The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 1995 the United Nations Year for Tolerance with UNESCO as the lead organization. (It had invited the Economic and Social Council to consider the matter in an earlier session.)
The idea and practice of tolerance was widely promoted in schools in many member states. Tolerance was held to be an 'endangered virtue' in many parts of the world, particularly those who were under racial and religious wars, such as those in Bosnia and Rwanda. UNESCO said that five key planks were required to overcome intolerance: law, education, access to information, individual awareness and local solutions. Tolerance is thus a political, legal and moral duty to protect and preserve human rights.
The International Day for Tolerance is now celebrated on November 16 every year, in recognition of the Paris Declaration which was signed that day in 1995 by 185 member states.
In 1995, a press conference was held at the United Nations by 12 year old Mark Semotiuk who launched his book "401 Goofy Jokes for Kids" which united kids from Ukraine, Canada and the United States, as one of the symbols for the United Nations Year for Tolerance.
Famous quotes containing the words united nations, united, nations, year and/or tolerance:
“Mankind owes to the child the best it has to give.”
—United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989.
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the UN and what it means clearly. Everything will be all right—you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction, and see it as a drawing they made themselves.”
—Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961)
“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)