Agenda item

Councillor McLaren MOVED and Councillor Akhtar SECONDED a report which provided feedback on the Council motion entitled ‘Making a Commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals’.  The Overview and Scrutiny Board and the Health Scrutiny Committee had been asked to identify the work that was being done by the Council and its partners and what more could be done with its’ findings and recommendations. 

Councillor Hamblett MOVED and Councillor C. Gloster SECONDED the following AMENDMENT to the report:

“Add at the top of Page 16, a new section 17.2 to read:

’17.2   Oldham is the first borough in the UK to have embraced the Pledge to Peace, an initiative launched at the European Parliament in November 2011 to promote a ‘culture of peace across Europe’.

This has attracted significant positive coverage for Oldham, with the borough increasingly seen as a place of peace and an exemplar to others.

·         Oldham Council and Shaw and Crompton Parish Council are currently the only two local authorities in the UK to have become signatories of the Pledge.

·         Oldham Council was the first organisation to appoint a Pledge to Peace Mayor, former Councillor Derek Heffernan.

·         The Oldham Pledge to Peace now has 52 affiliated signatory organisations, making the Forum the biggest organisation of its kind representing the Pledge to Peace.  These affiliates include Oldham Council, Shaw and Crompton Council, twenty-six of our borough’s schools and colleges and the Oldham Youth Council.

·         Delegates from the Oldham Pledge to Peace Forum have represented Oldham – at their own expense – at high-level events in the UK, Italy, Germany and Australia, as well as visiting the European Parliament.

·         This has included making presentations at Oldham’s work in the UK and Europe to four conferences and at meetings with Ambassadors, Mayors, Members of the European Parliament and the Ambassador to the Pledge to Peace, Mr Prem Rawat.

·         For five consecutive year, until 2019, the Forum also hosted, with the support of Council officers, a celebratory event at Gallery Oldham / Oldham Library to mark the UN International Day of Peace (21 September).

·         Oldham Council is also an affiliate of the international Mayor for Peace initiative, which campaigns for a nuclear weapon free world.

·         Consequently, Oldham was one of only three locations in the UK visited by two delegations from Hiroshima – one from the National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims, which met with the Oldham Youth Council, and one of Hibakusha (Japanese A-bomb survivors), who at Alexandra Park planted seeds received as a gift from the Mayor of Hiroshima.

·         These seeds were sourced from city-centre trees which survived the atomic bombing.  Later this year, they will be planted in several parks and at Pledge to Peace schools.

·         Oldham is also the only municipality to have hosted a delegation from Neve Shalom – Wahat al-Salam (the Oasis of Peace), a village founded in Israel on the basis of equality and co-operation between its Jewish and Arab inhabitants, to sign an exclusive international agreement to work for peace with this village.

·         The Forum is now working to develop links for peace with Australian partners, including Toowoomba, which is working towards UNESCO recognition as an international City of Peace and Harmony, and Saddleworth, which was named by its founder after his former West Yorkshire home town.’

On being put to the vote, that the AMENDMENT be REFERRED back to Overview and Scrutiny was CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY.

Councillor McLaren exercised his right of reply.

RESOLVED that:

1.         The report commended to Council by the Overview and Scrutiny Board and the Health Scrutiny Committee on the work by Oldham which contributed to the ambitions of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals be approved.

2.         The amendment as submitted related to ‘Pledge to Peace’ be referred to Overview and Scrutiny.