CELEBRATING INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE 2020

Contributed by: Sean Morrissey 
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September 21st has come to symbolise our shared hope of a more harmonious world. Introduced in 1981 under declaration of the United Nations general assembly, International Peace Day is honoured each year by UN-member states around the world. It provides a brief - though essential - moment for us to reflect on the complexities of our human family, and how we might reach a more egalitarian future together.

​Perhaps it goes without saying that 2020 has been a year of unprecedented challenge whose reach can be felt across the globe, and there is a lens which might see the unfolding events of this year as evidence of our great undoing. I think, though, one could argue the exact opposite; that in fact, the winds of change are blowing an inspired course. As a UK-Based charity with international ambition - to provide clean water, nutritious meals, and personal peace for affected communities around the world - Peace Partners is dedicated to the ideals put forth on this and every International Peace Day.

We the people are more empowered than ever to march and speak out against injustice, no matter the consequence. From pro-democracy demonstrations across Hong Kong and Belarus, to the international reckonings around racial prejudice, police brutality, environmental sustainability and sexual misconduct, the collective will of humanity is charting a truly incredible path.

​What’s more, these global waves of change are all shaped by many millions of people, galvanised around their shared vision of a just and peaceful world. They are, to borrow from this year’s theme, shaping peace together, across social media and the public square and often in solidarity with those most affected communities.

Take the international outpouring of support for the Black Lives Matter movement which, although rooted in the struggle for racial equality in the United States, has been re-appropriated by human rights groups the world over as communities reflect on their own flawed systems of oppression.

The murals of George Floyd appearing throughout historically contested conflict zones such as Bethlehem and Belfast, highlight this shared want for change. Now more than ever, people around the world are beginning to see themselves in their neighbour, to realise the power of Martin Luther King’s declaration that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

And while a day so devoted to world peace may feel intangibly massive, it is important to remember that any vision of international peace is built on myriad acts of kindness, here there and everywhere on earth. We can observe this international peace day through the smallest gesture of compassion, or by engaging the greater good within our own community. Consider the guiding philosophy of the little flower, Saint Thérese of Lisieux:

Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.

Thérese lived by these tiny acts of kindness, believing the heart was made for nothing else but love. Now more than ever, we see how the small sacrifice of one to another can inspire whole communities to action, and how those actions reverberate into larger and larger spaces until at last it settles into the global imagination; shaping peace together.