Paris, 16 September {No.96-159}- Some 100 students from five countries will compete in the finals of UNESCO's second Peace Games, a competition centred on peace for high school students, which will be held in Lomé, Togo, from 23 to 26 September.
Peace Games events are based on academic subjects with peace as their central theme. They aim to encourage mutual understanding and respect for the environment among young people.
Organized for the first time last year in Romania, the games are intended to be a sort of Olympic Games for high school students and form part of UNESCO's action in favour of a culture of peace. This year they bring together girls and boys 10 to 18 years old from Benin, Costa Rica, Morocco, Romania and Togo.
The games include three events: spelling, choral singing and a relay race. The events are sprinkled with symbols chosen by UNESCO, such as relay race batons sculpted with doves or wrapped with peace messages written by schoolchildren from many countries, or songs chosen for the singing contest with titles like Song of Peace, Song of Friendship or The Voice of Our Humanity.
Trials for the 1996 games, in which thousands of young people participated, were held from January to July in the five participating countries at regional and national levels. Each country then chose about 20 finalists and more than 100 youths will compete again in the three events at the Togo finals.
The games will end on 26 September in Togo's capital, Lomé, with a ceremony at which Ahmed Sayyad, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for External Relations, will award medals to the winners on behalf of Director-General Federico Mayor. The ceremony will be in the city's conference centre.
Some 5,000 young people participated from January to June 1995 in the first UNESCO Peace Games, which were organized by the Romanian Education Ministry and that country's National Commission for UNESCO. Bernard Pivot, a French journalist who produces television programmes on literature, gave his support to the games, whose finals were in Busteni, central Romania. Invited to visit UNESCO Headquarters last April, the winners were welcomed and congratulated by the Mayor of Paris.