The Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) together with the Peace Education Division of the Ministry of Education will commemorate the International Day of Peace on Tuesday 21st September 2005 with the inauguration of a child art exhibition on the theme Brush Strokes of Peace in Sri Lanka.

SCOPP conducted an island wide school art competition to which we received over seven hundred entries from school children of all communities in Sri Lanka between the ages of 10 and 15 years.

A panel of four judges selected seventy entries to be exhibited of which six are prize-winning paintings. The exhibition will be inaugurated by Dr. Lester James Peiris at the Lionel Wendt in Colombo on the 21st of September 2005.

The exhibition will be open to the public on the 22nd and 23rd of September 2005.

The United Nations General Assembly, in resolution 55/282, of 7th September 2001 decided that beginning in 2002, the International Day of Peace should be observed on 21 September each year. The Assembly declared that the Day be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence. It invited all Member States, Organizations of the United Nations system, regional and non-governmental organizations and individuals to commemorate the Day in an appropriate manner including, through education and public awareness and to cooperate with the United Nations in establishing a global ceasefire.