Jude Law tries to promote peace in Afghanistan

Jude Law and director Jeremy Gilley are visiting Afghanistan, in an effort to maintain momentum for Peace Day — an annual day on Sept. 21 urging a global cease-fire and nonviolence. The United Nations General Assembly adopted Peace Day in 2001, following a lobbying campaign by Gilley which he documented in the film “Peace One Day.”
Law helped Gilley produce his second documentary film, called “The Day After Peace.”

The documentary, which also features former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, the Dalai Lama, Angelina Jolie, Annie Lennox and Jonny Lee Miller, charts the way Peace Day can be used as a focus for lifesaving activity, Gilley said.

Law said the movie “was the most important film I have been part of.”

The Oscar-nominated Law and Gilley, who arrived in Kabul on Sunday, are to meet President Hamid Karzai, top NATO and U.N. officials, and members of the aid community.

The visit coincides with one of Afghanistan’s most violent periods since the ouster of the Taliban from power in 2001. More than 3,700 people — mostly militants — have died as a result of the war this year.

Law said that even as Kabul has become more dangerous, hope among its people has remained surprisingly high.
“When I left Kabul last year, I was hugely moved not by the conflict that I have read so much about, but by the people’s courage and the people’s sense of hope,” Law told reporters in Kabul on Monday.

“It seemed that they really want to make this day, the Peace Day, work. And they did,” Law said. “People recognize the day, because they recognize that lives could be saved.”

Gilley said in Afghanistan over 1.4 million children were able to be vaccinated against polio on Peace Day as a result.

Source: AP