On Wednes­day 16th No­vem­ber, the Unit­ed Na­tions will cel­e­brate In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Tol­er­ance. This day is held to help peo­ple un­der­stand the im­por­tance of tol­er­ance world­wide and to help them un­der­stand the neg­a­tive ef­fects of in­tol­er­ance.In 1996, the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (by res­o­lu­tion 51/95) in­vit­ed UN Mem­ber States to ob­serve the In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Tol­er­ance with ac­tiv­i­ties di­rect­ed to­wards both ed­u­ca­tion­al es­tab­lish­ments and the wider pub­lic.

This ac­tion fol­lowed on the Unit­ed Na­tions Year for Tol­er­ance, 1995, pro­claimed by the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in 1993 at the ini­tia­tive of UN­ESCO, as out­lined in the De­c­la­ra­tion of Prin­ci­ples on Tol­er­ance and Fol­low-up Plan of Ac­tion for the Year. The 2005 World Sum­mit Out­come doc­u­ment (A/RES/60/1) fur­thered the com­mit­ment of Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment to ad­vance hu­man wel­fare, free­dom and progress every­where, as well as to en­cour­age tol­er­ance, re­spect, di­a­logue and co­op­er­a­tion among dif­fer­ent cul­tures, civ­i­liza­tions and peo­ples.On In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Tol­er­ance live dis­cus­sions and de­bates take place across the world, fo­cus­ing on how var­i­ous forms of in­jus­tice, op­pres­sion, racism and un­fair dis­crim­i­na­tion have a neg­a­tive im­pact on so­ci­ety.

Many ed­u­ca­tors use the theme of this day to help stu­dents in class­rooms or in lec­ture the­atres un­der­stand is­sues cen­tred on tol­er­ance, hu­man rights and non-vi­o­lence. These is­sues are al­so found in text books, les­son ma­te­r­i­al and oth­er ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources used for this event. In­for­ma­tion on the day is dis­sem­i­nat­ed through fly­ers, posters, news ar­ti­cles and broad­casts, and oth­er pro­mo­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al to raise peo­ple's aware­ness about the im­por­tance of tol­er­ance.

Oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude es­says, di­a­logues and sto­ry-telling of peo­ple's per­son­al ac­counts of in­tol­er­ance and how it af­fects their lives. Hu­man rights ac­tivists al­so use this day as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak out on hu­man rights laws, es­pe­cial­ly with re­gard to ban­ning and pun­ish­ing hate crimes and dis­crim­i­na­tion against mi­nori­ties.So what will you do to cel­e­brate this day? Let us know. Send us an email at gie.ed­i­tor@gmail.com.

In­for­ma­tion tak­en from http://www.un.org and http://www.time­and­date.com