Cartooning for Peace
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Jean Plantu, 2006 "Cartooning |
“Cartooning for Peace” is the brainchild of Jean Plantu, the French daily newspaper Le Monde’s editorial cartoonist. The idea for the project was born in 1991 at an exhibition in Tunisia, when Plantu met former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who drew the Star of David for one of Plantu’s drawings and signed it. “At that time, Arafat could not say, ‘I recognize the State of Israel,’ and yet, with a blue felt tip pen he drew the Star of David on the Israeli flag,” said Plantu. The following year, Plantu traveled to Israel and convinced then-Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres to sign the same drawing. It was the first time that signatures from both the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization had been affixed to the same document prior to the 1993 Oslo Accords. “Since that time, I have thought a great deal about the role of newspaper cartoonists,” Plantu said.
Plantu once again realized the power cartoons hold when, in 2006, the world erupted in anger and divisive debate over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. “This sudden interest in political cartooning made me think that this polemic presented quite possibly an opportunity to cartoonists-above all, an opportunity to start an intellectual debate,” Plantu remembered.
As a forum for such debate, the “Cartooning for Peace” movement began that same year with a seminar with opening remarks by United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and an exhibition of cartoons, co-sponsored by The Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning, at the United Nations in New York. Since then, there have been six editions of “Cartooning for Peace” and one special edition “Cartooning for Human Rights” which coincided with Human Rights Day in 2007.
"Cartooning for Peace" in the past:
2008
2007
2006
*Learn more about Cartooning for Peace on iTunes U.*