United Nations Messengers Of Peace
United Nations Messenger of Peace is a title bestowed by the United Nations to "distinguished individuals, carefully selected from the fields of art, music, literature and sports, who have agreed to help focus worldwide attention on the work of the United Nations.
The messengers are initially chosen for a period of three years, although three of the current 12 messengers, Michael Douglas, Elie Wiesel and Jane Goodall have served for more than ten years.
The Messengers of Peace scheme was instigated in 1998 as a central addition to the system of UN goodwill ambassadors and honorary ambassadors, which has been run by the different UN agencies since 1954, when UNICEF appointed Danny Kaye as its first goodwill ambassador.
Whilst the goodwill and honorary ambassadors mainly promote the work of the UN agency they are ambassador for, the messengers of peace are intended to promote the work of the United Nations in general and are appointed directly by the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Read more about United Nations Messengers Of Peace: Current Messengers, Former Messengers
Famous quotes containing the words united, nations and/or peace:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“Interest does not tie nations together; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)