We are encouraged by the report of UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffith’s tour of Afghanistan, who points to interactions with the Taliban that show cracks in the monolith of the existing authority. An encouraging number of provincial Taliban seem ready to change.
How to teach peace around the planet was the topic of the Global Peace Education Forum on UN Education Day, January 24. Talks included UN Sec-Gen Antonio Guterres, Taliban shooting survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, UNESCO top educator Stefania Giannini, French activist/actress and Harvard professor Guila Clara Kessous, and UNESCO ex-chief Federico Mayor Zaragoza.
The upcoming Transforming Education Summit, part of the UN Secretary General’s ambitious agenda, can truly bring accountability and participation to the inevitably new ways education will be imparted in the future.
This joint statement is well worth reading by peace educators as a basis of an inquiry on the integral relationship of the human rights of women to the achievement of just and stable peace.
“The war in Ukraine threatens not only sustainable development, but the survival of humanity. We call upon all nations, operating in accordance with the UN Charter, to put diplomacy to the service of humanity by ending the war through negotiations before the war ends us all.” – Sustainable Development Solutions Network
We call on all whom we can reach to send their own requests to Secretary-General Guterres to go to Moscow and Kyiv to establish an immediate ceasefire and advance serious peace talks sponsored by the UN, representing the world’s people who want and need peace.
Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN and Founder of The Global Movement for The Culture of Peace, spoke at the First Annual Peace Education Day Conference organized virtually by The Unity Foundation and Peace Education Network. The conference organizers support an agenda to create a “Global Peace Education Day.”
The present terms of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan expire on September 17. The human rights of Afghan women and girls may depend upon its continuation and expansion.
Civil society continues to look for opportunities to bring precedents and bases for meaningful action to the attention of those within the UN system that have the capacity to act on Afghanistan. Please read our latest proposal put forth in a letter to the Canadian Ambassador to the UN and please consider signing to indicate your support.
Members of international civil society assert that the human rights and security of women and girls must be integral to whatever course of action the UN determines to take in Afghanistan. We invite you to join in this effort, by signing this call to protect Afghan women, to establish UNSCR 1325 as a practically applicable international norm, and to assure that peacekeepers are prepared to honor its principles.
Underlining UN commitment to achieving a nuclear-free world, Secretary-General António Guterres has urged governments to strengthen efforts to make this goal a reality.
UN Secretary-General António Guterre, among other leaders, advocates for proactive environmental justice in the face of climate change.