UNMIK/PR/824
Friday, 20 September 2002

SRSG Michael Steiner's Message on International Peace Day
Pristina, 21 September 2002

In just a few moments at UN Headquarters in New York the Secretary General will be ringing a peace bell cast from coins contributed by children on all continents and donated by Japan.

As Kofi Annan is telling our colleagues across the Atlantic, "The inscription on the side of the bell reads, 'Long live absolute world peace.' Every year on the International Day of Peace people throughout the world gather to reiterate that sentiment, to remember the victims of conflict and to rededicate themselves to the age-old quest of building a safer and more just world." Safety and justice - these are the universal values that brought us here to Kosovo.

Many who have heard the phrase "for whom the bell tolls" may think that it was coined by the American writer Ernest Hemingway.

Few remember that it actually comes from a 17th century poem by John Donne. The lines preceding Donne's famous phrase resonate powerfully with what we are doing here:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

As I have said many times before, Kosovo is not an island; what happens here, for better or worse, is an integral part of the struggle to make the Balkans, Europe and the wider world safer and more just.
Neither are we as individuals islands unto ourselves.

Any indignity…

Any hour passed in fear…

Any crushed hope - diminishes each one of us. In that sense, all our work here is an assertion of our common humanity.

The simultaneous ringing of the peace bell by the Secretary General and his Special Representatives around the world attests to our shared commitment to making the world a place where all people can live in security and dignity.

As I ring this bell, let us reflect with pride on the measure of safety and justice we have already brought to Kosovo… and let us rededicate ourselves to extending the blessings of peace to all Kosovans for years to come.