The inaugural Ppeace park event in this Mexican resort town kicks off at 11:00 a.m. on the upper level of Los Arcos, the monument at the entrance to town. Mayor José Luis Dagnino Lopez of San Felipé will join IIPT (International Institute for Peace through Tourism) Ambassador Bea Broda to highlight the city’s commitment to peace, and will be joined by the troupe female dancer, Ballet Flor Naranjo, musician, a poet and community leaders who will express their enthusiasm for the future of San Felipé.

The event will be crowned with a tree-planting ceremony and the placement of a plaque designating San Felipé as a city that will promote the growth of peace, tolerance and understanding at home and in the world, and will strengthen awareness of a community’s commitment to peace and inclusiveness. , a healthy environment and sustainability. It is intended to enshrine common ground for community members to come together to celebrate the Mexican people, land, and heritage; the future of all humanity and our common home, planet Earth. San Felipé Los Arcos Peace Park will be a place to reflect on our connection to each other as a global family and to the land from which we are all separated.

The International Institute for Peace through Tourism (IIPT) was born in 1986, the International Year of Peace, with a vision of travel and tourism becoming the world’s leading peace industry and the belief that every traveler is potentially an “ambassador of peace”. IIPT’s first world conference, Tourism: A Vital Force for Peace, Vancouver 1988, with 800 delegates from 68 countries, was a transformative event. At a time when most tourism was “mass tourism”, the conference introduced for the first time the concept of “sustainable tourism” as well as a new paradigm for a “higher purpose” of tourism that puts the emphasis on the key role of tourism in promoting travel and tourism initiatives that contribute to international understanding; cooperation between nations; improved environmental quality; cultural enhancement and preservation of heritage; poverty reduction; reconciliation and healing of the wounds of conflict; and through these initiatives, contribute to the advent of a peaceful and sustainable world. IIPT has since organized around 20 international conferences and global summits in different parts of the world with a focus on real case studies that demonstrate and promote these values ​​of tourism.

In 1990, IIPT pioneered the role of tourism in poverty reduction by identifying potential projects in four Caribbean countries and three in Central America. Following the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio Summit in 1992), IIPT developed the world’s first code of ethics and guidelines for sustainable tourism and, in 1993, conducted the world’s first international study on codes of conduct and best practices for tourism and the environment. The 1994 IIPT Montreal Conference: “Building a Sustainable World through Tourism” was the first major international conference on sustainable tourism. The conference was instrumental in beginning World Bank support for tourism projects aimed at reducing poverty in developing countries. Other development agencies followed suit and in 2000 the role of tourism in poverty reduction became widely recognized.

In 1992, as part of Canada 125 celebrations commemorating Canada’s 125th anniversary as a nation, IIPT designed and implemented “Peace Parks across Canada”. 350 towns and cities from St. John’s, Newfoundland, across five time zones to Victoria, British Columbia, dedicated a park to peace on Oct. 8 as the National Peacekeeping Monument was unveiled in Ottawa and reviewed by 5,000 peacekeepers. Of the more than 25,000 Canada125 projects, peace parks across Canada were rated the “most important”. Since then, the IIPT International Peace Parks have been dedicated as a legacy of every IIPT International Conference and World Summit. IIPT’s notable international peace parks are located in: Bethany Beyond the Jordan, site of Christ’s baptism; Victoria Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world; Ndola, Zambia, crash site of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold on his way to a peacekeeping mission in Congo; DMedellin, Colombia, dedicated on the opening day of the 21st UNWTO General Assembly; Sun River National Park, China; and the Catholic Martyrs’ Shrine of Uganda, Zambia.

One of IIPT’s current major initiatives is a Global Peace Parks Project with a target of 2,000 peace parks by November 11, 2020 commemorating the centenary of the First World War and its theme ‘No More War’.