WHAT IS THE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE?

The International Day of Peace (Peace Day) is observed around the world each year on 21 September. Established in 1981 by unanimous United Nations resolution, Peace Day provides a globally shared date for all humanity to commit to Peace above all differences and to contribute to building a Culture of Peace.

2021 Peace Day Theme: Recovering Better for an Equitable and Sustainable World

We invite you to join the efforts of the United Nations family as we focus on recovering better for a more equitable and peaceful world.

To the backdrop of the current Covid-19 Global Pandemic, and keeping in mind so much of death, suffering and deprivation, this year’s International Day of Peace is important for those of us surviving the scourges of the Pandemic, to look ahead and to ask, as Educators at Assumption University of Thailand, how do we promote Peace to our students?

The tenets of our education system which brings together lecturers and students from different cultures, race, religion and socio-economic backgrounds, foregrounds ethics as an instrument of Peace, and this is indeed imperative for us as a University community to enshrine in our personal, educational and societal priorities.

To echo Msgr. Carlos Filipe Belol Ximenes, Titular Bishop of Loriumand Nobel Peace Price 1996, “The education for Peace is an education for global citizenship, and this implicates to favor the understanding of global interdependence and the need to bridge the structural divisions between rich and poor, the developed "North" and the underdeveloped "South"; between the West and the East; between Christianity and Islam, or Islam and Hinduism. To overcome these differences and the distrust that still reigns in the world, the program of Peace’s Culture in the World, and the Education for Peace and for Human Rights, can contribute to Humanity's ethical renewal in this globalized world.”

I would encourage and urge all members of the Assumption University of Thailand’s academic community to place ourselves in the larger framework of world needs for peace, and to strive through whatever we do to promote Peace through Ethics in the present times.

Glen Chatelier, Director
The Office of International Affairs