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The Bahá'ís Magazine

A global campaign for peace

This campaign began with a letter, entitled The Promise of World Peace, and addressed to "The Peoples of the World." It called on world leaders to gather and discuss the ways and means by which world peace may be established. More than simply a demand for action by the world's political leaders, however, the document analyzed the reasons that world peace had for so long been considered unattainable--citing the barriers of nationalism, racism, poverty, and religious strife--and outlined new approaches for the demolition of those barriers.

Written by the Universal House of Justice, the document also indicated that because of humanity's new stage of maturity, these barriers could at last be overcome and that peace was now inevitable although whether it would be achieved through intelligent collaboration or after disastrous conflicts remained to be seen. [See excerpts on page 71]

Galvanized by this message, the world-wide Bahá'í community began a systematic campaign to diffuse these ideas around the world. Within a few years, more than one million copies of this treatise had been disseminated, many to individuals in the highest ranks of government and academia. Indeed, copies were presented to virtually all of the world's heads of state. It has also been published whole or in part in magazines and newspapers around the world. In conjunction with this distribution, Bahá'í communities around the world organized thousands of local, regional, and national peace conferences, lectures, concerts, dramas, exhibitions and fairs.

In 1987, the Bahá'í International Community and five national Bahá'í communities were recognized by the United Nations with the "Peace Messenger" award, a prize in recognition of contributions by non-governmental organizations during the 1986 United Nations International Year of Peace.

Next page:

• The Promise of World Peace [pg. 71]

"Excerpted from The Bahá'ís, a publication of the Bahá'í International Community."

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