The International Network of Museums for Peace (originally the International Network of Peace Museums) was established following a conference in Bradford in 1992. At this conference, for the first time, directors and curators of peace and anti-war museums worldwide came together. The loose network which emerged aimed to promote cooperation between peace museums and to stimulate the creation of new peace museums across the world.
Between 1992 and 2009, the network was very informal, sustained by occasional newsletters between international conferences. As the number of peace museums worldwide increased, however, the network needed to formalise its structures. Steps towards addressing this were taken at the Gernika conference of 2005, including changing the name of the organisation to the International Network of Museums for Peace (INMP).
In 2009 the INMP was established as a foundation (nonprofit) in The Hague and, with the support of the municipality, opened its secretariat and archive in the Bertha von Suttner Building near the Peace Palace in 2010. Since 2014 the INMP, as an international NGO, has been granted special Consultative Status from the UN ECOSOC, and gained ANBI-status in the Netherlands. The foundation consists of a General Coordinator, ten international Executive Board members and twelve international members in the Advisory Committee. In 2018, the INMP Office in the Hague was closed, and moved to the Kyoto Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan.
The definition of Museums for Peace according to the INMP is non-profit educational institutions that promote a culture of peace through interpreting, collecting and displaying peace related material. They inform the public about peace and nonviolence using illustrations from the lives of individuals, the work of organizations, campaigns and historical events. Included are also peace related sites, centers and institutions which are involved in peace education through exhibitions, documentation and other related activities.
Since 1992 the aims of the INMP have been
1992: Bradford (UK) [1]
1995: Stadtschlaining (Austria)
1998: Osaka & Kyoto (Japan) [2]
2003: Ostend (Belgium)
2005: Gernika-Lumo (Spain) [3]
2008: Kyoto & Hiroshima (Japan) [4] [5]
2011: Barcelona (Spain)</ref> [6]
2014: No Gun Ri (Korea) [7]
2017: Belfast (Northern Ireland) [8]
Discover Peace in Europe [9]
Three year (2013-2015) European project with six European partners, funded by the European Commission - Lifelong Learning Programme 2007-2013. It is a project about peace trails in Berlin, Budapest, Manchester, Paris, The Hague, Torino and Vienna to make people aware of the importance of peace. The INMP is the organiser of Peace Trail The Hague.
Peace Philanthropy - Then and Now. In the Footsteps of Andrew Carnegie [10]
An international travelling exhibition to celebrate the centenary of the Peace Palace in The Hague (28 August 2013).
A Picture for Peace [11]
An international travelling exhibition based on the 2012 International Day of Peace youth photo competition by the United Network of Young Peacebuilders (UNOY Peacebuilders).
Guernica, official name Gernika, is a town in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. The town of Guernica is one part of the municipality of Gernika-Lumo (Spanish: Guernica y Luno, whose population is 16,224 as of 2009.
The University for Peace (UPEACE) is an intergovernmental organization with university status, established by treaty at the United Nations General Assembly in 1980 and having its main campus in Costa Rica. Its stated mission is "to provide humanity with an international institution of higher education for peace with the aim of promoting among all human beings the spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, to stimulate cooperation among peoples and to help lessen obstacles and threats to world peace and progress, in keeping with the noble aspirations proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations."
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the body of secular international law. A third conference was planned for 1914 and later rescheduled for 1915, but it did not take place due to the start of World War I.
Ritsumeikan University is a private university in Kyoto, Japan, that traces its origin to 1869. With the Kinugasa Campus (KIC) in Kyoto, and Kyoto Prefecture, the university also has a satellite called Biwako-Kusatsu Campus (BKC) and Osaka-Ibaraki Campus (OIC).
Younes Shokrkhah is an Iranian journalist and academician. Younes, who lectures on communications and journalism, has been a journalist for thirty years, and is the ICT consultant for ME Printer magazine and a member of the Academic Board of the Center for Media Studies. He has been member of the juries of a dozen press and photo-journalism competitions.
The Austrian Peace Service is one of the three sections of the non-profit organisation Austrian Service Abroad and offers a 6-12 months voluntary service at its partner institutions. Male Austrians may accredit their Austrian Peace Service as an alternative to the Austrian national or military service, provided their service abroad lasted a minimum of 10 months. Austrian Peace Servants are financially supported by the Austrian government.
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is a non-profit non-governmental organization working "to bring together women of different political views and philosophical and religious backgrounds determined to study and make known the causes of war and work for a permanent peace" and to unite women worldwide who oppose oppression and exploitation. WILPF has national sections in 37 countries.
The Global Youth Action Network (GYAN) is an international network of youth NGOs spanning 180 countries, and headquartered in New York, near the United Nations. GYAN is a youth-led not for profit organization that incubates global partnerships and increases youth participation in decision-making. GYAN has registered chapters in Brazil, Colombia, France, Ghana, Mexico, and South Africa, with teams working out of an additional eight countries.
A peace museum is a museum that documents historical peace initiatives. Many peace museums also provide advocacy programs for nonviolent conflict resolution. This may include conflicts at the personal, regional or international level.
The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, generally known as the Geneva Conference or World Disarmament Conference, was an international conference of states held in Geneva, Switzerland, between February 1932 and November 1934 to accomplish disarmament in accordance with the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was attended by 31 states, most of which were members of the League of Nations, but the USSR and the United States also attended.
The United Network of Young Peacebuilders is a global network of young people and youth organisations active in the field of peacebuilding and conflict transformation. UNOY Peacebuilders was founded in 1989 and is working with youth mostly in violent conflict and post war regions. The core activities of UNOY Peacebuilders are capacity building as well as advocacy and campaigning.
The Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) is an international network of NGOs, with a membership of over 2,500 organizations worldwide advocating for a fair, effective and independent International Criminal Court (ICC). Coalition NGO members work in partnership to strengthen international cooperation with the ICC; ensure that the court is fair, effective and independent; make justice both visible and universal, and advance stronger national laws that deliver justice to victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The CICC Secretariat is hosted by the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP) and has offices in New York City, near the United Nations (UN), and in The Hague, The Netherlands. Additionally, the CICC has regional offices in Belgium, and Peru.
A peace congress, in international relations, has at times been defined in a way that would distinguish it from a peace conference, as an ambitious forum to carry out dispute resolution in international affairs, and prevent wars. This idea was widely promoted during the nineteenth century, anticipating the international bodies that would be set up in the twentieth century with comparable aims.
The Peace Museum, Bradford is the only museum dedicated to the history and stories of peace, peacemakers and peace movements, in the UK.
PeaceWomen Across the Globe (PWAG), previously known as 1000 PeaceWomen, is an organization based in Bern, Switzerland that aims to increase the visibility of women promoting peace all over the world.
Hizkias Assefa (1948) is a conflict mediator known widely in Africa for his non-aligned work as a consultant who has mediated in most major conflict situations in sub-Saharan Africa in the past 20 years, as well as in a dozen countries elsewhere. He is also a professor of conflict studies. Of Ethiopian origin, he is based in Nairobi, Kenya. He was one of the founding faculty members in 1994 of the Conflict Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University.
Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA) is a project space for contemporary art in Amsterdam, Netherlands. SMBA was founded in 1993 and is part of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. It is the uccessor of Museum Fodor, a platform for young Amsterdam artists that ceased to exist in 1992. The goals of SMBA are to stimulate and signal contemporary art in Amsterdam and to create an international stage for this. SMBA organizes eight to ten solo and group exhibitions annually. The current head of Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam is Jelle Bouwhuis.
Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada is a Japanese textile artist, curator, researcher and author.
Stefan Stoev is an Austrian entrepreneur, philanthropist and supporter of the arts.
Vladimir Fedorovich Petrovsky was a Soviet/Russian diplomat, Ambassador, professor in history, politician and writer.
1995: Peace Museums Worldwide (Geneva United Nations Publications on Peace; League of Nations Archives, Geneva, in association with the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford)
1998: Peace Museums Worldwide (Geneva United Nations Publications on Peace; League of Nations Archives, Geneva, in association with the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford)
2008: Museums for Peace Worldwide (Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University)
1993 - 2002: International Network of Peace Museums Newsletter (Published by Give Peace a Chance Trust, Hertford, UK; Editorial Office: Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK)
2010 - current: International Network of Museums for Peace Newsletter (Published by the International Network of Museums for Peace)
2017: Conference Report from Belfast: https://sites.google.com/site/inmpconference/