International Day of Conscience 2024: Guila Clara Kessous & Yael Deckelbaum - Prayer of the Mothers

Performed on 5 April 2024 at the United Nations in Geneva:
Guila Clara Kessous, Ambassador and UNESCO Artist for Peace (France)
Yael Deckelbaum, Singer and Peace Activist (Isreal)
WHAT IS THE DAY OF CONSCIENCE? "Be the change you want to see in the world," the Mahatma Gandhi asserted in the last century. At the dawn of the new millennium, we answer him with Sofia Stril-Rever, "Be the love you want to see in the world." Love is not just a feeling, experienced individually. It is also a collective force for social justice, world peace, and human evolution. History proves that leaders of conscience and love, such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Wangari Maathai, Nelson Mandela or Malala can shape a future of peace, solidarity, and human rights. According to the resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 19 July, 2019, the International Day of Conscience is dedicated to “the promotion of a culture of peace with conscience and love”. It calls us to rethink and rearchitect the way we can build a lasting peace based on conscience and love.
WHY DO WE CELEBRATE THE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF CONSCIENCE? As we witness the escalation of wars and settle into the normality of deadly conflicts between peoples, the trivialization of large-scale massacres of civilian populations and a losing war against nature, we want to remember that we are part of the indivisible community of the living. Therefore, on the International Day of Conscience, on 5 April, 2024, we will say with Renaud Ruhlmann: "Nature speaks, listen to her!", and we will reassert that the war of humanity against itself and against life is not a fatality. Non-killing societies and non-violent economies are possible, as demonstrated by the WHO’s World Violence and Health report. It depends on us to make peace a reality, under the roadmap of the Agenda 2030, the IDGs framework and the UN Security Council resolution 1325 on Women and Peace, reaffirming the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, and post-conflict reconstruction. The celebration of the International Day of Conscience on 5 April, 2024 is therefore a call to realize the power of our interconnectedness and take urgent action to open new pathways of conscience and love for fairer, happier, and peaceful societies. To shift our mindsets that condition our vision and therefore our action in the world, on 5 April, 2024, in the presence of Mr Alfonso Gomez, Mayor of the City of Geneva, and of UN and UNESCO officials, we were bringing together physicists and biologists, representatives of ancestral traditions, experts in sustainability, the IDGs and the 17 SDGs, peace activists, artists, writers and meditators, with the participation of young global actors of change that will give the event a transgenerational dynamic.
Hosted by : Initiatives of Change
Global Convenors: Ignacio Packer, Sarah Noble & Sofia Stril-Rever
At the initiative of : Be the Love
Partners : UNESCO, the City of Geneva, lthe International Space Federation, Tchendukua, Naturasounds, and Jindal Global University.
An event supported by the PACI Foundation
More information here: www.iofc.ch/da...