On the occasion of the UN Public Service Day 2018, a meeting on the Culture of Peace held on 25 June 2018 at the United Nations Information Center (UNIC) in Tehran, attended by a group of artists, cultural figures and diplomats.
The first of the series of sessions in 2018 at the UN was held on Monday 25 June to focus on the effect of art on peace with the aim to study various fields of arts to develop peaceful relations among cultures.
At the beginning of the meeting the representative of UNIC in Tehran, in her welcoming speech expressed thanks for holding such events as one of the best measures to establish peace and friendship among nations.
Then Secretary of the meeting, Ms. Tayyeba Mohammed, while appreciating the participants for attending at the meeting, presented a brief overview of the procedures to begin the program and provided a perspective on its outcome in 2020.
The first speaker, Dr. Mohammad Mahdi Mazaheri, president of ECO Cultural Institute in his address at the issue of cultural communication and its impact on peace, stressed that today culture is considered as a soft power in international affairs which is viewed as cultural diplomacy. He also emphasized that: "As the president of an international and cultural institute I firmly believe that through cultural diplomacy we can facilitate and strengthen interactions between states."
The Deputy Director General of Cultural Diplomacy also announced the readiness for joint cooperation to organize international ceremonies in the fields of peace and literature and to support the International Children's Peace Prize in other countries.
Elsewhere at the meeting, the issue of television and its impact on peace as well as the effect of fashion on peace within and beyond borders were discussed.
Fereshteh Ta'erpoor, a children's film producer, in her turn, stated that children are now aware of the main world's issues and that planning for children should be made in a way that they can grasp, deemed it as a critical point that local stories and tales should not be eliminated from children's life as their local language should not be forgotten.
At the end of the ceremony, the Children's Peace Prize designed and registered by the cooperation of the Ambassadors for Peace and Friendship group and the Cultural Institute for the Association of Iran and Norway was unveiled. The award is granted annually to the best children active in five areas of art on promotion, training and presentation of practical projects on peace and friendship. During the meeting, the participants also signed a calligraphy painting artwork created by two artists from Mashhad and Kashan.