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Learning to live together

© UNESCO/Dom Joao

“It is not enough to be connected to each other. We also share our solutions, our experiences and dreams in one great community supported by human rights and fundamental freedoms.” (Irina Bokova, ex-Director-General of UNESCO at the International Conference of National Commissions for UNESCO, Vienna, Austria, 31 May 2012).

In today’s increasingly diverse societies, UNESCO continues to accomplish every day its fundamental humanist mission to support people in understanding each other and working together to build lasting peace. UNESCO also helps to enable people to create and use knowledge for just and inclusive societies.

Yet, lasting peace rests on a complex and fragile web of daily practices embedded in local settings and the most ephemeral encounters that individuals and communities creatively maintain out of the conviction that they constitute the sustainable conditions for living together in dignity and shared prosperity.

At a time of increasing global challenges and threats, such as inequality, exclusion, violence and sectarianism worsened by local tensions and conflicts, which undermine humanity’s cohesion, learning to live together among all members of the global community becomes more topical than ever before.

Individuals become interculturally competent through learning and life experience for successful living in the modern complexity of our heterogeneous world and consequently they become prepared to appreciate diversity as well as to manage conflicts in accordance with the values of pluralism and mutual understanding.

International Day of Living Together in Peace

© UNESCO

Living together in peace is all about accepting differences and having the ability to listen to, recognize, respect and appreciate others, as well as living in a peaceful and united way.

The UN General-Assembly, in its resolution 72/130 (https://undocs.org/A/RES/72/130), declared 16 May the International Day of Living Together in Peace, as a means of regularly mobilizing the efforts of the international community to promote peace, tolerance, inclusion, understanding and solidarity. The Day aims to uphold the desire to live and act together, united in differences and diversity, in order to build a sustainable world of peace, solidarity and harmony.

The Day invites countries to further promote reconciliation to help to ensure peace and sustainable development, including by working with communities, faith leaders and other relevant actors, through reconciliatory measures and acts of service and by encouraging forgiveness and compassion among individuals.

 

 

 

 

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