‘Wales as a Nation of Peace’ – UN Peace Day, 21 Sept 2024
UN World Peace Day, 21 September 2024
To imagine a Wales and a world where peace reigns is not just to imagine the absence of war. It’s to imagine a place where we all live free from fear, where our rights are respected, and where everybody is equal. It’s to imagine conducting all our relationships – with ourselves, neighbour to neighbour, stranger to stranger, community to community, country to country – with justice and fairness. Imagine if this kind of positive peace was part of our national identity, a value that drove all of what we do.
Ahead of the United Nations Summit of the Future, a global cooperation event held in New York this weekend, Academi Heddwch Cymru (Wales’s Peace Institute) has been working on a paper which explores how Wales can become a Nation of Peace – Cymru fel Cenedl Heddwch. Imagine that.
The paper affirms that the people of Wales have, time and again, undertaken innovative, sometimes world-leading initiatives to promote peace. For example, in 1923 the women of Wales took part in an unprecedented appeal. 390,296 women, signed a peace petition calling on the United States to join and lead the League of Nations. In this way, the women of Wales, stricken with a collective grief following the horrors of the first world war, played a role in the very founding of the United Nations.
How can we build on this proud legacy of peace-making in Wales? How can Wales foster dialogue as a way of life, where people seek cooperation rather than conflict? What kind of pathways would Wales need to build to become a Nation of Peace? And how do we get there?
In a time of escalating global conflict, with deepening divisions and multiple crises facing us, peace can be a dream too difficult to realise, and hope a thing too easy to lose. But we can all contribute to a culture of peace, as a new generation of young peacemakers has stressed. Through the Urdd’s Peace & Goodwill Message, these young people have shown us how ‘Hope is an Action – Gweithred yw Gobaith’. They know that atrocities, wars and violence must be stopped, and know too that cooperation, passion and hope are the driving forces that can lead to a better and peaceful future.
21st September is the International Day of Peace, providing a day for all of us, world-wide, to commit to peace above all differences and to take action to build a culture of peace. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption of the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace. The UN recognised that peace ‘not only is the absence of conflict, but also requires a positive, dynamic participatory process where dialogue is encouraged and conflicts are solved in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation.’
In the forthcoming ‘Wales as a Nation of Peace’ report, Academi Heddwch Cymru also recognises this and considers how promoting peace is fundamental to the delivery of the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, legislation intended to enshrine action towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Welsh law.
This weekend we will be looking towards the Summit of the Future to see how countries from across the globe will cooperate to tackle the challenges of our time and renew their commitments to get delivery of the SDGs back on track. Ahead of the Summit, Philémon Yang, President of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, underscored the need to restore trust and solidarity among nations, adding that people are ‘desperately looking for a glimmer of hope’.
Here in Wales let us hear the voices of the peacemakers who lived here before us chiming with the sage advice of the young peacemakers who live here now. On International Day of Peace let’s all commit to cultivating a culture of peace in Wales and unite behind a vision of Wales as a Nation of Peace.
Academi Heddwch is Wales’s national peace institute. Established formally in 2020, Academi Heddwch was founded as an alliance with every university in Wales, the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol, the Learned Society of Wales and the WCIA, with the support of the Peace Movement in Wales, Race Council Wales, Urdd Gobaith Cymru and the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales.
Academi Heddwch aims to extend Wales’s long-standing tradition of peace-making and peace-promotion by developing and coordinating an independent community of researchers in related fields. Funded by Welsh Government, Academi Heddwch works to place peace firmly on Wales’s national agenda as well as on the international stage.
We will be announcing the launch date of the Nation of Peace report on our website very soon: https://www.wcia.org.uk/academiheddwch/
