International Year for the Culture of Peace

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The International Year for the Culture of Peace was designated by the United Nations as the year 2000, with the aim of celebrating and encouraging a culture of peace.

1 Origins
2 UNESCO and the IYCP Taskforce
3 International Year Strategies
4 Assessment of the International Year
5 Ongoing Commitment of the United Nations
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Origins

Since 1959 the United Nations has designated specific years to emphasize issues which are part of the mission of the organization. The International Year for the Culture of Peace was proclaimed in a United Nations General Assembly resolution in 1997 on the basis of an Economic and Social Council resolution.^[1] with a Declaration and Programme of Action produced after a ten months of negotiation.^[2]

[edit] UNESCO and the IYCP Taskforce

The lead organization for the International Year was UNESCO. There was a logic to this, in that UNESCO is the United Nations organization dealing with education, and also in that the constitutional mandate of UNESCO involves the encouragement of a global culture of peace. Within the UNESCO Secretariat in Paris, a specific International Year for the Culture of Peace Taskforce was established, with the aim of co-ordinating the activities to publicize the International Year.

[edit] International Year Strategies

The strategies behind the International Year centred upon involving civil society as much as possible. The specific initiatives included the collection of some 75 million signatures worldwide in support of a culture of peace, with the Manifesto 2000 Project ^[3]. Another initiative was the Culture of Peace News Network (CPNN), a plan to develop a world-wide network of locally-based websites reporting news in support of a culture of peace.

[edit] Assessment of the International Year

Opinion is divided as to how effective the International Year was. It is possible to argue that there was much rhetoric in the International Year, and yet often the impact of such events can only be discerned many years later ^[4].