|
16 November 2004: International Day for Tolerance |
|
|
|
05 Nov 04 |
Since the General Assembly of the United Nations asked member states in 1996 to observe November 16 as the International Day for Tolerance, the need to focus on this issue has only become more pronounced. The media inundates us daily with reports of violence resulting from intolerance with racial, ethnic, religious and gender roots. The Secretary General, Kofi Annan says that: “Only by fighting intolerance and exclusion at the grass roots level can we hope to overcome it in the global arena. On this International Day for Tolerance, let us resolve to practice actively at the individual level the principles we wish to see respected universally.”
In his Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in America in 1999, Pope John Paul II spoke of the gravity of the “social sins which cry to heaven because they generate violence” and he includes among these “racial discrimination and inequality between social groups”. November 16 is the anniversary of the assassination of the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter at the Central American University in El Salvador in 1989. Surely this tragedy is a cogent reminder of the need to practice and promote tolerance and to struggle against all forms of discrimination and exclusion.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has developed a Tolerance Programme which can be found at www.unesco.org/tolerance. This website includes Ten Ideas for Observing the International Day for Tolerance, information about UNESCO Regional Tolerance Networks (organized by continent) as well as the text of the UNESCO Declaration of Principles on Tolerance. For ideas for curriculum on human rights and ethnic and racial discrimination see the website www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/index.html |
|
Last Updated ( 28 Oct 05 )
|
