In 1974 he co-founded the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre at the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Spanish High Council for Scientific Research.
The main focus of his scientific research has been on molecular brain disease, and he was responsible for drawing up the Spanish National Plan for Mental Health Prevention.
On 10 November 1998, the UN General Assembly declared the years 2001–2010 International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World.
On 13 September 1999, it adopted the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, which embodies Mayor's greatest aspirations from both a conceptual and practical standpoint.
The aim of HGM was to support projects and develop programmes based on policies that would humanize the process of globalization across its many dimensions — economic, ecological, social, political, cultural and organizational.
In 2005, he was appointed co-president for the UN High Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations (AoC), by Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General.
The Alliance of Civilizations is an initiative proposed by the President of the Government of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, at the 59th session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2005.
To fulfil the objective of the initiative, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan assembled a High-Level Group (HLG) consisting of 20 eminent persons drawn from policy making, academia, civil society, religious leadership and the media.
Among the members were former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, who proposed the Dialogue Among Civilizations initiative, South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Prof. Pan Guang, who obtained the Saint Petersburg-300 Medal for Contribution to China-Russia Relations, and Arthur Schneier, who is the founder and president of the "Appeal of Conscience Foundation" and who gained the "Presidential Citizens Medal".
The second meeting was in Doha, Qatar, from 25 to 27 February 2006 with the agenda of aiming to find ways to calm the cartoon crisis between West and Islamic world.
He pointed out two key arguments for abolition: the death penalty is irreversible – mistakes cannot be repaired – and there is no evidence of its deterrent value to prevent criminality.
[citation needed] In 2013 Federico Mayor Zaragoza joined the Nizami Ganjavi International Center Board along with Ismail Serageldin, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Tarja Halonen, Suleyman Demirel, Roza Otunbayeva, Walter Fust.
Federico Mayor Zaragoza and Ambassador Karim Errouaki were keynote speakers at the first annual Peace Education Conference,[8] held virtually in September 2021.
Its activities focus mainly on linking and mobilizing networks of institutions, organizations and individuals who have proven their commitment to the values of the Culture of Peace.
Each year the foundation offers an annual Culture of Peace course in collaboration with the Juan Carlos I University of Madrid, with educational content including democracy, human rights and the origin of conflicts.
Federico Mayor Zaragoza supported the stand taken by UNESCO with regard to peace, disarmament, human rights and education.
The specific aim of the book, which he has drawn up in collaboration with Jerome Binde and with the assistance of Jean-Yves Le Saux, Ragnar Gudmundsson and the team of UNESCO's Analysis and Forecasting Office, is to prepare people more thoroughly for the coming decades so that they may respond in good time to the challenges of the future.
[citation needed]He later worked with Edward J. Nell (Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research, New York) and Karim Errouaki[note 2] on a book called Reinventing Globalization after the Crash (2016).
Comprising, among others, Columbia University Professor of History Edward Malefakis, and Juan Pablo Fusi, the committee declared in 2004, by a majority of 14 of its 17 members, that it was "just and legitimate" that the documents be returned to the autonomous government.