Mohammad Hadi Heydarzadeh, advisor to Mayor of Tehran, in his speech at the newly inaugurated Nowruz Park in Tehran, said that the park would be a haven for all countries that celebrate Nowruz as their national new-year festival.

Addressing mayors of different districts of Tehran, representatives from environment NGOs and journalists, Heydarzadeh, who is also the Head of Environment and Sustainable Development Office of Tehran Municipality, proposed that it would be a good idea if a “Nowruz Club” was also established in the park. “All countries that celebrate Nowruz could be members of the club and have a place in the park to display their Nowruz traditions,” he added.

Speaking at the ceremony which was held on the occasion of International Day of Nowruz and the third anniversary of the adoption of the UN General Assembly Resolution on the International Day of Nowruz (10 May 2010), Director-General of Abbas Abad Development Company, Dr. Hojjatollah Mulla-Salehi, mentioned that the park covers 67 hectares of land and it has the capacity for some 500,000 trees.

Speaking last, UNIC Tehran's Officer-in-Charge delivered the UN Secretary-General’s message the Day. The ceremony ended by planting a cedarwood sapling in the park.

UNIC-Tehran, for the tenth year running coordinated the participation of the UN System in Iran in the 26th Tehran International Book Fair, held from 1-11 May 2013 and inaugurated at Imam Khomeini Mossla (prayer ground) by President Mahmoud  Ahmadinejad on 30 April 2013.

The book fair is one of Iran's most important cultural events and according to authorities, this year more than 5 million people visited it. A large number of people visited the UN booth where UN information materials, including books, reports, pamphlets, flyers, CDs and posters were displayed and distributed to them. The agencies represented in the UN booth were United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), United Nations Population Fund(UNFPA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and United Nations Information Centre (UNIC).

This year many high ranking people including some government officials, diplomats such as the Ambassadors of Japan, Venezuela, Pakistan, Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) President,  UN Resident Coordinator, some Heads of UN agencies as well as many university professors, students and researchers visited the UN booth.  According to the media reports, a total of 4,145 Iranian and foreign publishers, including 2,545 domestic and 1,600 foreign publishers from 77 countries, have put 445,000 titles of books on display in a 135,000 square meter plot of land.

Head of the Peace Museum of Tehran, Mohammad Reza Taghipour, irrigating a just planted olive sapling on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance for All Victims of Chemical Warfare at City Park in Tehran

Vice President and Head of Martyr Foundation, Massoud Zaribafan, in his message during a ceremony marking the Day of Remembrance for All Victims of Chemical Warfare held in Tehran, said that it is the heart-felt desire of all nations, in particular Iranian people as victims of chemical weapons, that all weapons of mass destruction, including chemical ones should be rooted out.

“It is unfortunate that despite Chemical Weapons Convention, still large quantities of these weapons are available and stockpiles of chemical weapons of some countries have not yet been destroyed,” Zaribafan said in his message which was read by his Deputy, Kazem Sheikh-Foroutan. Meanwhile, the possibility exists that these dangerous weapons can be used in some part of the world, he added.

Held at Peace Museum of Tehran located in Park-e Shahr (City Park) in downtown Tehran on 29 April,the ceremony was organized by the Society for Chemical Weapons Victims Support (SCWVS) and Tehran Peace Museum, in cooperation with UNIC-Tehran. The Centre’s Officer-in-Charge read the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message on the Day for the participants.  The programme continued with a screening of a video clip on the trend of using chemical weapons from the First World War all the way to the Iran-Iraq war. Then, a chemically wounded veteran of the Iran-Iraq war delivered a message from victims of Iraqi chemical attacks. The programme ended with planting an olive sapling at Park-e Shahr in commemoration of the victims.

From left to right. Dr. Farideh Shaygan, Dr. Nasrin Mossaffa (moderator) and Dr. Jamshid Momtaz

Former member and President of the UN International Law Commission and professor of Tehran University Dr. Jamshid Momtaz said in Tehran that in order to avoid future genocides, the principal of equality and justice among ethnic groups must be observed and enhanced in communities which enjoy cultural, ethnical and religious diversity.

Addressing a seminar on the occasion of 19th Anniversary of Rwanda Genocide at Khane Andishmandan-e Oloum Ensani (House of Humanities Intellectuals) in Tehran on 22 April, Professor Momtaz said the international community could have prevent genocide in Rwanda.

“If proper and timely preventive measures had been taken, genocide would never have happened in Rwanda,” he said adding that it was for the same reason that the then UN Secretary-General in his report paid special attention to the issue of “prevention”. 

Also speaking at the conference organized jointly by the Iranian Association of UN Studies (IAUNS) and UNIC-Tehran were: UN Resident Coordinator Gary Lewis who delivered the UN Secretary-General’s message on the Commemoration, as well as IAUNS Secretary-General Dr. Farideh Shaygan, who delivered her speech on “Intervention by invitation in internal conflicts and unrest, and the doctrine of responsibility to protect”. A UN documentary film on Rwanda genocide entitled “ Duhozanye: A community of resilience, hope and dignity” was also screened, followed by a question and answer session.