BY HARNOOR GILL
Grade 11 student
Christ The King Catholic Secondary
Georgetown, Ontario
ON Sunday, September 21 people from all the various parts of the world will be celebrating the International Day of Peace. This day was created back in 1982 when the Peace Bell was rung at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The General Assembly declares the Day of International Peace a day to strengthen the ideals of peace among all nations and people. This year marks the 32nd anniversary of the International Day of Peace. The theme for 2014 is to raise awareness of the ongoing issue of the right of peoples to peace.
As an immigrant myself, I am very glad that my parents decided to move from India to a safer country with more opportunities like Canada. Back in India, the water isn’t safe to drink and the overall environment isn’t the greatest either. As a child, I had problems breathing because of the horrendous amount of pollution that was present in the atmosphere. However, coming back to the topic of peace, everyone deserves the necessities of surviving in life such as clean water, ample amounts of food, safe shelter and warmth regardless of race or religion.
Now when I turn on the TV or receive an update on my phone, I can’t help but notice that war just doesn’t seem to end among humankind. The Israel-Hamas conflict that has seen so many casualties definitely needs to be resolved. Although several attempts at peace have been made, some incident or the other sparks off fighting time and again.
The recent incident in which a missile hit a Malaysian Airlines plane could have easily been avoided and was a terrible incident in which over 300 passengers were killed just because of another nation’s conflict. I hate to say this but at this rate I don’t think that the world will ever be at peace as long as I live in this world. There’s always bound to be crime, greed, theft and eventually the clashes between nations. These video games and magazines that portray violence and things that influence children who grow up to hate is just a never-ending cycle. It needs to S-T-O-P!
I want to raise awareness for the less fortunate because we have over 7 billion people in this world and only 3 billion of us are living well off. This figure needs to change and we need to create the change by spreading awareness. To spread awareness, there are numerous websites and social media outlets available to you to change someone’s point of view in less than a minute. Some of these include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Photobucket, Linkedin, Snapchat and others that you can search as well.
Please, on September 21st, raise awareness on the issue of the right of peoples to peace.
