Today, the world celebrates International Peace Day.
“We are a world in pieces. We need to be a world at peace,” said Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday at the annual UN General Assembly in New York.
The UN chief said that the world is seeing insecurity rising, inequality growing, conflict spreading, climate changing, societies fragmenting and political discourse polarizing. He that global anxieties about nuclear weapons are at the highest level since the end of the Cold War due to provocative nuclear and missile tests by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “The solution must be political. This is a time for statesmanship. We must not sleepwalk our way into war,” Guterres warned.
The International Day of Peace is observed since 1982. The 2017 theme is “Together for Peace: Respect, Safety and Dignity for All”. The goal is to engage and mobilize people throughout the world to show support for refugees and migrants and to bring people together and remind us of our common humanity.
Who doesn’t long for world peace these days? But, what can I, and you, do?
Come and share an intercultural evening of poetry, music and collaborative story telling this evening at BonnLAB. (See event details below.)
There will be an open stage (for poems & songs for peace) and readings by Hidir Celik and Barbara Degen. We will also hold a minute of silence for victims of war, conflict, violence and expulsion around the world. The evening will end with an inner peace mediation, guided by Syrian Kung Fu Master Sohaib Alhasan.
Hidir Celik is the director of the Bonn Institute for Migration and Intercultural Learning (BIM e.V. located at MigraPolis), a social scientist, author and poet. He’s of Turkish-Kurdish decent and will read from his new book, titled “Ich stehe vor Euren Toren” (“I’m standing in front of your gates”), a collection of poems published in May.
Barbara Degen is a lawyer, women’s rights advocate, author and the co-founder of the House of Women’s History (HDFG e.V.) in Bonn Altstadt.
A group of local refugees will talk about their collective arts project “Human and Boat – Memorial against Forgetting” was last month displayed at the Lutheran St. Lukas Church.
The wooden arts installation was created last fall. It includes a boat and several figures, one featuring Alan Kurdi, the 3-year old Syrian refugee boy who drowned two years ago in his family’s attempt to reach Greece. The photograph of him washed up on a Turkish beach became a symbol of the refugee crisis.
Peace Day began in 1981 with a UN resolution, sponsored by Costa Rica and the United Kingdom. In 2001, the UN resolved that Sept. 21 will be a day for wide scale community action to celebrate peace.
In 2012, the UK-based nonprofit Peace One Day invited people from around the world to join by singing, sharing, writing and/or reciting POEMS FOR PEACE on Peace Day. They discovered that poems opened a way of sharing our very humanity — our love and respect for one another, our prayers for peace, forgiveness and healing.
Please join us to strengthen the ideas of peace, both within our community and among nations and peoples. The event is free of charge.
WHAT: Intercultural Evening with Peace Poetry Reading and Music
WHEN: Sept. 21, 2017, 7-10 PM
WHERE: BonnLAB, Zingsheimstr. 2, 53225 Bonn-Beuel
7.00 pm – Welcome reception & Short Film Screening
7.30 pm – Reading by Hidir Celik
8.00 pm – Minute of silence with candle circle in remembrance of victims of war, violence, flight & displacement
8.10 pm – Open Stage: Songs, Poems & Story Telling
8.30 pm – Reading by Barbara Degen
9.00 pm – Open Stage – Peace Dance & Eurythmy Excercise with Selma Fricke
9.30 pm – Peace Meditation guided by Sohaib Alhasan
10.00 pm – Ending
