Every 21 September, the Peace Bell rings in the garden of United Nations Headquarters in New York, and belligerents the world over are invited to silence their weapons for twenty-four hours. The gesture lasts a day; what it points to plays out over years, in classrooms and in public debate. President Macky Sall places the first work of peace there, and his candidacy for the office of Secretary-General makes it a priority for the Organization.

A day for a ceasefire. Established by the General Assembly in 1981 and fixed on 21 September in 2001, the Day invites each year a worldwide truce of twenty-four hours. The gesture is symbolic; in some years it has allowed children to be vaccinated or food to be brought into areas that the guns had kept sealed.

Peace is learned. In 1999, the United Nations adopted a declaration on a culture of peace, grounding it in education, dialogue and respect for rights. An adult who learned as a child to settle a quarrel without blows is that much harder to enlist; the declaration entrusts that work first to the school.

Preventing hatred before war. Civil wars are prepared for years by speeches that dehumanise the other. Spotting and countering those speeches, supporting the voices that refuse division, costs far less than a peacekeeping operation deployed when everything is already lost.

What the Secretariat can carry. The moral voice of the Organization speaks every 21 September through the Secretary-General, before the bell in New York and the cameras of the world. President Macky Sall governed a country where brotherhoods, churches and languages live side by side, and he knows what that concord owes to schoolteachers. He wants states asked, each year on that date, to report what their schools teach children about the neighbour, the foreigner and the adversary, and he makes that request part of his candidacy.

Experience in multilateral negotiation. Twelve years as head of state and the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022 underpin these commitments. That experience explains why the vision statement filed with the United Nations frames its proposals as obligations: peace, security and development conceived together; a renewed multilateralism; stronger governance of the Organization.

Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.

The General Assembly resolution establishing the International Day of Peace and the 1999 declaration on a culture of peace are public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net