U Thant Peace Award


The U Thant Peace Award was created by Sri Chinmoy's peace meditations at the United
Nations, after U Thant's death.
First offered in 1982, the award is given to individuals and organizations who have exemplified the lofty spiritual ideals of the late United Nations Secretary-General U Thant and implemented those ideals in the tireless pursuit of world peace.

Recipients

It had been bestowed by The Peace Meditation at the United Nations upon Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, Javier Perez de Cuellar, Kurt Waldheim the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Dada J.P. Vaswani, Swami Satchidananda and U Thant’s daughter, Daw Aye Aye Thant.
The U Thant Distinguished Lecture Series is a forum through which eminent thinkers and world leaders speak on the role of the United Nations in addressing the challenges facing the world’s peoples and nations in the 21st century. The lecture series is co-organized by the United Nations University and the Science Council of Japan.
The UNU has a tradition of inviting world leaders and renowned individuals to Tokyo to explore the role of the United Nations in a rapidly changing world. The U Thant Distinguished Lecture Series builds upon this tradition by providing an opportunity for Nobel laureates and heads of state, current and former, to share their insights and experiences with scholars, policy makers, business leaders and the general public.

Recipients of the U Thant Peace award

YearRecipientCountry
2007Ibrahim Gambari
2007Bill Pearl
2007Pascal Alan Nazareth
2004Kurt Waldheim
2002Satchidananda Saraswati
2002Daw Aye Aye Thant
2002Ravi Shankar
2001Atal Bihari Vajpayee
2000Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
1999Mahathir Mohamad
1998Pope John Paul II
1998Dada Vaswani
199714th Dalai Lama
1997Vladimir Petrovsky
1996Nelson Mandela
1996Robert Mugabe
1996Maurice Strong
1995Desmond Tutu
1994Mother Teresa
1994Mikhail Gorbachev
1994James P. Grant
1993Ganesh Man Singh
1991Vilayat Khan
1986Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
1982Zenon Rossides