Despite international conflicts filling news headlines, peace was the top priority as community members came out to various events to recognize the International Day of Peace on Sunday.
The day was designated by the United Nations in 1981 as an attempt to send the message across the world that “we need peace,” said Lynn Bartley, president of the Greater Lansing United Nations Association.
City
“The UN originally said this is a time to cease fire,” Bartley said, adding that people need to be constantly working towards achieving peace.
Bartley said part of the Greater Lansing United Nations Association’s ongoing efforts is to spread awareness about what the UN has to offer and what they do. This year they hosted an event focusing on the UN’s peacekeeping efforts around the world.
The association Advocacy Chair David Wiley said the UN spends more than $5 billion each year on peacekeeping operations, which now consists of 15 to 17 operations. The operations are mainly situated in Africa and the Middle East.
“Peacekeeping can be really difficult,” said Rashida Harrison, association member and representative of the Michigan Capital area chapter of Zonta International, an international professional organization working toward advancing women’s status.
Harrison said when watching the news, people get to learn about the happenings, but don’t get the chance to look into the “inner workings” of the issues.
One of the challenges facing peacekeeping is that most countries that have UN peacekeeping operations lack a viable political process, said Nedialko Kostov, special assistant to the secretary general for peacekeeping operations in the UN Secretariat, during a Skype presentation.
“You need a peace process (and) a political process,” Kostov said.
Campus
A group of on- and off-campus organizations made sure to highlight the process of continuous peace making this year by hosting an event dubbed “Sowing Seeds of Peace.”
The Shalom Center for Justice and Peace, the MSU Wesley Foundation and the MSU Campus Interfaith Council got together on Thursday at the University United Methodist Church to talk about how peace is perceived and worked towards in different religious faiths and secular beliefs.
Penny Zago, chair of the guiding committee of the Shalom Center, said when the group came together to pick this year’s theme, they realized peace resembles the different stages of the agricultural process: cultivating, sowing, nurturing, harvesting, celebrating and, lastly, sustaining.
“(Peace) begins with cultivating, you have to prepare for that,” Zago said. “The next thing is sowing, you have to get it out there.”
Zago said the Shalom Center started hosting the event six years ago to celebrate the International Day of Peace.
“It was a point where it was bigger than the Shalom Center and it’s always good to be a part of something larger when you’re dealing with such large issues,” she said.
Farha Abbasi, an assistant professor of psychiatry, said it’s important to have such an event because a lot of people’s fears originate from ignorance or from misunderstanding an issue.
“(Peace) is not a moment or an event, it’s something that goes on and has to grow everyday,” Abbasi said.
Chair of the MSU Campus Interfaith Council Dakota Riehl said it’s important to have a forum where it’s safe to discuss peace from various different religious and non-religious standpoints.
“Not only do we want to provide these opportunities for students, we want community members to come in and speak to our students,” said Riehl, who is a religious studies and arts and humanities senior.
“We want them to hear about other faiths, other communities, other belief systems, such as secular ones,” she said.
Abbasi, also one of the speakers at the event, said peace has to start from within people so that it can spread.
