard using the ship as a space “to engage in dialogue for peaceful coexistence”.
Peace Boat was founded in 1983 by a group of young people in Japan to foster people-to-people dialogue for peace in East Asia.
Its founder, Yoshioka Tatsuya, was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize by Mairead Corrigan Maguire for the Article 9 Campaign to Abolish War.
Peace Boat is the Japan anchor of the 2017 Nobel Peace Laureate, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). It is also Northeast Asia Regional Secretariat of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, a global network of local peacebuilders, of which Yoshioka is the current Board chair.