Reconciliation and the Role of Global Peace Festival

Three hundred participants and civil society leaders representing more than 40 NGOs, gathered in one of the largest NGO conferences ever held in the United Nations building in Vienna, in the UNIDO Board Room, to attend the Austrian event of the Global Peace Tour 2009 entitled “Reconciliation and the Role of Global Peace Festivals”. More than twenty embassies were represented by the ambassador or a senior staff member. The event was made possible thanks to the support of the NGO Liaison office at the UN in Vienna.

The Austrian Prime Minister, Werner Fayman, sent a message of encouragement which was read by the Secretary General of the Austrian chapter of the Universal Peace Federation, Mr. Peter Haider, who welcomed the participants.

Podcasts from the GPF2008 event. Choose which mp3 you want below:

Edward Hartley, co-chair of the GPF Marriage and Family working group opened the focus session by stating “Stable families are the building blocks of a peaceful society; it behoves a country to look carefully at how these can be nurtured”.

The Peace and Development Focus Session of the Global Peace Festival in London featured the problems of nations struggling to fulfil millennium development goals by 2015 while struggling with debt, conflict and unfair trade relationships. This followed the Rt. Hon. Bill Rammell MP, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister of State’s encouraging words to the International Leadership Conference of the Global Peace Festival to create an international coalition of all sectors of society to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, lasting peace and prosperity.