Together for Peace: to the International Day of Peace

The thematic exhibition "Together for Peace", dedicated to the International Day of Peace, is open from September 14 to October 17 in Official Documents department (room 207).

This day was established by the UN General Assembly (resolution A/RES/36/67) in 1981 and is celebrated annually on 21 September.

The peace in the world is the main value for any person. To defend its ideals, to strengthen friendly relations between states, to work together to achieve peace throughout the world are the main principles that guided the UN by establishing this holiday.

The events of recent years – wars, terrorism, military expenditures, deep contradictions, separating nations and individuals around the world, have conditioned the unprecedented relevance of the International Day of Peace today.

The UN invites all countries and peoples on this Day to stop all military actions and celebrate it by conducting educational and public information campaigns on the problems of peace.

The celebration of the International Day of Peace is accompanied by various activities, but the ceremony of the Peace Bell is unchanged. It is traditionally opened by the appeal of the UN Secretary General, after which he strikes the bell. Then follows the moment’s silence. The peace bell was presented to the United Nations by Japan in June 1954. It is cast from coins collected by children from 60 countries. The inscription on the bell is: "Long Live Absolute World Peace" and every year on September 21 people around the world gather to reaffirm this idea, to remember the victims of conflicts and to declare their readiness to devote themselves to building a safer and more just peace.

17 sustainable development goals were unanimously adopted by the 193 UN member states at the historic summit of heads of state held in New York in September 2015. They are universal and applicable to all countries. The 16^th goal involves promoting the building of peace-loving and open societies for sustainable development, ensuring access to justice for all and creating effective, accountable institutions at all levels. However, the theme of peace goes through all 17 goals, each of them is an integral element of the global architecture of the world. Realization of these goals is crucial for ensuring peace and general prosperity.

Every year, the Day of Peace is dedicated to a specific topic. The theme of 2018 is "The right to peace: 70 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights".

The declaration, adopted almost immediately after the inhuman World War II, which corrected all possible rights, including the right to the lives of millions of people, was the first universal document to formulate human rights provisions. It was drawn up by representatives and endorsed by the leaders of countries of all continents, which, in the words of the preamble of the Declaration, fully realized that "disdain and contempt for human rights led to barbaric acts that outraged the conscience of mankind". It was adopted with the aim of providing not only civil and political, but also social, economic and cultural rights, with the full understanding that development without human rights is impossible, as well as the full realization of human rights without development, and peace, stability and security depend and from that, and from another.

The exhibition represents more than 100 documents that reveal the work of international organizations, governmental and non-governmental institutions and groups in the field of maintaining peace and security. The most part of the exposition consists of documents of international organizations (UN, UNESCO, European Union, Council of Europe, etc.) in Russian and English languages: books, periodicals, mimeographed materials of the UN.

The exhibition includes the following topics:

• international agreements and international legal instruments for the maintenance of peace and security;
• disarmament, nuclear disarmament;
• peacekeeping and peace-building operations;
• combating terrorism and nuclear terrorism;
• human rights and peacekeeping;
• democratization and culture of peace.

The exhibition will be interesting to specialists in the field of world politics, diplomacy, international relations, international law, conflictology, as well as students, undergraduates, political and public figures and all who value peace on Earth.

Useful links

About the International Day of Peace
International Day of Peace (September 21) 
Maintain International Peace and Security
United Nations Peacekeeping
United Nations Operations
United Nations Peacebuilding
Messengers of Peace 
Dialogue among Civilizations
UN Alliance of Civilization

Documents

• Resolution A/RES/36/67 «International Year and International Day of Peace» 
• Resolution A/RES/55/282 «International Day of Peace» 
• Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace
• Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace

The opening hours of the exhibition corresponds to the library’s opening hours.
Entrance to the exhibition is available by the library ticket or ticket of the library's social and cultural center.