Peace Week 2020: Online and with a great concert for life and hope
The celebration for Peace Week 2020 (Semana por la Paz) in Colombia will follow the motto “Let’s take the plunge, our meeting is with peace”. The purpose of the event is to promote peace and to highlight the work that is being conducted from the territories with a view to establishing peace and reconciliation.
This 33rd version will be run online, given the current COVID-19 pandemic. The celebration will be held in the midst of a situation of intensified violence in the country, during which dozens of social leaders and human rights defenders have lost their lives and, in recent days, violent actions have been recorded throughout the territory involving several young people being murdered.
At this time, we need to show support for those who through their actions are working towards a stable and lasting peace. CAPAZ joins this voice of encouragement and recognition of these daily efforts, throughout the Colombian territory and from abroad.
The event is organised and promoted by the Colombian Caritas Social Pastoral; Redepaz; the Colombian Episcopal Conference; CAPAZ founding member, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana; CINEP, peace programme; IPAZUD Peace Institute; Fundación para la Reconciliación; the Bogotá City Council; Compensar; Red ProdePaz; and Justapaz.
Peace Week events
Peace Week No. 33, to be held on September 6 – 13, 2020 is intended to “promote citizen participation and action as a strategy of visibility and political and social advocacy for the consolidation of peace, life, dignity and reconciliation”.
You may also like: The history of the Semana por la Paz (in Spanish)
August 20, 2020 was the official launch event of the Peace Week communication campaign in which its main organisers intervened, among them Fernando Sarmiento, current national coordinator of the ProdePaz Network. The floor was then given to Monsignor Héctor Fabio Henao, Director of the National Secretariat of Social Pastoral – Cáritas Colombiana. Monsignor Henao referred to recent events in the country: “if we are not able to stop all this wave of violence, we are going to waste a crucial moment in history”. For Monsignor, “Peace Week invites us to continue to move forward. And this movement must lead us to a reencounter with peace”.
Other participants in the Peace Week inaugural event included Monsignor Óscar Urbina, President of the Colombian Episcopal Conference; Patricia Linares, President of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP); Christine Büsser Mauron, spokesperson for the Swiss Embassy; the governors of Caldas and Antioquia (E); and Armando Valbuena, Senior Counsellor of ONIC, and Secretary of the Inter-Ethnic Peace Commission.
National concert “Sowing life and hope”: #movámonos
Beginning at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 12, 2020, the Peace Week celebrations will include the National Concert, featuring artists, well-known in Colombia and abroad, who will add their voices and music to send out a joint message: we must mobilise to defend life and hope. The concert will be broadcast on the Redepaz and Peace Week Facebook and Youtube social networks: @RedepazOficial @SemanaporlaPazColombia o Redepaz Oficial Youtube
Click here for the Peace Week webpage
Note: CAPAZ is not an organiser of Peace Week activities. For more information, please contact the event coordinator directly.
(NW Text: Andrés Escobar, Claudia Maya. English version: Tiziana Laudato)