Note to Correspondents

Secretary-General to Celebrate Thirtieth Anniversary of International Peace Day

at Headquarters with University Originator of Observance, 14 September

 

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will open on Wednesday, 14 September, the “Give Peace Another Chance” symposium in observance of the annual International Day of Peace.  The event will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. in Conference Room 4 of the North Lawn Temporary Conference Building.

His remarks will be followed by those of Inwon Choue, President of Kyung Hee University and Kyung Hee Cyber University in the Republic of Korea.

This year’s observance of the International Day of Peace is significant since it is the thirtieth anniversary of its inception.  It was Kyung Hee University’s then President, Young Seek Choue, who proposed the idea at a conference of the International Association of University Presidents held in San Jose, Costa Rica, in 1981.  The proposal was presented by Costa Rica and endorsed by the thirty-sixth session of the General Assembly on 30 November 1981, in resolution 36/67.

The symposium’s key element will be the round table on “Higher Education and Human Dignity”.  Speakers will include Eduardo Ulibarri, Permanent Representative of Costa Rica to the United Nations and Chair of the Committee on Information; Francis Deng, Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide; Aftab Seth, educationist, diplomat and writer; Norhan Basuni, a City University of New York Baccalaureate student who witnessed the Tahrir Square events in Cairo; Kim Yer-su, former Secretary-General of the Korean National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and former rector of the Global Academy for Future Civilizations at Kyung Hee University; and Beth Nielsen Chapman, singer and songwriter.

Nashville-based Ms. Nielsen Chapman and the New York group Kaleidhaphonic will provide musical performances, and there will be a video projection about the International Day.

The event is organized by the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) programme, in the Outreach Division of the Department of Public Information, in partnership with UNAI member Kyung Hee University.  It will feature a video link connecting the audience at United Nations Headquarters with 5,000 university students and other participants in Seoul.  While the official Day is 21 September, it is observed a week earlier at United Nations Headquarters due to a number of summit-level meetings taking place around that date.

More than 690 universities and academic institutions in 107 countries have joined the UNAI initiative, launched last November by the Secretary-General.

For further information, visit http://outreach.un.org/unai.  For more information on the event, please contact Nathalie Leroy, Senior Public Information Officer, United Nations Academic Impact, Department of Public Information, at tel.:  +1 917 367 8091 or e-mail:  leroyn@un.org.

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For information media • not an official record