The events were organized by pupils and staff to mark the 10th anniversary of the UN resolution declaring Sept. 21 as an International Day of Peace. The declaration incorporates the additional aim of declaring a global cease-fire and doing so on a fixed day of the year.

A powerful keynote address by British Consul General Mohammed Shokat was the highlight of the morning assembly at the school.

Shokat told the students and teachers that he had scrapped his planned speech that detailed statistics of conflict and preferred instead to relate a personal story from his previous posting in Iraq that brought out the significance of peace and the individual ability to create it to him.

Shokat said that to create a possibility of peace, it started with the individual and most importantly with the world’s children, “because they are tomorrow’s leaders.”

He summed up the process by quoting J.F. Kennedy, who in an address to the member states of the UN on Sept. 20, 1963, said: “Peace is a daily, weekly, a monthly process gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers and quietly building new structures.”

Dhabyah Khashoggi, an International Baccalaureate (IB) and maker of an audio-visual presentation that concluded the day, said that she became involved with the project as part of the tasks within the IB program.

“I have been helping the deputy head teacher (Liz Murray) with the Peace Day preparations since last year, but due to long holidays, we were unable to present it. This year we joined in with the rest of the world.”

Khashoggi said since she was very young she has truly wanted the world to have peace one day: “At least one day when there is no war.”

A musician who plays guitar and piano, Khashoggi has written several songs for the school on the theme of peace.

A peace committee consisting of senior IB students assisted Deputy Head Murray in the organization of the event this year and gathered together to accompany Munir Awartani, who lit the Peace One Day lantern to symbolize the participation of the school in the celebrations.

British documentary filmmaker and actor Jeremy Gilley founded peace One Day in September 1999. The first Peace Days were relatively uneventful but that began to change significantly in 2006. In that year the World Food Program delivered 30 tons of food to Southern Sudan and Star Syringe Ltd. carried out immunization programs in nine countries.

The following year 2007 was even better: Over 100 million people in over 100 countries marked the day, Director of the United Nations News and Media Department Ahmad Fawzi said after the event.