Esperanto - Français - English

Equinox : World Citizens Day

World Unity Day

Twice a year the earth's trajectory makes it that the sun is perpendicular to the equator. Those days , whereas at the poles, the sun appears in half-circle to the horizon, everywhere else the lighting and the darkness are perfectly of equal lenghts: 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night. These are the equinoxes of spring and autumn. And if we project this cosmic equality on our lives as citizens ? Equality of persons in rights and in responsibilities, equality of persons among themselves,despite the differences, equality before the law.........Several times in recent history,some world citizens have proposed that one or the other of these dates, or the two be celebrated as World Citizens Day and the Day for World Unity, the day of action against inequalities, against the injustices, against racism and against exclusion,the day during which all the inhabitants of the earth should be invited to reflect on what would become of humanity and of the planet.

From the side of the U.N: the day of 21st March is declared ''International Day for the elimination of racial discrimination'', whereas that of the 21st September is 'International Day for Peace''

A little history:

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the formation of the U.N.O, the mundialist organisations gathered in Congress in San Francisco,from the 20th to the 25th July 1975, at the invitation of the Association of World Citizens ''A W C''.

It is within this framework that the Commission 2 of the group A, enlivened by the organisation ''World Community Events'' proposed that the days of the March and September equinox be declared ''World Public Holidays''

Subsequently, the effort was mainly focused on the equinox of the month of March which took the name of World Citizens Day. For example in 1982, 1984 and 1985.

  • 1982: Saturday 20th March at 23 h 56 ;In order to celebrate the spring equinox and launch the World Citizens Day, our friends in San Francisco called the world citizens of New York, Mississauga, Toronto, Mexico, Osaka, London and Paris.
    In Paris,the call was received at ''New Earth'' and retransmited by the free radio ''Here and Now''.
    For more than half an hour, this radio accepted to retransmit the transmited mundialist messages across the world. Guy Marchand sent that of Paris to Simon Fisher who translated it into french for the listeners.
  • 1984: As every year, the World Citizens Day is the occasion for an intercontinental conversation among some world citizens. This 20th March, the conversation was launched from far away Vermont in the United States and rejoined Canada, Japan, the U.N. at New York, Australia, San Francisco, Great Britain and France where the messages were retransmited as every year since 1982 by the radio ''Here and Now''
  • In 1985, the Intercontinental telephone conversation had been launched by Lucille GREEN from far away San Francisco towards Canada, New York, France, Gambia, India and Japan.

(Source:World Citizens archives --it will be interesting to crosscheck with other sources)

In 2000, the Association of World Citizens (A.W.C - San Francisco) has filed at the U.N.O. a resolution proposal so that the spring equinox be officially declared ''World Citizens Day''. This proposal never received the expected response.

In March 2002, the Canadian Center of World Citizens launched an invitation (Newsletter No.11) for the celebration of the equinox in Mississauga.

20th March 2005, Gerhard Hirschman invited the World Citizens for a meeting in Magdeburg, Germany. In 2006, this meeting became a festival.

In March 2006, about a twenty World Citizens launched a discussion on the theme of the equinox. The final proposal is that the World Unity Day be celebrated.

In October 2006, the first World Unity Tree was planted at Bohicon in Benin at the inauguration of the Mundialist Studies Seminar. The participants decided that a meeting of World Citizens will take place near this tree every year at equinox in the month of March to celebrate World Unity which is becoming a reality.

In March 2007, the Peoples Congress Consultative Assembly launched a petition to ask the Peoples Congress that it declares the equinox day of the month of March ''World Citizens Day and World Unity Day''

 


ASCOP / RCM, 66 bd Vincent Auriol, 75013 PARIS