A few words from George D'Angelo, International Peace Day Vigil founder:

The International Day of Peace itself is 25 years old. But it’s only been since 2001 that it called for a  ceasefire and was set to a specific day, September 21^st. In 2002, when I was working on the International Day of Peace in the Department of Political Affairs at the U.N., we started the Vigil. The idea was to have religious communities and religious leaders take responsibility for peace, because, oftentimes, religions are a source of problems.

While I was at the U.N., I ran trainings on conflict prevention. There are many causes that turn peaceful conflict into violent conflict. We became aware of the religious factor, and began to look into the spirituality of peace, which really derives from peace within yourself, a realization that we’re all one brotherhood and sisterhood, one humanity. It’s when we treat others as ourselves, that we can have some sort of true peace. That’s the message behind the International Day of Peace Vigil, in support of the International Day of Peace.

A colleague and I went on a three month world tour to promote the Day of Peace through religious observations. And every place we went, we met people who had attended events in the past. Some of them were pretty big that we never knew about. So, there may be 350 on the website, but I would imagine there’s five to ten times that going on. We're getting about 10 commitments a day now, from 60-70 countries. It seems to be a movement that is resonating with a lot of people, certainly on the tour we found that.

There are events going on all over the place. Sri Lanka is huge. This year, on the 21^st, they are starting a two-week program that will culminate on Gandhi’s birthday on the 2^nd of October. They expect to involve at least a million people in one place. But the group that puts it on represents about three or four million Sri Lankans throughout the country. That was one of the countries we visited. This particular group does a lot to promote peace. Sydney, Australia is going to have a very large affair this year. And in New York there are at least a dozen different events. There’s one in Central Park that’s been going for four years. I live in Pittsburgh and the Roman Catholic Diocese is having programs in all their schools and in all their parishes.   

The Vigil is trying to stress that peace is a very spiritual thing. You can’t be spiritual and religious and not look at people through a humanity lens. You have to be inclusive. We’re trying to do it through interfaith. On our trip, in the 13 countries we went to, we always met with one or more interfaith groups. And their idea was to use the vigil planning to bring them together, engaging the religious and spiritual leaders that are more interfaith minded and inclusive. As an interfaith group they're together anyway, but now they’re together with a cause. And they stress the idea that spirituality and peace really goes beyond religion. So, that’s part of the solution.

Next we need a strategy to try to temper down the extremes, which is not happening now. Each country needs it, governments need it, religions need it and NGOs and the people need it. The fundamentalists within all religions are exclusive. Muslim, Islam is not inherently a violent religion. People want to paint it that way, but it’s not. It’s actually a very loving religion. The guys that are blowing themselves up believe from the very extreme part of Islam that it’s going to be a religious reward. In cases like that, it’s important that speakers of the true religion and the moderates within the religions have a strategy to combat the extreme. For example, in Catholicism it would be the Vatican's spot to come out very strongly and persuade the fundamental Catholics not to pursue extreme agenda. I see a lot of options that could be done.

How do you get the central figure to speak up in every religion? Do you have a nationwide conference on it? Religions for Peace are addressing the problem. They provide conferences, interfaith groups throughout the world to form strategies in very specific places to combat religious elements of conflict.

But one of the other options is to have religious groups and interfaith groups participate in the International Day of Peace as a group, as a way to say: We want peace, and you can’t really be spiritual and religious and want war. You can’t be exclusive. So, we’re opening up our churches, our mosque, our temples to everybody. The whole idea is of the Peace Day is, if you can get fighting to stop for one day, then you’ve proven that psychologically it’s possible and why not two or more? Whereas most people will say "you’ll never have a day of peace". Well, what happens when you do? Then you can never say, "you’ll never have a week of peace or a month of peace".

There’s not been declared ceasefires yet. But while I was at the U.N. and working in the political department, for two years straight, the Indian and Pakistani generals in Kasmir held a one-day truce. Atleast two years in a row they did. In Kenya there was fighting up north and they used the International Day of Peace Vigil to observe the day and they started a dialogue. That was a little victory.

To my knowledge, there has not been a formal ceasefire that said: This is the International Day of Peace and we’re going to have a ceasefire. When it does, it will open doors. We keep plugging at it because those of us that have been involved for a long time believe there will be. It’s just a matter of time. I believe it’s going to be an honored day, that it’s going to be a day that is recognized and people are just going to lay down their arms.