Office For Justice, Ecology and Peace

International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims
2021-03-24 00:00 - 23:59 (Australia/Sydney)

International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing UN Staff Members
2021-03-25 00:00 - 23:59

1975: Biological Weapons Convention
2021-03-26 00:00 - 23:59

Earth Hour
2021-03-28 20:30 - 21:30

World Autism Awareness Day
2021-04-02 00:00 - 23:59

International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action
2021-04-04 00:00 - 23:59
The United Nations established this day in 2005 through this resolution.

The annual message for the day, together with other resources, are available here.

International Day of Sport for Development and Peace
2021-04-06 00:00 - 23:59
Find out more about why the United Nations declared this day here.

A Crown for Australia: Striving for the Best in Our Sporting Nation

Today is a great day to revisit the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Social Justice Statement 2014–2015. It challenges us to look at the place of sport in our lives. Where are its strengths and how can we ensure that sport can thrive and in return can nourish our society? Equally, what are the influences that are undermining and distorting sport’s ideals? Most importantly, how can we work to realise sport’s potential to unite communities, overcome differences and be a force for social justice and reconciliation?

Prayer for Good Sports

God of all sports (and none);from our small minds,how amused you must bewhen our prayers about sportare about our own success or our team's.Whose side are you on?How do you choosewhen supporters from both sidesimplore your divine intervention?Remind us that in prayerour hearts are opened to youand our minds lifted beyond ourselves.Just as prayer changes us,not you, O God,so sport too, can lift us beyond ourselves.So we pray:We give thanks for the gift of our bodies,for the ability to run, walk, jump,swim, catch and throw.We pray for patience and discipline,that we may learn the joy of mastering new skills:achieving success, and cheerfully bearing failurein the company of others.We pray that our relationships be enrichedthrough the friendships we form.May we learn to include others across bordersof language, colour, gender and religion.We pray that we care for others.May we especially look out for thosewho are differently abled,and those often left on the boundaries.Through our vigilancemay we always play fair,and ensure that no one is abused or exploited.We ask this through Jesus your son. Amen.

International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda
2021-04-07 00:00 - 23:59
Ubumuntu (kindness, humanity, greatness of heart), from the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Kigali, Rwanda Artist: Unknown.

For Reflection

The Rwandan Genocide in 1994 saw over 800,000 Rwandans, mainly from the Tutsi minority, massacred by the Hutu ethnic majority in three months. Over two million Hutu’s later fled the country, fearing revenge attacks. Fr Marcel Uwineza SJ, a survivor of the genocide, calls these horrific events in his home country an “intimate genocide……It was not an invasion by an outside country, but an intensive, systematic killing of Rwandans by Rwandans.”

Dehumanisation of people because of their ethnicity, and imbalances of power that illegitimately privilege one group of people over another, have contributed to atrocities throughout history. As Christians, we are called to break this cycle of violence. We honour the dignity of every human person, no matter their ethnicity, religion, or difference to us. Jesus offers clear teaching in Matthew 22: 34-40 on how to move forward in peace:

“’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
This is the greatest and first commandment.
And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Marcel Uwineza SJ’s journey of healing and forgiveness: “To remember is to act so that those criminal activities never happen again. So, to remember is to do justice.”

Prayer

Pope Francis’ Prayer for Peace

Music

Will You Be My Protector? by The Good Ones

Will You Be My Protector? by The Good Ones

World Health Day
2021-04-07 00:00 - 23:59
Christ the Healer Icon by Christine Hales https://americanassociationoficonographers.com/2017/10/30/feed-my-sheep/christ-the-healer-icon-details-064/

For Reflection

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

Christ came to bring life in body, mind, and spirit to all people in their daily lives. Since 1950, every April 7 the World Health Organisation highlights a specific health area of concern. In 2021, the focus of the WHO is on building a fairer, healthier world: “…we are calling on leaders to ensure that everyone has living and working conditions that are conducive to good health.“

Christ challenges us to offer abundant life through ensuring people can access and experience secure employment, housing, education, gender equality, a safe environment, clean water and air, nourishing food, and quality health services. As Christians, we uphold and actively support the conditions that allow all in our human family to flourish.

Prayer for A Fairer, Healthier World

(adapted from the 2021 Social Justice Statement Prayer)

Jesus, you invite us all into the fullness of life.May we support one another to flourish in body, mind and spirit.Strengthen our commitment to ensure that nobodyfalls through gaps in our systems of care.

Help us to recognise youin those who suffer ill-health today.Show us how to eliminate inequality in our health systems, and in our world.

You drew near to thosewho were suffering in body or mind.May we too feel your nearnesswhen we struggle with health challenges.May we be one as members of Your Body.

You invite us to share in your ministryof love and true compassion.May we be empowered by your Spiritto reach out to all people in need.May we build communities of welcome and inclusion. Amen.

Music

By Our Love by Tom Kendzia

International Mother Earth Day
2021-04-22 00:00 - 23:59
Tree of Life – Mieke Boynton

Mother Earth is a common expression for the planet earth in a number of countries and regions, which reflects the interdependence that exists among human beings, other living species and the planet we all inhabit. Resolution establishing Mother Earth Day adopted by the General Assembly on 22 April 2009

The United Nations designated this day in 2009. It was already celebrated in a number of different countries prior to this. You can find a range of related resources for the celebration of this day here.

Artwork:

Tree of Life – Mieke Boynton

Music:

Tend the Ground – Curtis Stephan

Tend the Ground – Curtis Stephan

World Book and Copyright Day
2021-04-23 00:00 - 23:59
Did you know that this date was chosen by the United Nations because it was on this date in 1616 that Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare and Inc Garcilaso de la Vega died?

Read the UNESCO resolution proclaiming the day here.

Access resources for celebrating the day here.

1945: First united Nations Conference opens
2021-04-25 00:00 - 23:59

1986: Nuclear accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine
2021-04-26 00:00 - 23:59

World Day for Health and Safety at Work
2021-04-28 00:00 - 23:59
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) began to celebrate this day in 2003 however the trade union movement internationally has marked this day as the International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured Workers since 1996. This celebration is an integral part of the Global Strategy on Occupational Safety and Health of the ILO.

As part of the 2020 World Day for safety and health at work campaign, the ILO will produce a global report, highlighting how a comprehensive OSH [occupational safety and health] framework at both national and workplace level could address violence and harassment in the world of work. This includes for example incorporating provisions related to violence and harassment into OSH laws, regulations and collective agreements and developing specific standards, code of practices and guidelines to support the implementation of programmes and preventive measures in the workplaces. At the workplace level, sound OSH management systems can include the assessment and control of psychosocial risks including the interplay with violence and harassment. ILO, World Day for Safety and Health at Work 2020 – Violence and Harassment in the World of Work

International Workers Day
2021-05-01 00:00 - 23:59

World Press Freedom Day
2021-05-03 00:00 - 23:59

World Password Day
2021-05-06 00:00 - 23:59
In his 2005 book Perfect Passwords, security researcher Mark Burnett encourages people to have a ‘password day’ when thy would update important passwords. Intel Security took up the idea in May 2013 and promoted World Password Day. The day is intended to create awareness of the need for good password security and it is observed on the first Thursday of May.

Here are some activities for marking World Password Day:

change your passwords – tips for creating strong passwords can be found herelayer up and implement multi-factor authentication for your important accounts – learn about layered security herelearn about using password managersmake sure your family and friends understand what makes a strong password.

World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day
2021-05-08 00:00 - 23:59

World Fair Trade Day
2021-05-08 00:00 - 23:59
World Fair Trade Day is celebrated on the 8th of May, 2021 and the World Fair Trade Organisation is calling on us to ‘Build Back Fairer’. This is a day where we can reflect on our purchasing and procurement policies and see what are the practical ways we can support ethical and fair trade practices. Catholic organisations such as Ethica and ACRATH provide practical means for us to make trade fair. For more information on the day and the Build Back Fairer statement click here.

Organised by the Fair Trade Advocacy Office and World Fair Trade Organisation, World Fair Trade Day invites us to “Build Back Fairer”

“We’ve known for a long time that something is wrong with how trade works. Our trade structures and practices are designed in a way that benefits the most powerful…who hold the power in supply chains and set the terms of international trade. Meanwhile small farmers, artisans and workers have been left vulnerable to exploitation and struggle to earn living incomes and wages.”

COVID-19 exasperated these differences, and the World Fair Trade Organisation is calling for the world to transform and ‘Build Back Fairer’ to deal with the underlying exploitation of people and climate at the heart of destruction of nature, deforestation, climate and health crises.

‘Build Back Fairer’ is the theme of World Trade Fair Day and is taken from the Build Back Fairer Statement released in Sept 2020. This a day where we can reflect on our purchasing and procurement power and plan ways we can support ethical and fair trade practices.

On World Trade Fair Day, be sure to buy fair trade products available at supermarkets, looking for the fair trade logo or online for example, at Ethica, the Fair Trade social enterprise of Mary MacKillop Today.

For more information on World Trade Fair Day and the Build Back Fairer Statement go here.

International Day of Families
2021-05-15 00:00 - 23:59
The following reflection is from Andy Hamilton SJ. Andy is an Australian Jesuit, Consulting Editor of Eureka Street, Editorial Consultant to Australian Catholics, and a member of the communications team at Jesuit Social Services.

The coronavirus has put enormous pressures on all of us as persons, and on the groups and institutions to which we belong. It has been an affliction. The response to the measures taken to address it has been mixed. Sometimes it has been narrow and divisive, but more generally it has been extraordinarily good-willed, generous and patient. It has opened out to a far broader and balanced conversation about other areas of life that have been affected by the virus. One of these is the family. World Family Day invites us to reflect inclusively and with broad sympathy on the family.

Reflection on the family is often conducted along narrow lines in which we are tempted to focus on one set of relationships and so neglect other relationships that are equally important for healthy family life. The family, for example, may be seen as a stable relationship, recognised as a marriage by state and church, between mother and father and the children they have borne together. Many people will rightly celebrate this as the Catholic ideal of a good marriage.

Others will appeal to dysfunctional families in dismissing this as a primitive and coercive form of association that inhibits individual growth. They might emphasise the freedom of the individuals involved as central to the family. Discussions about the family will then turn to which forms of relationship justify the name of family, and which are better. These are important questions, but they are not the questions asked first by people living with the daily challenges and opportunities of family life.

The consequences of coronavirus have made us attentive to the complexity and breadth of the relationships involved in families which struggle under its burdens. The economic and social changes brought by the virus have shown, for example, the consequences for the family of relationships involved in losing casual work, in working from home, in the expectation that all adult members of a family will work, in schooling, in recreation, staying in touch with extended family and friends, and educational institutions, of relationships with sport, television and social media, and in a house design that offers both common and personal space.

After coronavirus the way in which these relationships have been shaped can no longer be taken for granted. We shall have experience of the disadvantages and advantages of other shapes we may not have considered. The merits of working from home and of home schooling will be considered as real possibilities of which we have experience and not simply as abstract ideas.

We shall see more clearly, too, how tightly the internal relationships within our families are connected to broader relationships with society. We shall have noticed how pressures of living together in a narrow space can be reflected in family violence and in mental illness. We shall find it difficult to reflect on the inner life of families without setting them against the social conditions in which they live. We shall know that if we wish to address antisocial behaviour we shall have to take account of the social problems that give birth to it.

At Jesuit Social Services we work with young people from families which have been disadvantaged. This has often reflected lacks in the way our society cares for families.

World family day is a time to celebrate the generosity and goodness displayed in families, and the resilience that finds life in the most unfavourable circumstances. It is also a day to ask how as a society we can best to accompany families as they prepare children for a full and generous life.

International Day of Living Together in Peace
2021-05-16 00:00 - 23:59

World telecommunications and Information Society Day
2021-05-17 00:00 - 23:59

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
2021-05-21 00:00 - 23:59

International Day for Biological Diversity
2021-05-22 00:00 - 23:59

International Day to End Obstetric Fistula
2021-05-23 00:00 - 23:59

International Day of UN Peacekeepers
2021-05-29 00:00 - 23:59

International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression
2021-06-04 00:00 - 23:59

World Environment Day
2021-06-05 00:00 - 23:59
Celebrated every year since 1974, World Environment Day is a good time to focus on the environmental dimensions of the Sustainable Development Goals. This year the theme is celebrating biodiversity.

The 2020 World Environment Day global campaign aims at highlighting how we as humans are inextricably linked to and depend on nature for our existence and quality of life. Recent events, from bushfires in Brazil, United States and Australia to locust swarms to the COVID-19 outbreak, highlights how meddling with ecosystems and biodiversity from its natural state is creating unprecedented challenges for humankind on a global scale. Human activities such as pollution, unsustainable use of land and sea, exploitation of organisms, climate change and invasion of alien species, are leading to biodiversity breakdown and the decline and degradation of natural ecosystems at an unprecedented scale. The crisis also reflects our connectedness to one another and how actions and events in one part of the world affect us all. It also brings to the spotlight the need for international cooperation and coordination in responding to the challenges posed by environmental degradation. Yet, these events are symptomatic and require us to address the decline of nature through transformational and sustained reforms with nature at the heart of decision-making. This World Environment Day, the need to heal our relationship and start living in harmony with nature, perhaps, has never been this stark in modern history. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is calling on governments, businesses and civil society to work together in building global understanding of biodiversity and nature’s key contribution to our survival… 2020 is a critical year for biodiversity. It’s a year of crucial decisions for planet and people, and all other forms of life on Earth. While 2020 also concludes the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity, the scientific community continues to sound the alarm on global biodiversity breakdown. Living in harmony with nature—a goal world leaders have set for 2050—cannot be achieved unless we stop the loss of the planet’s biodiversity by 2030. This leaves us with a decade for action, which will start with the 2020 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in October in Kunming, China and the design of a new 10-year framework for biodiversity. UN Environment Program, Working Brief, 6 April 2020

World Oceans Day
2021-06-08 00:00 - 23:59

World Day Against Child Labour
2021-06-12 00:00 - 23:59
The Catholic Church teaches that child exploitation is a serious violation of the dignity of the human person, with the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church n 296 stating that “Child labour, in its intolerable forms, constitutes a kind of violence that is less obvious than others, but it is not for this reason any less terrible”. In an address from the Vatican on the 2014 World Day Against Child Labour, Pope Francis urged all people to renew their commitment to protect the dignity of every child, offering children the opportunity to grow in peaceful, healthy environments that foster hope and confidence.

According to the United Nations, children are are classified as child labourers when they are:

“…either too young to work, or are involved in hazardous activities that may compromise their physical, mental, social or educational development. In the least developed countries, slightly more than one in four children (ages 5 to 17) are engaged in labour that is considered detrimental to their health and development.”

Almost nine out of every ten children in child labour worldwide can be found in Africa, Asia and the Pacific regions, with the Americas (11 million), Europe and Central Asia (6 million), and the Arab States (1 million) also having some form of child labour. Child labour effects 5% of children in the Americas, 4% in Europe and Central Asia, and 3% in the Arab States.

The impact of COVID-19 affects the poorest countries and those in already disadvantaged or vulnerable situations. These include children, particularly women and girls. In 2019 it was estimated that there were 152 million child labourers with 7 out of every 10 of these children working in agriculture. The UN asks all nations to work towards the UN Sustainable Development Goal Target that seeks an end to child labour in all its forms by 2025.

Going Deeper:

https://www.un.org/en/observances/world-day-against-child-labour

Prayer:

For An End to Child Labour

God of freedom, we pray for all your children around the world who are bound by unjust child labour. Free them from their work so they can learn and grow. Heal their physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds, and protect them from further harm and exploitation.

We ask that you sustain child labourers with hope for new beginnings in safety and peace. Amen.

Fiona Dyball

Artwork:

Victoria Villasana and Zabou Street Art, London, UK, 2016.

Child Labor Free Street Art

Music:

Let them Fly by Ridma Weerawardena and Charitha AttalageSourced from https://www.musicagainstchildlabour.com/songs
