HWPL World Peace Summit celebrates a decade of global commitment to peace

SEOUL: The 10th anniversary of the HWPL World Peace Summit will be celebrated on September 18 in South Korea and various locations worldwide reaching 122 countries.

Under the theme ‘Creating World Peace Community Through Regional Collaboration’, this event commemorates global leaders’ and citizens’ commitment to peace that lasted a decade, with an eye on future strategies to promote global harmony.

In 2014, the Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), an international peace organisation, convened over a thousand global leaders from politics, religion, women’s groups, youth organisations, and the media from about 140 countries to the inaugural HWPL World Peace Summit in Seoul.

The summit addressed the issues of conflict resolution, religious harmony, and the implementation of legal instruments to ensure lasting peace.

HWPL states that the purpose of the anniversary is to review achievements since 2014 and discuss future plans. The event aims to gather regional talents and establish networks essential for tailored peace strategies, strengthening regional networks to tackle local peace threats and harnessing collective capacities. To achieve this, various sessions will be held in each country at different levels.

Under the slogan ‘Let’s have everyone become a messenger of peace’, HWPL advocates for individual responsibility in promoting peace at all levels. HWPL plans to collect messages of peace from people around the world and reveal them at the event representing the desire for peace and unity of people from all walks of life around the world in the name of peace.

Fostered by the agreements signed in 2014, over the past decade, HWPL, alongside its global partners, is committed to address global challenges such as military tensions, economic disputes, climate change, and cyber security threats through enhanced regional cooperation and collective action.

HWPL is dedicated to establishing a robust peace governance framework, connecting international organisations, governments, and civil societies.

Back in the ninth anniversary in 2023, Chairman Lee Man-hee of HWPL said, “Why should the lives of young people be sacrificed in war? What is politics, and for whom is it for? When war breaks out, it is the young people who are sacrificed. Peace cannot be achieved through words alone. If peace had won in this world, there would have been no regrettable deaths. We must leave peace as a legacy to the global community where our descendants will live.”