Cambodia celebrates International Day of Peace

The Cambodia Peace Forum held a festival to celebrate the International Day of Peace here on Friday, with a theme of "Peace Starts from Everyone of Us".

A group of Cambodian teenagers, in traditional white fashion which symbolizes peace, performed Khmer dance at the celebration.

During the ceremony, Thida Khus, Executive Director of Silaka and one of Cambodia's long-term peace workers, made a speech about process and experience of peace building in Cambodia.

"Nobody knows better than the Cambodians on what conflict and war brought. The road to recovery is still paved with pain, mainly due to our confusion of the value of life, and our embrace of materialism and coercive power," Thida Khus said.

"When we come to believe that we cannot live without each other, and to learn that when one person is treated with injustice, it is injustice for all, then, and only then are we moving closer to the road of peace," she added.

The Cambodia Peace Forum is made up of local and international NGO's organizations, student movements and civil society members, a press release said, adding that since 2003, the Cambodia Peace forum has met and continues to meet to prepare workshops and programs of promoting issues of sustainable peace within the homes, villages and provinces whilst reflecting on stories from local to international news.

The International Day of Peace, established by a United Nations resolution in 1981 to coincide with the opening of the General Assembly, was first inaugurated on the third Tuesday of September, 1982.

Beginning on the 20th anniversary in 2002, the UN General Assembly set Sept. 21 as the now permanent date for the International Day of Peace.

Source: Xinhua