PRESS RELEASE/BRIEF

PRESS RELEASE/BRIEF

Global Peace Education Day
Email: contact@GlobalPeaceEducationDay.com

World Peace Leaders Tell United Nations:

Declare GLOBAL PEACE EDUCATION DAY!

NEW YORK. September 20.  Leading international peace advocates, diplomats, educators and artists will gather online Tuesday, September 20 to insist that the United Nations make Global Peace Education Day an annual United Nations event.   The yearly Global Peace Education Day conference spotlights the success of peace education in transforming lives around the world, even in the face of war, pandemic and climate change. Last year, more than 1,500 people attended from 86 countries.  Registration for the online event is free at GlobalPeaceEducation.com/Registration.

Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO Assistant Director General for Human and Social Sciences chairs the event. “The search for peace may be as old as humanity itself,” she says. “Peace cannot be secured through economic and political cooperation alone. It must be nurtured through the everyday elevation of the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes needed to understand, appreciate and cooperate across differences.  If we can learn to spread war, we can learn to spread peace.” 

Stage and screen actor Michael Nouri hosts the Global Peace Education Day event. “If we prepared for peace the way we prepare for war, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” he says. “That’s why I’m an ambassador for Seeds of Peace, preparing young leaders around the globe to be ready for peace with training, skills, knowledge and experience to build a peaceful world.”  

“I was honored last year to be the inaugural speaker for a Global Peace Education Day,” says Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, former UN Undersecretary-General. “As human beings we must empower ourselves to contribute more effectively to bring inner as well as outer peace. This realization has now become more important, especially for women, youth and children, in the midst of the ever increasing military expansion that is destroying both our planet and our people.”  The ambassador has served the United Nations as Under-Secretary-General, President of the UN Security Council, the UNICEF board, and high representative of the UN, advocating for the most vulnerable countries of the world.

“A global network of peace educators is very important because it allows us to establish a culture of peace,” said Tunisia’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ouided Bouchamaoui. “Peace education must be widely accepted by all nations, societies, and cultures. They require the abilities and knowledge to foster peace.”  Bouchamaoui won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 for stabilizing democracy following Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution.

“We need educators who can educate in a culture of peace and non-violence,” says former UNESCO Director General Dr..  “We know that our earth faces an irreversible threat, but now we the people will act to prevent all this by implementing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.  A United Nations Global Peace Education Day will provide a transition from a culture of imposition, domination and war to a culture of encounter, conciliation, dialog, alliance and peace.”

Global Peace Education Day speaker Kehkashan Basu was only 12 years old when she founded the global Green Hope Foundation to educate her peers about the Sustainable Development Goals. She is a Climate Reality Mentor, former Global Coordinator for Children and Youth, UNEP MGFC, and a UN Human Rights Champion. “The way we facilitate peace education is to empower women in underserved communities to drive change. We’ve just opened a sewing school where women and girls make masks, clothes, bags and sell these products to earn their livelihood.”

“Africa continues to be wracked with violence so it has a special need for peace education,” says – Professor Dr. Karim Errouaki, Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Foreign Affairs and International Development, the State of the African Diaspora (SOAD), President Emeritus of the American University of Europe, Former Special Advisor to the UN SG late Prof. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Ambassador of OLA-DSCC to the UNECA, African Union and CAFRAD-PanAfrican Intergovernmental

Other noted speakers include:

• Dr. Kozue Akibayashi: Professor, Doshisha University Graduate School of Global Studies, Kyoto, Japan; past President, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
• Ambassador Al Alim Alsoswa: Yemen’s first woman Minister of Human Rights; Ambassador to the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark; UN Assistant Secretary General

• Dr. Fawzieh al-Ammar: Senior Research Fellow, Sana’a Centre for Strategic Studies, Sana’a University 
• Willow Baker: Program Director, Peace Education Program, The Prem Rawat Foundation
• Reiner Braun: Executive Director, International Peace Bureau
• Dr. Doudou Diene: Senegalese jurist and author, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance
• Dr. Lisa Worth Huber: President and Board Chair, National Peace Academy
• Prof. Dr. Karim Errouaki: Minister of Finance and International Development, State of the African Diaspora (SOAD)
• Garry Jacobs: President and CEO, World Academy of Art & Science; Chairman of the Board and CEO, World University Consortium
• Dr. Tony Jenkins: Managing Director, Global Campaign for Peace Education, International Institute for Peace Education
• Dr. Guila Clara Kessous: UNESCO Artist for Peace
• Steve Killilea: Founder, Institute on Economics and Peace
• Dr. Andrew Laszlo: President of the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS), Director of Research at the Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research (LINPR)
• Dr. Stéphane Monney Mouandjo: Director General, African Training and Research Centre in Administration for Development (CAFRAD)

“We no longer understand the simple need to be kind. Even in environments that should be full of love, full of encouragement, full of understanding, you find that people are fighting,” says keynote speaker Prem Rawat, creator of a peace education program which partners with governments, NGOs and volunteers in more than 70 countries. “On the other hand, you have a Peace Education Program in India’s Telengana State that closed down five prisons!  The people that were released did not come back. This is what the Peace Education Program has done! Not what it can do.” 

“Peace and justice are the two components of a society that values everyone,” says Bishop Horace Smith, MD, pastor of Chicago’s Apostolic Faith Church. “What we see in every child – what we see in their future – is life in all its fullness.  This calls forth a prayer in the heart of all of us – the will to make it so.”  He is also Pediatric Hematology/Oncology physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago; Assistant Professor at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine; and Presiding Bishop Emeritus of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc.

The Global Peace Education Network is calling upon the UN General Assembly to declare a Global Peace Education Day.  The year-old global collaboration is taking grassroots action to share skills, know-how, and best practices to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development goals. It includes the Global Movement for the Culture of Peace, Fundación Cultura de Paz, Spanish Federation of UNESCO Associations and Clubs, Malaga Club of UNESCO, International Institute for Peace Education, Global Campaign for Peace Education, Institute for Economics and Peace, Pathways to Peace, The Prem Rawat Foundation, the National Peace Academy, Unity Foundation, PeaceChannel.com and a growing number of others.  The Global Peace Education Network promotes cooperation, resource sharing and information exchange about peace education strategies, structures and curricula.

Free Registration at GlobalPeaceEducation.com/Registration

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