Activity Report by General Coordinator Ikuro Anzai
(1) Interim General Coordinator
After the last general meeting in Belfast in April 2017, there was a vacancy in which no General Coordinator was elected. A strategy group was then formed and unanimously recommended that Ikuro Anzai be promoted to the position of Interim General Coordinator, which was approved without opposition. The Hague Office was officially moved to Kyoto Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University on June 30, 2018 and Anzai began his work as General Coordinator on July 1, 2018. However, due to the financial backlog associated with the office relocation, full-scale financial activities based in the Kyoto office began on October 1, 2018.
(2) As the Interim General Coordinator, I have set forth 5 principles, i.e. [1] democracy, [2] transparency, [3] traceability, [4] financial soundness, and [5] fairness of membership burden.
I tried to adhere to these five principles. Therefore, every time I needed to decide something, I consulted with the board members by e-mail and asked for their opinions and asked them to express their intentions for or against my proposals. As the medium for discussion, "General Coordinator's Document" (GCoD) was sent to the Executive Board and Advisory Committee members, and "From General Coordinator's Desk" (FGCD) was sent to ask the intentions of all INMP members such as amendment of the Statute, and asked for their opinions and judgments. GCoD was issued 27 times and FGCD 38 times. I am convinced that these materials have helped to ensure democracy, transparency and traceability.
(3) The Strategy Group expected me to: [a] review the Statute, including the election system; [b] clarify the individual and group membership lists; [c] review the dues structure; [d] publish newsletters and manage the website; [e] clarify the accounting; and [f] consider the venue for the 10th International Conference of Museums for Peace Museum scheduled for 2020.
Regarding [a], I worked with the Executive Board and Advisory Committee members to build consensus on a prerequisite constitutional amendment focusing on the introduction of three coordinator system and electronic voting, asked the members' opinion, and passed it without opposition in July 2020.
Regarding [b], in order to clarify the individual and group membership lists, I appointed Ms. Hitomi Katayama as an accounting expert advisor to check the accurate list of all members and the status of payment of membership fees in cooperation with our treasurer Kazuyo Yamane. The latest membership list has already been sent to the Nominations/Election Committee as a basis for determining voting eligibility for the next election of Executive Board and Advisory Board members. We have found that not a few members have not paid membership fees for the past three years.
Regarding [c], the INMP membership fee is self-reported according to income, and I followed this basic principle. Looking at the membership fee payment status, remittance to the bank account opened by the Japanese office is complicated in some countries, and the use of PayPal is not generalized in some countries and regions, so in the future, we believe it will be effective to utilize a three-coordinator system to establish a regional office to facilitate the payment of membership fees.
Regarding [d], we are grateful for the efforts of Peter van den Dungen and his team of editors in publishing the Newsletter and the special contribution of Roy Tamashiro in maintaining the website, which has served as an effective information channel for both inside and outside the INMP. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of volunteer translators, led by Kazuyo Yamane, in editing and publishing the Japanese version of the Newsletter.
Regarding [e], in order to ensure accurate execution of accounting procedures and also objectivity in financial matters, I appointed Hitomi Katayama, who has accounting expertise, to the special accounting staff and Manabu Anzai, a professional tax accountant, to INMP’s official audit. They, along with the Treasurer Kazuyo Yamane, contribute to the financial health of the INMP.
Regarding [f], we are in the midst of the 10th International Conference of Museums for Peace organized not as an in-person conference but as a virtual online conference. At the time an in-person conference was scheduled, the City of Hiroshima had indicated that it was willing to co-sponsor the conference, but it ended the co-hosting relationship when INMP switched to a virtual conference last April. The conference was organized by INMP and co-organized by Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto Seika University, Kyoto University of the Art, and Ikenobo Junior College, with the support of the Kyoto Shimbun newspaper and the Kyoto Society for Inter-Art Exchange, the Kyoto UNESCO Association, the No More Hibakusha Center for the Preservation of the Legacy of Memory, Association of Japanese Museums for Peace, and Japanese Citizens’ Network of Museums for Peace.
I was appointed as an Interim General Coordinator at the recommendation of the Strategy Group, and in the two years since the office relocation was virtually completed, I made utmost efforts to respond to the challenges expected by the Strategy Group. I think I was able to tackle the issue to an extent. But I am not the General Coordinator elected by an official election by INMP members, and I was something like a crisis management cabinet. In addition, I had to operate the network under the influence of COVID-19, and I could not carry out some of the plans as I had expected to do.
As one of the attempts by INMP to get business income, I planned and partially executed INMP-coordinated peace tours. The Peace Tour to South Korea (from Japan) was carried out in June 2019, and I attended and toured for 6 days, visited a number of peace museums and added commentary. I learnt a lot with 35 participants from all over Japan, and INMP was given 100,000 yen in business revenue from a tour company.
I also planned a peace tour to China in February 2020 and a peace tour to Europe including Guernica in April, and I was planning to accompany it, too. Iratxe Momoitio, Director of Gernika Peace Museum, actively cooperated with this plan. Reservations were full long before departure, but these travel plans were canceled due to COVID-19. I am very much looking forward to these INMP-coordinated peace tours going forward around the world.
One of my hopes was to propose a publication of an annual electronic journal of INMP, but I could not materialize the plan.
I sincerely hope that a more essential change will be made under the three-coordinator system from the next term onward, and that the network will gain more members and strengthen its role in peace-making throughout the world.