International Day of Peace

Although world peace seems to be unreachable, especially for a longer period, people around the world wish to live in a peaceful place that hasn’t even heard the term “war”. To support people’s idea of peace, the United Nations General Assembly decided to establish the International Day of Peace in 1981. The main goal of this creation was to celebrate peace and absence of war. Even in the warzones people still accept this Day as a reason to ceasefire. Another goal was to commemorate the Day with the use of education and knowledge of the problems thatoccur through the world . 

At first, the Day was meant to be every third Thursday of September. In 2002 the date was changed and fixed at 21^st day of September. To initiate the day, the Japanese Peace Bell – a gift made from coins donated by children from around the world (excluding Africa) that was donated by Japan to the United Nations – is being rung by the UN’s leaders. The bell itself is one of 50 identical copies of a bell destroyed by a nuclear bomb in Hiroshima in 1945. Its symbolism is to show people the human cost of war. 

In the morning of 11^th September 2001, Kofi Annan the Secretary General of UN gave a speech at the opening of the UN General Assembly. He reminded us that this was the 20^th anniversary of “a day of world-wide peace and goodwill”. Unfortunately he wasn’t aware of what was about to happen in a few hours in the same city he gave the speech at. The famous Twin Towers of New York City collapsed after being attacked by terrorists.  

We as human beings hope that one day we’ll reach world peace. At the same time we understand that it’s not likely to happen but as they say hope dies last.




Daniel Tarka, Erasmus student from Poland, and Laura Silva, students at the course in Technical English III, LpRI