How many more deaths will it take before we stop looking at war as a tool to resolve disputes between states, instead using it for the arbitrary desire to dominate other peoples? 'Never again' was the expression adopted by the international community to condemn the Jewish Holocaust. Today we witness 'war again'. Racism again. Great inequalities again. Violence again. Aggression again.

This was stated by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, speaking to the German Bundestag on the occasion of the National Day of Mourning, describing "an increase in cruelty: with the atomic age, a single gesture can erase a city and the very innocence of the world."

"Today, according to the United Nations," he continued, "over 90% of conflict victims are civilians. This cannot go unpunished and ignored."

According to the report released in April by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, there were 122 million refugees, and the number is increasing year after year. The head of state emphasized that "these are not statistics. They are faces, people on the move, families wiped out, robbed of the future they were preparing."

For Mattarella, "no exceptional circumstance can justify the unjustifiable: the bombing of populated areas, the cynical use of hunger against populations, sexual violence. The blurring of the distinction between civilians and combatants strikes at the very core of humanity ."

"War has always sought to cast its dark shadow over humanity," he added. "The twentieth century transformed the tragedy of soldiers into a tragedy of peoples. In the villages of Europe and in the cities destroyed by bombings, in the devastated countryside, millions of civilians became targets. Deportations and genocide characterized the Second World War. Since then, the face of war has not been reflected only in that of the combatant, but has become that of the child, the mother, the defenseless elderly. This is what is happening today, in Kiev, in Gaza ."

And for this reason, according to the head of state, we need to strengthen multilateralism, "which is not bureaucracy, as the bullies claim: it is the tool that cools differences and allows for their peaceful resolution; it is the language of shared responsibility." This also helps to stem the "new Dr. Strangeloves looming on the horizon, claiming that we must 'love the bomb.'"

(Unioneonline)

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