21 September marks the International Day of Peace. To celebrate this special occasion, a UN campaign was kicked off earlier this month, urging people around the world to compose messages to be published on a website. It hopes to become a concerted effort to express a universal desire for peace.
The UN system in China joined the campaign by collecting the text messages on its website (http://peace.un.org.cn). Participants were asked to answer two questions: What would make the world a more peaceful place? What would you like to do for world peace?
During the past two weeks, over 300 powerful messages in Chinese and English came from peace lovers across the country, including college students, teachers and Olympic volunteers, among others. They expressed their best wishes for increased communication between countries and that all societies can prosper through peace and development.
“To communicate, to love”, one message reads. Dora, a school teacher, said that she has been doing her best to teach her students that there is nothing that cannot be solved through peaceful means, but anything can be frustrated by war and violence.
Other people believe that education can be a powerful force to reduce conflicts caused by misunderstandings among various cultures. At the same time, education can help lift people out of poverty, one of the triggers of conflicts and violence. There are also messages encouraging women to say “no” to domestic violence.
Various media organizations teamed up with the UN to promote this campaign in China. China’s biggest video website, Youku.com, created an on-line discussion board and placed promotion banners on their main channels. QQ, one of the most popular internet communication platforms in China, advertised the campaign on its Charity Channel. Beijing Youth Newspaper reported this campaign and encouraged the readers to contribute their ideas on the future of the world.
The International Day of Peace was first established by the UN General Assembly in 1981 as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence. The Assembly called for people around the world to use the Day as an opportunity to promote the resolution of conflict and to observe a cessation of hostilities during it.