Letter to Madam BOKOVA, Director-General of UNESCO
Signed by: IFLAC Association: International Forum for a Culture of Peace,
by Poets from the International Poetry Festival: "Poètes à Paris, 2009",
as well as intellectuals, writers and poets from around the world.

September 30, 2009

Dear Mrs Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO,

Please, let us first congratulate you for your election to such an important post. This is especially remarkable, since you are the first woman to get such an honour.

The IFLAC Association, and the International Poets for Peace, would like to let you know about their project, which for them, and for the world, is extremely important and urgent. For ten years running, thanks to Dr. Ada Aharoni, President of IFLAC, who founded this organization in 1999, and for three years running, thanks to Mr. Yvan Tetelbom, President of the "International Poetry Festival", poets and intellectuals from all over the world, have met in Paris to discuss world peace, and offer poems about peace, as well as deliberate about cultural diversity and the importance of dialogue between cultures and civilizations. We all agree with Khalil Gibran's view of life when he says: "My motherland is earth and my family is the whole of mankind." However, the question remains how to partake and to impart this crucial global conscience to the whole world, so as to all live together in Peace.

An innovative means to reach this goal is to create an International Television and Internet Channel to spread the Culture of Peace. We suggest that it would be called: the World PCTV (Peace, Culture, Television and Internet), by Satellite. It is Dr. Ada Aharoni, who initiated this crucial project. The goal of the PCTV would be to guide people and leaders, to become aware that there really could be a world beyond war and violence since, as Dr. Aharoni says: "It is never too late to make the world become what it could have been, and what we desire it to be."

Recently, at the International Festival of Poetry in Paris (September 26th - October 3rd), poets, writers, educators and intellectuals, have taken the resolution to appeal to UNESCO, to create this International Peace Channel, for the spreading of a peace culture: literature, poetry, music and art. The creation by UNESCO of this world Television and Internet Channel to broadcast a Culture of Peace, as an antidote to the culture of violence which is so rampant globally today, is in fact very near to the concept of a new humanism for the Twenty First century, that UNESCO and yourself would surely like to develop. It would be remarkable that at the beginning of your career as the Director General of UNESCO, you direct the creation of such an important and gigantic project. We at IFLAC and the International Poets for Peace as well as all the Peace NGO's all over the world would do everything to help create this so timely International PCTV.

Together with IFLAC and all the NGO's and poets who participated in the Festival: "Poètes à Paris 2009", and with all that has been done at IFLAC and at the Festival of Poets, this year and in the years before (which we have on tape and in videos), UNESCO could already start up this urgent channel in 2010. At the beginning, it could be dedicated to the spreading of a Culture of Peace over the Middle East, and concurrently, it should be developed to spread all over the world. The aim of the PCTV and Internet Channel would be to develop and broadcast constructive and attractive emissions that would have as a main theme: how the nations of the world could live together in peace and harmony.

T.S. Eliot said that poets represent humanity's conscience. The PCTV, through its programs, films, documents and interviews with World Leaders and citizens, would appeal to the conscience of the great majority of people around the world, that are fed up with War and thirsting for Peace. It will also have programs for the new generation: our youth and our children, to whom through the PCTV, we will donate the birthright, to live in a world of Harmony and Peace.

During her lecture at the "International Poetry Festival in Paris", Dr. Aharoni presented the Program and values that should be promoted in the Broadcasting Agenda of the PCTV Channel and Internet, as well as ways and means of achieving them (please find her lecture in a joined attachment, and on her Homepage on the Internet). The PCTV could be a wonderful and apt tool to unite all men and women who want to build Peace and to create a world beyond war and violence. Their united creative power would be increased, strengthened and empowered, and it would spread to leaders and citizens all over the world.

Your recent election, honourable Director Bokova, is a great opportunity to mark the beginning of your mandate by this crucially important initiative - the PCTV, using today's varied media. By directing UNESCO to create this channel, you, the first woman elected at this post, would give a powerful promotion to the humanist values defended by this prestigious Organization.

We hope Madam, to meet you soon in order to discuss the creation of this most important project - the PCTV. Please let us know when we can meet you. It would be a great privilege for us to have the opportunity of meeting your honour and discussing the great advantages of the PCTV for the building of a world at Peace.

With our highest regards,

THE INTERNATIONAL PCTV COMMITTEE

Ada Aharoni - IFLAC Founder - President

Yvan Tetelbom - President of the "International Festival of Poets in Paris"

Nicole Szendy - IFLAC Representative in France and PCTV Correspondent

Nicolas Lebeau - Correspondent "International Festival of Poets in Paris"

Svante Svahnstrom - International Correspondent

Kamel Mrad -Tunisia and the Middle East Correspondent