Human right to peace.

Excerpts from the declaration The Human Right to Peace, issued in January 1997 by Federico Mayor, the Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO):

Lasting peace is a prerequisite for the exercise of all human rights and duties. ...

We are now approaching the end of a century of amazing scientific and technological progress: we can diagnose and treat many diseases which cause suffering and death; we communicate with extra-ordinary clarity and speed; we have at our disposal instant, limitless information. However, antibiotics and telecommunications do not compensate for the bloody conflicts which have cut down millions of lives in their prime and inflicted indescribable suffering on so many innocent people. All the obscenities of war, brought home to us nowadays by audio-visual equipment, do not seem able to halt the advance of the huge war machine set up and maintained over many centuries.

Present generations have the almost impossible, biblical task of "beating their swords into ploughshares" and making the transition from an instinct for war - developed since time immemorial - to a feeling for peace. To achieve this would be the best and most noble act that the "global village" could accomplish, and the best legacy to our descendants. With what satisfaction and relief should we be able to look into the eyes of our children! It would be also the best way to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in 1998. ...

Our aim must be to foster understanding, generosity and solidarity, so that with our minds more focused on the future than on the past, we may be able to look ahead together and build, however difficult the conditions or inhospitable the setting, a future of peace, which is a fundamental right and pre-requisite. Thus, "We, the people" will have fulfilled the promise we made in 1945, our eyes still seared by the most abominable images of the terrible conflict that had just ended - "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," "to construct the defences of peace in the minds" of all the peoples of the Earth.