Message from Ms Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of the International Day of Peace

Date：2021-09-22 Source：BJIPCF Count：6944

Peace on earth is everyone’s responsibility; it is a universal responsibility.

On this International Day of Peace, these words, spoken by Otomí Tolteca, a member of Mexico’s indigenous Otomí community, remind us of our duty to show solidarity towards our fellow human beings; the building and defending of peace is a universal enterprise, a collective undertaking, which is carried out daily and which concerns us all.

Being responsible for peace means acting, on a personal scale, to overcome the flaws and injustices which continue to prevent us from achieving an egalitarian world. Because a planet eroded by division is a planet which knows no peace.

Building peace over the long term, through dialogue and compromise, is precisely the founding ambition of the United Nations, expressed at the end of a terribly destructive world war.

At UNESCO it is our conviction that this mission must necessarily and from the very outset involve work on education, culture and science, given that, as expressed in the Preamble to our Constitution, “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”.

Every day, through our programmes and our actions in the field, UNESCO reaffirms our founders’ commitment to ensuring that peace is more than just the absence of war. This is a conviction held firmly in both the mind and the heart, a capacity to live together while respecting each other's differences.

It is this commitment to peace in diversity which we resolutely honour throughout the International Decade for the Rapprochement of Cultures (2013-2022), and which was at the heart of the first edition of our Global Forum against Racism and Discrimination in March 2021.

Nevertheless, because peace requires daily effort and entails transformation which must be constantly tended to, the path towards universal peace is a long one. Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the first President of an independent Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, liked to say that “peace is not a word, but a behaviour”. We celebrate his legacy by awarding the Félix Houphouët-Boigny – UNESCO Peace Prize.

Now more than ever therefore, solidarity and cooperation are essential to ensuring a culture of peace in our societies and to protecting the world’s most vulnerable populations.

On the occasion of this International Day, our Organization thus calls on everyone to engage in dialogue and to share ideas about the future with due respect for the diversity of opinions and of people. For this is what is at stake in our common quest for lasting world peace.

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