Each year on June 21, the United Nations sponsors the International Day of Yoga, a celebration of the ancient science of yoga and its many benefits to humanity. In acknowledgement of the day, organizations around the world hold events that bring together yoga practitioners and interested newcomers from all age groups, religious affiliations, and ethnic backgrounds. This year the program at the UN Headquarters in New York included a yoga session on the North Lawn and a meditation session at the Church Center for the UN called Yoga, Peace, Unity and Healing: Sharing Collective Meditation in Stillness. 

The 2018 UN/DPI NGO Conference (August 22-23 at UN Headquarters in New York) is an opportunity for NGOs across the world to come together to address global issues of interest to the work of the United Nations. Recent annual conferences have attracted over 2000 civil society delegates from every region of the earth. This year’s theme, “We the Peoples…Together Finding Global Solutions to Global Problems”, will focus on the importance of multilateralism in solving world problems.

Last month two representatives from World Goodwill were delighted to attend a gathering in Islington, London, to participate in one of the launch events for the English language edition of a board game designed to deepen understanding of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, will be resigning next year at the end of his four-year term. In his final Global Update on the state of human rights to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 18, he spoke from the heart.

Those of us in the UN Secretariat, originating from all the 193 Member States, work collaboratively and we do not answer to any State. In contrast, too many governments represented at the UN will often pull in the opposing direction: feigning a commitment to the common effort, yet fighting for nothing more than their thinly-thought interests, taking out as much as they can from the UN, politically, while not investing in making it a true success. The more pronounced their sense of self-importance – the more they glory in nationalism – the more unvarnished is the assault by these governments on the overall common good: on universal rights, on universal law and universal institutions, such as this one.

And as the attack on the multilateral system and its rules, including most especially international human rights law, intensifies, so too will the risk increase of further mischief on a grander scale. The UN’s collective voice must therefore be principled and strong; not weak and whining, obsessed with endless wrangling over process, the small things, as it is the case today.

If my Office, of which I am very proud, and I, have gotten one thing right over the last few years, it is our understanding that only fearlessness is adequate to our task at this point in time. Not ducking for cover, or using excuses or resorting to euphemisms, but a fearlessness approaching that shown by human rights defenders around the world – for only by speaking out can we begin to combat the growing menace of chauvinistic nationalism that stalks our future.

Every year since 2012 the President of the UN General Assembly has convened a High-Level Forum on the Culture of Peace. With the support of member nations (102 governments sponsored the resolution calling for this year’s event) the Forum aims to highlight emerging trends impacting on the realization of the culture of peace, defined as a set of values, attitudes, traditions and modes of behaviour and ways of life based on universal principles of freedom, justice and peace.