What is "Flowers from Cannons," the campaign to provide study corridors for Palestinian children?
Ensure the immediate activation of safe and secure transportation for the evacuation of scholarship recipients from the Gaza Strip to Italian universities, issue official authorization qualifying the operation as a humanitarian mission for educational purposes, and ensure, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy, the priority issuance of emergency educational visas , as already indicated in the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR) order of June 5, 2025. These are the demands of the campaign called "Flowers from Cannons," an initiative born from an appeal by the publishing house Another Coffee Stories, with the aim of bringing Palestinian students to Italy, saving them from the massacres and destruction in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and guaranteeing them the right to education, denied them in their homeland.
In effect, universities no longer exist in Gaza, the right to education is denied, and people live under the constant threat of hunger and death . They are in a state of constant tension. Thanks to collaboration with Italian universities, however, it is possible to provide scholarships to young men and women denied any education. To date, dozens of students have been admitted by Italian universities but are currently stranded in the Palestinian territories.
For this reason, the appeal to the Italian government is to grant study visas and urgently prepare a humanitarian mission on the ground to evacuate people to safety.
The initiative, which benefits from the support of lawyer Annalisa Nanna and a network of activists, was presented to the Chamber of Deputies by the Honorable Gilda Sportiello, with the aim of promoting diplomatic activation for visas with priority for "educational emergencies" and official authorization qualifying the operation as an urgent humanitarian mission.
“Fiori nei Cannoni” is based on fundamental principles of our legal system: the right to education is regulated by our Constitution, which in Articles 33 and 34 establishes the inviolability and inalienability of the right to education and that institutions have the duty to guarantee it; by the EU “Charter of Fundamental Rights,” whose Article 14 reaffirms that “Everyone has the right to education and to access to professional and continuing training”; by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with Article 26, and Article 25 of Regulation (EC) 810/2009, which specifies that the Government has the right to issue humanitarian visas in derogation of the ordinary conditions. Last but not least, the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 (Article 24) requires special protection for students and civilians in the context of armed conflict. And Directive 2001/55/EC allows for extraordinary protection measures for persons returning from war zones.
Among other requests to the Italian government, it must ensure operational coordination with the Rectors of the universities involved, in order to allow entry into Italy by the start of the 2025–2026 academic semester, and more specifically by September 15, 2025.
On August 18, 2025, a formal formal notice was sent, requiring action by September 15, 2025. The same request was submitted by each of the Italian universities involved. If concrete action is not taken by that date, the matter will be referred to the highest levels of jurisdiction.
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