A Preview of the International Day of Peace
A Preview of the International Day of Peace
Hello, this is Chris & Partners. 😊 If there's one most peaceful day in the year, when would it be? 🕊 It's probably September 21, the International Day of Peace. Some of you may be unfamiliar with the Day of Peace. Let's find out together just what kind of day it is!
The International Day of Peace
In 1981 the UN established the International Day of Peace and decided to observe the third Tuesday of September each year as the International Day of Peace. (Changed to September 21 from 2001.) But did you know our country greatly contributed to establishing this Day of Peace? At the time, the global village was in a period when the Cold War mood—centered on the US and the former Soviet Union—reached its peak. Against this backdrop, at the International Association of University Presidents conference held in San José, the capital of Costa Rica, in June 1981, Dr. Choue Young-seek, founder of Kyung Hee University and chair of the world presidents' conference, through his keynote ‘Peace is more Precious than Triumph,’ proposed urging the UN to establish an International Day of Peace. At this assembly, about 600 university presidents unanimously passed Dr. Choue's proposal to establish a UN International Day of Peace. At the time, Korea was not a UN member state and had no authority to submit a motion, but with the help of the Costa Rican government it was submitted, adopted by the UN, and the International Day of Peace came to be established. The fact that, on a page of history we hadn't known, there was someone who worked for world peace representing the Republic of Korea evokes pride and emotion. The 2021 International Day of Peace proceeds under the theme “Recovering better for an equitable and sustainable world”, and it appears the focus will be on the exclusion, stigma, discrimination, and hatred caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the recovery of nature, including climate change.
Examples of peace events
1. PBF
Dr. Choue Young-seek, founder of Kyung Hee University, proposing the establishment of the International Day and Year of Peace at the 6th International Association of University Presidents conference. Source: Kyung Hee University
The PBF event is Peace BAR Festival, where BAR means spiritually Beautiful, materially Affluent, humanly Rewarding— ‘spiritually beautiful, materially affluent, and humanly rewarding’—a global-village peace festival that seeks the path of future civilization by combining an international academic conference holding the meaning of building such a global community together with various events. PBF is an event hosted by Kyung Hee University, founded by Dr. Choue Young-seek, who proposed establishing the International Day of Peace, and each year, commemorating the establishment of the International Day and Year of Peace, it invites various speakers and holds events.
2. The Paris Peace Forum
The Paris Peace Forum is an international conference founded in 2018 by France's President Macron, with the purpose of commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, reflecting on the pain of war, and having the whole world cooperate to establish a permanent peace. At the Paris Peace Forum, leaders of civil society—heads of state of each country, as well as regional and international organizations, NGOs, companies, associations, and more—attend to discuss and converse on various topics.
3. The 2020 Seoul Peace Dialogue
Hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and The Seoul Institute, the 2020 Seoul Peace Dialogue was an event where research institutes from home and abroad gathered to diagnose the changing security environment and discuss countermeasures and cooperation plans. It was also a time to deliberate together on what role Seoul—as the most populous city on the Korean Peninsula and the central city of the Republic of Korea's diplomacy, politics, security, and technology—would play to build peace on the divided Korean Peninsula. If you're curious for more about the 2020 Seoul Peace Dialogue, which Chris & Partners took part in through speaker booking, studio construction, and online seminar operation, click!
4. The PyeongChang Peace Forum
The PyeongChang Peace Forum is an event held each year in early February since 2019, commemorating the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Reviving the meaning of PyeongChang, which became a byword for the Peace Olympics, it is an event that aims to build a global peace platform to sustain the growth engine of peacebuilding on the Korean Peninsula—by grafting peace onto the global agenda and drawing out the international community's cooperation. Each year it holds discussions across various fields—sports, the economy, sustainability, and more—and as a result adopts a resolution, urging all governments, international organizations, and global civil society to join concrete, practical action for a peace system on the Korean Peninsula. In these days when the theme of ‘peace’ feels heavier and more meaningful than before through the COVID pandemic, we pray that peace comes to our country, the Korean Peninsula, and the whole world. 🙏🏻
Are you planning a hybrid event? Chris & Partners—partner with us! As a proven PCO that responds flexibly and aptly to clients' needs, we provide tailored services to deliver the best results from the planning stage to the finish—program and content planning, consulting, speaker booking, follow-up, and more.