Twice a year the earth's trajectory makes it that the sun is perpendicular to the equator. Those days , whereas at the poles, the sun appears in half-circle to the horizon, everywhere else the lighting and the darkness are perfectly of equal lenghts: 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night. These are the equinoxes of spring and autumn. And if we project this cosmic equality on our lives as citizens ? Equality of persons in rights and in responsibilities, equality of persons among themselves,despite the differences, equality before the law.........Several times in recent history,some world citizens have proposed that one or the other of these dates, or the two be celebrated as World Citizens Day and the Day for World Unity, the day of action against inequalities, against the injustices, against racism and against exclusion,the day during which all the inhabitants of the earth should be invited to reflect on what would become of humanity and of the planet.

On 4 November 2007, the Peoples Congress voted the formalization of the March equinox as "World Citizens Day- World Unity Day".

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the formation of the U.N.O, the mundialist organisations gathered in Congress in San Francisco,from the 20th to the 25th July 1975, at the invitation of the Association of World Citizens ''A W C''.

It is within this framework that the Commission 2 of the group A, enlivened by the organisation ''World Community Events'' proposed that the days of the March and September equinox be declared ''World Public Holidays''

Subsequently, the effort was mainly focused on the equinox of the month of March which took the name of World Citizens Day. For example in 1982, 1984 and 1985.

• 1982: Saturday 20th March at 23 h 56 ;In order to celebrate the spring equinox and launch the World Citizens Day, our friends in San Francisco called the world citizens of New York, Mississauga, Toronto, Mexico, Osaka, London and Paris.
  In Paris,the call was received at ''New Earth'' and retransmited by the free radio ''Here and Now''.
  For more than half an hour, this radio accepted to retransmit the transmited mundialist messages across the world. Guy Marchand sent that of Paris to Simon Fisher who translated it into french for the listeners.
• 1984: As every year, the World Citizens Day is the occasion for an intercontinental conversation among some world citizens. This 20th March, the conversation was launched from far away Vermont in the United States and rejoined Canada, Japan, the U.N. at New York, Australia, San Francisco, Great Britain and France where the messages were retransmited as every year since 1982 by the radio ''Here and Now''
• In 1985, the Intercontinental telephone conversation had been launched by Lucille GREEN from far away San Francisco towards Canada, New York, France, Gambia, India and Japan.

(Source:World Citizens archives --it will be interesting to crosscheck with other sources)

In 2000, the Association of World Citizens (A.W.C - San Francisco) has filed at the U.N.O. a resolution proposal so that the spring equinox be officially declared ''World Citizens Day''. This proposal never received the expected response.

In March 2002, the Canadian Center of World Citizens launched an invitation (Newsletter No.11) for the celebration of the equinox in Mississauga.

20th March 2005, Gerhard Hirschman invited the World Citizens for a meeting in Magdeburg, Germany. In 2006, this meeting became a festival.

In March 2006, about a twenty World Citizens launched a discussion on the theme of the equinox. The final proposal is that the World Unity Day be celebrated.

In October 2006, the first World Unity Tree was planted at Bohicon in Benin at the inauguration of the Mundialist Studies Seminar. The participants decided that a meeting of World Citizens will take place near this tree every year at equinox in the month of March to celebrate World Unity which is becoming a reality.

In March 2007, the Peoples Congress Consultative Assembly launched a petition to ask the Peoples Congress that it declares the equinox day of the month of March ''World Citizens Day and World Unity Day''

From the side of the U.N: the day of 21st March is declared ''International Day for the elimination of racial discrimination'', whereas that of the 21st September is 'International Day for Peace''

The Day of the Citizens of the World, by René Wadlow

The passage at midnight between 20 March and 21 March marks the central moment of the Day of the Citizens of the World. It is the start of the Spring Solstice and is celebrated in countries influenced by Persian culture such as Iran, Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics as Navruz (Nawroz), the start of the New Year. It is a period of renewal, of new beginnings, and a time of recognition that we are all citizens of the world bound together in a common destiny.

The Spring Solstice as the Day of the Citizens of the World marks a profound regard for cycles. Every cycle has a beginning, a middle, and an end; and nearly every cycle is followed by another. It was this sensitivity to cycles of change that served as the basis for the Chinese philosophy embodied in the I Ching – the Book of Changes. In the Richard Wilhelm translation, the text for the hexagram Fu advises “This is the moment, but it is not brought about by force…the moment is natural, arising spontaneously. For this reason, the transformation of the old becomes easy…Therefore, it is not necessary to hasten anything artificially. Everything comes of itself at the appointed time. This is the meaning of heaven and earth…The return of health after illness, the return of understanding after an estrangement: everything must be treated tenderly and with care at the beginning, so that it may lead to a flowering.”

The Spring Solstice is an intrinsically meaningful cosmic-terrestrial event and at the same time serves as a powerful symbol for the deepest processes of transformation in the individual and collective human psyche. Wisdom consists in knowing one’s place in any given cycle and what kind of action (or restraint from action) is appropriate for that phase. What is constructive at one time may be destructive at another.

Thus, the passage from an international system based on States to a world society based on the vision of world citizenship is a transition which flows naturally, without violence and without a destruction of the old. World Citizenship is based on a broad awareness of the ways the planet Earth is inter-related — what happens in one part of the world or to one group of people has an impact on all others.

The Spring Solstice — Day of the Citizens of the World — is placed under the sign of Hermes Trismegistus (the thrice-great Hermes) who is said to have lived in Egypt at the time of Moses. As a priest and an older man, Hermes would naturally have taught Moses about the Light in which we live, move and have our being. Hermes was also thought to have been the teacher of Orpheus, who passed on the teaching concerning the order of the world to Pythagoras and Plato. Thus, there is, in the tradition of the Alchemists, the symbol of Aurea Catena — the Golden Chain — an unbroken series of wise persons — women and men— from Hermes Trimegistus to the present, a chain which also symbolizes the links between heaven and earth.

This Aurea Catena chain is depicted in a 1488 mosaic of the Sienna Cathedral, Italy, where we see two figures, one from the East and one from the West coming to receive instruction from Hermes. Knowledge and Wisdom flowing toward both the East and the West is a key symbol of world citizenship. Thus the Day of the Citizens of the World is placed under the sign of the thrice-great Hermes.

The current financial-economic crisis has brought the realization to many that we are all associated in one world. The decisions of a few can have an impact on the many. If this is true for the negative impact of financial decisions, it is also true for positive actions. Thus the Day of the Citizens of the World can be a day for greater awareness of the need for cooperation and mutual action. The Day calls for individual commitment and responsibility.

*Rene Wadlow,
Representative to the UN, Geneva,
Association of World Citizens
20/03/2011