25th Anniversary of the UN Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 9 Dec 2024
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service
1 Dec 2024 – Twenty-five years ago, in September 1999, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, which many have compared to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the most important resolutions in its history. Having been deeply involved in its preparation, I thought it would be fitting to provide the historical details.
My involvement with the culture of peace goes back to 1988 when I learned about it from Father Felipe MacGregor from Peru during the preparations for the Yamoussoukro conference. It was that conference a year later that adopted his proposal of the culture of peace. MacGregor had published in 1986 a book entitled Cultura de Paz, written and beautifully illustrated for an audience of school children.
Over the years, my involvement deepened when I went to UNESCO, as described in detail in my Early History of the Culture of Peace. I was honored to be given major responsibilities for the culture of peace by Director-General Federico Mayor, who announced in his re-election speech of 1993 that “I intend to devote myself personally, in the coming years, to the culture of peace.”
The involvement of the UNGA in the culture of peace began in 1995 when the New York office of UNESCO, headed at that time by Jorge Wertheim and including Anita Amorin, worked with a number of Latin American delegations, including Peru, leading to resolution A/50/173 adopted in December 1995. The resolution requested UNESCO to report to the General Assembly at its fifty-first session on the progress of educational activities in the framework of the transdisciplinary project entitled “Towards a culture of peace.”
In1996 Nina Sibal followed Werthein as director of the New York office of UNESCO, and she continued this work. In July she requested us at UNESCO to prepare a draft resolution for the member states with whom she was working, and on behalf of Director-General Mayor I drafted and sent her a proposal. This led to UNGA resolution A/51/101 in December 1996 requesting UNESCO to prepare and submit “elements for a draft provisional declaration and programme of action on a culture of peace” for its 52nd session.
Director-General Mayor put me in charge of developing the programme of action, and he requested Sema Tanguiane to develop the declaration. Tanguiane, when he was Assistant-Director General of UNESCO in 1974 had taken the lead in the drafting and adoption of the landmark 1974 Recommendation concerning education for international understanding, co-operation and peace and education relating to human rights and fundamental freedoms. He and I worked well together.
In 1996, the main themes of the Programme of Action were foreshadowed in an article I prepared with Michael True for the International Peace Research Newsletter. The six themes were the transition from the methods of the culture of war to those of a culture of peace:
(i) power defined not in terms of violence but active nonviolence,
(ii) tolerance and solidarity instead of enemy images,
(iii) democratic participation instead of hierarchical authority,
(iv) sharing of information instead of secrecy and control of information,
(v) power-sharing between men and women instead of male domination,
(vi) cooperation and sustainable development instead of exploitation.
In 1997, these six themes were included in a draft of the programme of action that I sent in April and May to the UNESCO sectors requesting their inputs. The drafts were revised on the basis of substantial inputs from Ingeborg Breines in the Culture of Peace Unit, Doudou Diene in the Culture Sector and Alain Modoux and Choy Arnaldo in the Communication sector.
With the agreement of Director-General Mayor, our draft Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace was included in the report sent to the UNGA and published as A/52/292 in September 1997.
Document A/52/292 included the elements as above for a draft provisional United Nations programme of action on a culture of peace .
A. Aims
B. Strategies
C. Action to promote non-violence and respect for human rights
D. Action to foster democratic participation and sustainable human development for all
E. Action to ensure equality between women and men
F. Action to support participatory communication and the free flow of information and knowledge`
G. Action to advance understanding, tolerance and solidarity among all people and cultures
H. Coordination and popularization of action to promote a culture of peace
The final section of document A/52/292 included the following paragraphs:
107. In order to promote a global movement, partnerships for a culture of peace should be developed between the United Nations and Member States with various intergovernmental, governmental and non-governmental organisations, including educators, journalists, parliaments and mayors, religious communities, and organisations of youth and women.
108. A coherent vision for a culture of peace, prepared by summarizing in everyday words this declaration and programme of action, should be disseminated widely to young people.
The UNGA did not take up the Declaration and Programme of Action in 1997, but in their culture of peace resolution A/52/13 in January 1998, they made note of having received the drafts in A/52/292 and again requested UNESCO to submit a consolidated report containing a draft declaration and programme of action on a culture of peace to the General Assembly for its fifty-third session.
We had previously obtained inputs from the UNESCO sectors, but this time the Director General wrote to all UN specialized agencies and other Inter Governmental Organizations on 14 February 1998 to request their inputs. As reported to the Director-General on 6 March 1998, the Director of the New York office, with back-up from me at headquarters, engaged the main UN Executive Committees to provide their inputs.
In September 1998, we sent a new version of the draft Declaration and Programme of Action from UNESCO to the the UNGA via the UN Secretary-General that was published as A/53/370. It includes a list of all agencies that contributed to the document under each of the eight areas of the Programme of Action.
Document A/53/370 now included the following sections for the programme of action:
i). Actions to promote respect for human rights
(ii). Actions to develop education, training and research for peace and non-violence
(iii). Actions to implement sustainable human development for all
(iv). Actions to foster democratic participation
(v). Actions to ensure equality between women and men
(vi) Actions to support participatory communication and the free flow and sharing of information and knowledge
(vii) Actions to advance understanding, tolerance and solidarity among all peoples and cultures
(viii) Coordination with actions for international peace and security
(ix) The International Year for the Culture of Peace
These sections are similar to sections C through G of the document provided in 1997 with the addition of a section for education for peace, the separation of democratic participation and sustainable human development, and the addition of international peace and security. The latter had been omitted previously because Member States insisted it was the responsibility of the UN Security Council and not UNESCO.
Document A/53/370 also included the following paragraphs, the first repeated from 1997 and the second a new addition:
4. In order to promote a global movement, partnerships for a culture of peace should be increased and strengthened between the United Nations and the Member States with various inter-governmental, governmental and non-governmental organizations, including educators, artists, journalists, parliaments, mayors and local authorities, armed forces, religious communities, and organizations of youth and women.
5. The strategy should include the mobilization of resources for this programme of action, including an extra-budgetary and voluntary fund whereby governmental and private agencies can provide financial support for its implementation.
In 1999, after the document A/53/370 arrived at the UN, it ran into opposition from the Great Powers and had to go through nine months of “informal consultations” (perhaps the most in UN history) before it was finally adopted. The person who managed this “birth process” with great diplomacy and skill was the Ambassador from Bangladesh, Anwarul Chowdhury. I have described that process in detail elsewhere.
Because of the opposition from the Great Powers, the Declaration and Programme of Action was delayed and adopted by consensus on September 13, 1999, the last day of the UNGA session. If a resolution is not adopted in the session in which it is introduced, it cannot be introduced in another session. Despite Chowdhury’s valiant efforts, all references to the culture of war had been removed after the European Union complained that there is no culture of war in the world. And the Great Powers removed the section requesting a voluntary fund for its implementation, so that no UN funds can be spent for its implementation.
Despite the opposition of the Great Powers and despite the removal of reference to the culture of war, the Declaration and Programme of Action for a Culture of Peace remains an important roadmap in the transition from a culture of war to a culture of peace. All of us who took part in its development can be proud of our efforts!
As a postscript, we should note that for the first time the European Union publicly stated their official support for the culture of peace during the 2024 High Level Forum of the UNGA on the Culture of Peace. Most other member states (but never the United States) have sponsored the annual UN resolution on a culture of peace.
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Dr. David Adams is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the UN International Year for the Culture of Peace. Previously, at Yale and Wesleyan Universities, he was a specialist on the brain mechanisms of aggressive behavior, the history of the culture of war, and the psychology of peace activists, and he helped to develop and publicize the Seville Statement on Violence. Send him an email.
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Tags: Culture of Peace, UN Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, UNGA
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