peace congresses: Modern Peace Congresses

The horrors of World War II, with its aftermath of economic and social chaos and the invention of nuclear weapons, intensified worldwide movements for peace through the United Nations and increased the determination that the new international organization would succeed where the defunct League of Nations had failed. There now are a number of international peace organizations with the common goal of world peace; the most prominent of these is the International Peace Bureau, which was founded 1892 and reorganized in the early 1960s. Recent conferences include the 149-nation Paris meeting of the Geneva Committee (1989), which reaffirmed the ban on chemical agents in war and called for general and complete disarmament, and the Hague Appeal for Peace (1999), which marked the centennial of the first Hague Conference and focused on disarmament, conflict prevention and resolution, and human-rights issues.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Modern Peace Congresses
• The Period of the World Wars
• Early Peace Congresses
• Bibliography

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

See more Encyclopedia articles on: International Organizations