The culture of peace achieved an initially peak mobilization in the Year 2000. The Year was designated the International Year for the Culture of Peace (IYCP) by the UN General Assembly, with UNESCO as the lead agency.
As the Director of the IYCP, under the authority of Director-General Federico Mayor and special advisor, Anaisabel Prera Flores, I assembled an excellent team which mobilized a broad network of UNESCO partners. This is described in some detail in the Early History of the Culture of Peace which is available on the Internet. The most dramatic quantitative measure of the achievements of the Year 2000 was the 75 million signatures on the Manifesto 2000. Director-General Mayor took a direct interest in this mobilization :
he signed thousands of letters to partners in the global movement. They began with his letter of July 1998 to all heads of national parliaments and his memo of 20 July to all UNESCO field offices, followed by letters in September to all National Commissions for UNESCO, on 22 October to all Nobel Peace Laureates and culminating in letters in 1999 to all Heads of State, Secretary-Generals of National Commissions for UNESCO, 1,000 mayors, thousands of University Presidents, UNESCO sectors and field offices and media professionals. Mention should also be made of his personal involvement in the preparation of a kit on the culture of peace, as well as a letter to participants in the World Conference on Higher Education held at UNESCO on 8 October 1998. In hundreds of personal meetings with Heads of State and International Organizations, both Intergovernmental and Non-governmental, he spoke of the culture of peace and the International Year. As a result, the culture of peace was featured in dozens of international declarations as listed in Appendix 2 of General Assembly Document A/53/370.
A full record of the Manifesto 2000, its signatures, and the organizations that suppported it was maintained on our web pages at UNESCO, which have been maintained by UNESCO, although recently the organization "froze" it by closing down the sections where additional information could be added. Hopefully, the website will be maintained, especially in view of the UN General Assembly resolutions which annually:
Welcomes the efforts made by the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization to continue the communication and networking
arrangements established during the International Year for providing an instant
update of developments related to the observance of the Decade;
At the present time, on the UNESCO web pages for the culture of peace you may find information on 1,188 actors of the global movement for a culture of peace (218 international organizations and 970 national/local organizations), 75,846,833 signatures collected on the Manifesto 2000, including details by country, 1,361 events, and 253 projects for a culture of peace.
I had the personal privilege to undertake missions to see firsthand some of the major mobilizations, including India (37 million signatures) and Japan (1 million signatures). Although I did not go to Brazil (16 millions signatures) at that time, I have been there several times since and witnessed the lasting effects of the 2000 mobilization.