Ask the President to support UN Resolution for Establishment of Infrastructures to Support the Culture of Peace

Join us in urging President Obama, UN Ambassador Samantha Power and the UN General Assembly to support a resolution for Establishment of Infrastructures to Support the Culture of Peace. You can read the full text below. 

Given all the brewing conflicts and ongoing wars around the world, it is time to get more serious and organized around building peace.

1. Tell President Obama and Ambassador Power to support this resolution language and champion it at the UN.

2. Sign Peace Now’s petition, which will ultimately be turned in to the UN General Assembly.

This resolution is part of a petition drive by Peace Now and was in part inspired by the Global Alliance of Ministries and Infrastructures of Peace global gatherings, of which we are a founding member.

Your support will make a difference!

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To the United Nations General Assembly and to all nations of the world, we respectfully submit:

The Global Resolution for the Establishment of Infrastructures to Support the Culture of Peace

We respectfully call upon the United Nations (UN) and all countries, both nationally and in collaboration with the community of nations, to create infrastructures in their governments and in civil society to develop and implement policies, programs and practices that:

1. promote, establish, and maintain human and environmental security and justice in the social, economic, political, educational, and legal spheres, and thus generally the Culture of Peace;

2. effect the “economic conversion” from military to civilian production and more generally create Economies of Peace so as to “beat our swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks”;

3. are accepted and supported by and have legitimacy with the people they serve, whether at the local, regional, national, or international level;

4. are sustainable, adaptive, and resilient; and

5. may be in the form of, but not limited to, government ministries or departments of peace as well as peace academies, institutes, and councils:

• To establish peace as a primary organizing principle in society, both domestically and globally;
• To direct government policy towards non-violent resolution of conflict prior to escalation to violence and to seek peace by peaceful means in all conflict areas;
• To promote justice and democratic principles to expand human rights and the security of persons and their communities, consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, other related UN treaties and conventions, and the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace (1999);
• To promote disarmament and develop and strengthen non-military options for peacemaking and peacebuilding;
• To develop new approaches to non-violent intervention, and utilize constructive dialogue, mediation, and the peaceful resolution of conflict at home and abroad;
• To encourage the involvement in local, national, and global peace-building of local communities, faith groups, NGOs, and other civil society and business organizations;
• To facilitate the development of peace and reconciliation summits to promote non-violent communication and mutually beneficial solutions;
• To act as a resource for the creation and the gathering of best practices documents, lessons learned, and peace impact assessments;
• To provide for the training of all military and civilian personnel who administer post-war reconstruction and demobilization in war-torn societies; and
• To fund the development of peace education curriculum materials for use at all educational levels and to support university-level peace studies.

Further, we call upon the UN General Assembly to reaffirm its pledge, as faithful representatives of the governments of the world, to join “We the Peoples” in creating a peaceful world in the spirit of the UN Charter, thus advancing the Culture of Peace within each nation, each culture, each religion, and each human being for the betterment of all humankind and future generations. In making this call, we gratefully acknowledge the long history of work already accomplished within the UN toward this end, including:

• All the UN documents written on the Culture of Peace since June 1945, in particular, the Charter of the United Nations, which is dedicated to saving succeeding generations from the scourge of armed conflict, calls for nations to live together in peace as good neighbors, and takes to heart its emphasis on the vital role “We the Peoples of the United Nations” are to play in “realizing a peaceful, just and compassionate neighborhood”;
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that the foundation of freedom, justice and peace is the recognition of the inherent rights of all members of the human family without exception, and that all human beings should act towards one another peacefully and in the interest of the common good;
• The UN resolution 52/15 of 20 November 1997, proclaiming the year 2000 as the “International Year for the Culture of Peace, and A/RES/53/25 of 19 November 1998, proclaiming 2001-2010 the “International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World”;
• The UN resolution 53/243 adopted by consensus on 13 September 1999, in which the UN Declaration and Program of Action for a Culture of Peace gives clear guidelines for governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society and people from all walks of life to work together to strengthen the global Culture of Peace as we live through the 21st century;
• The Constitution of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which states, “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed”, and the important role UNESCO is mandated to fulfill in promoting the global Culture of Peace;
• Security Council resolution 1325 of 31 October 2001 on Women, Peace and Security, which acknowledges for the first time the crucial importance of women’s participation in the peace processes, and the follow-up Security Council Resolution 1820 of 19 June 2008 by same name; and
• The many other key UN Culture of Peace documents, including A/RES/52/13, 15 January 1998 Culture of Peace; A/RES/55/282, 28 September 2001 International Day of Peace; and the 2005 Mid-Decade Status Report on the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World.

In conclusion, we respectfully in one voice, affirm that we:

• Are motivated by the recognition that men, women and children in the billions have suffered the atrocities of violent conflict, poverty and human-induced environmental disasters and are thus now more than ever committed to saving future generations from these scourges and are determined to live in peace and to build the Economies of Peace at the individual, national and global levels that will sustain these efforts;
•  Stand in solidarity with all efforts to overcome the persistence of violent conflict in various parts of the world and the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons, which threaten the existence of our planet;
• Believe in the goodwill of all the Member States of the UN and in the increasing political will of each Member State to “promote social progress and better standards of life based in the growing freedoms and capabilities created by global peace”; and
• Acknowledge the urgent need to re-build the trust of the world’s citizens in governments and to establish effective working relationships between and among nations through the cultivation of shared interests and common ground that form the foundation of global peace.