Professor Priyankar Upadhyaya’s “Long Walk of Peace’’ launched at the UN Headquarter in Geneva

The keenly-awaited UN volume “Long Walk of Peace, Towards a Culture of Prevention” authored and edited by UNESCO Chair Professor Priyankar Upadhyaya of Banaras Hindu University was launched in Geneva at the UN Headquarters on 24 May 2018.

Acknowledged as an epoch-making contribution, the book was commemorated by many leading UN representatives and distinguished celebrities, including Michael Moller, Director General of UN at Geneva, Nada al-Nashif Additional Director General of UNESCO and a large number of diplomatic community, journalists and academia, NGOs and the general public. Presenting the book, Professor Priyankar highlighted the unique ways in which this volume has brought together the conceptual and experiential approaches to peace since the creation of the UN.

 

Through an in‐depth theoretical analysis, combined with an overview of practices across 32 UN bodies, this volume explores the long, steady haul towards peace and provides inspiration for the way forward. ‘Long Walk of Peace’ shows that peace is a dynamic process and a continuous journey of discovery. It highlights the imperatives of ‘local presence and local knowledge’ to augment the recent surge of ‘preventive diplomacy’.  The study finds peace education and multicultural literacy as pivotal vectors of the culture of prevention. This important UN publication is likely to have yet another launch at the UN Headquarters in New York. It is also being translated in many languages for the member states.

Professor Upadhyaya, a partner in the Global India EU Project completed this study in 2017 while serving as a Visiting Fellow at the Ireland India Institute, DCU. He has earlier served as the foundational ICCR Chair of Indian Studies at DCU.