Emergency, the Repudiate campaign kicks off: banners and flash mobs in Italian squares

Italy repudiates war. The appeal by Emergency, the NGO founded by Gino Strada, which launched the 'Repudiate' campaign, comes in a world where 56 conflicts are open. In more than 60 Italian cities, the association's volunteers have gathered to reaffirm the importance and adherence to Article 11 of the Italian Constitution which states: 'Italy repudiates war as an instrument of offence against the freedom of other peoples and as a means of settling international disputes'.

Flash mobs and banners in symbolic places from Milan to Catania, from Reggio Emilia to Sassari. They took to the streets to remember that 'No to war' is written in the Constitution. Banners reading 'R1PUD1A' were unfurled at the Colosseum, at the Rialto Bridge in Venice, in Milan in Piazza del Duomo, in Turin under the Mole Antonelliana. And it was also displayed in Rome, in St. Peter's Square, during the Angelus of the Pope who greeted the volunteers of the Roman group of Emergency asking 'that this principle may be implemented throughout the world. Let war be banished and let issues be addressed with law and negotiations, let weapons be silenced, let space be given to dialogue'.

Flash mobs of Emergency's volunteers at the Pantheon in Rome, under the Leaning Tower of Pisa, in Trieste at the Molo Audace, in Piazza dell'Unità d'Italia and Piazza della Borsa, and in Ferrara in Piazza Trento e Trieste, up to Volterra under the monument to the Fallen of all Wars. And again from Genoa to Messina, passing through Pistoia and Lucca Comics and in many other cities there were numerous silent parades with participants making up, with T-shirts and placards, the slogan of the campaign.

"In Italy there is a beautiful law: the Constitution. Which in Article 11 says something beautiful: Italy no longer wants to make war. It repudiates it. After the world wars, atomic bombs and millions of deaths, Italy has been reborn from the idea that no war can ever be the solution,' the association declares. Our country has committed itself to resolving conflicts by other means: through diplomacy, politics and peace. Yet we are no longer witnessing meaningful peace actions. The language of war spreads as if it were an incontrovertible truth: public opinion is called to war through the words of politicians and the media. In Italy and Europe, governments rearm and say that peace is a luxury. But the luxury is precisely the war industry. According to Milex, the Observatory on Military Expenditure in Italy, in 2025 alone our country has already budgeted to allocate 32 billion euros to military expenditure, a historical record with an increase of 12.4% over 2024 and 60% over the decade. Of these 32 billion, it will reserve 13 billion for new armaments, a leap of 77% over the last five years'.

Emergency has intervened in 21 countries, treating more than 13 million patients worldwide in all its facilities. The organisation is currently present in eight countries around the world, three of them with ongoing conflict: Sudan, Ukraine and the Gaza Strip in Palestine. It is precisely because of its experience in the field that it once again states that 90 per cent of the dead and wounded are civilians and that the cost of an F-35 is worth as much as 3,244 intensive care beds.