International Day existed before the establishment of the United Nations, but the United Nations regarded it as a powerful propaganda tool. The United Nations holds commemorative events around specific themes or topics on designated days, weeks, years, decades, and even anniversaries. By organizing special commemorative events, the United Nations hopes to stimulate public interest in specific areas of UN activities and programs, and enhance global awareness and action. Each international day provides an opportunity for multiple parties to organize related themed activities. Organizations and offices under the United Nations system work together with governments, civil society, public and private sectors, schools, universities, and broader citizens to make International Day a springboard for raising awareness. Most commemorative activities are proposed and established by resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly, while some activities are designated by specialized agencies of the United Nations.

Who established International Day? How to establish?
As the most representative body of the United Nations, the General Assembly designates a specific date as an International Day. The proposal to establish an international day is proposed by member states to the General Assembly, which then decides by consensus whether to adopt a resolution to establish the day.

The themes of international days are often related to the main areas of action of the United Nations, including maintaining international peace and security, promoting sustainable development, protecting human rights, and safeguarding international law or humanitarian action.

The resolution of the conference usually explains the reasons for announcing the establishment of an international day. For example, the resolution announcing May 23 as the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula states: "Poverty, malnutrition, lack or inadequate access to healthcare services, early childbearing, child marriage, violence against young women and girls, and gender discrimination are interrelated and are the root causes of obstetric fistula, while poverty remains the main social risk factor

Obstetric fistula may cause some of the most serious harm during childbirth, with approximately 2 million women in developing countries suffering from this disease, and this number is growing at a rate of 50000 to 100000 cases per year, but many people may have never heard of this disease. This well illustrates the necessity of raising people's awareness through international days.

In addition, the resolution of the General Assembly will also point out which aspects of a certain issue are most closely related to Member States, and can also be said to be most closely related to all mankind, because the General Assembly is composed of 193 countries, including most countries in the world. In this regard, the decision to declare June 23rd as International Widows' Day is a good example. In the resolution, the conference expressed deep concern that millions of children of widowed women suffer from hunger, malnutrition, child labor, difficulty accessing healthcare services, water and sanitation, dropping out of school, becoming illiterate, and being subjected to human trafficking

Some international days are not declared by the General Assembly but by specialized agencies of the United Nations, with the aim of drawing public attention to issues within the agency's professional fields, such as health, aviation, and intellectual property. For example, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, headquartered in Paris, declared May 3rd as World Press Freedom Day, which was then established by the General Assembly.

In addition to raising awareness, the United Nations also uses international days to suggest what actions countries should take to address the serious issues surrounding these days. For example, in the resolution announcing May 22 as the International Day for Biodiversity, the General Assembly invited member states to sign and ratify the Cartagena Protocol aimed at protecting biodiversity.

How can we measure the impact of these international days?
The webpage for international commemorative events (including International Week, International Year, and International Decade) is the most visited page on the United Nations website. Each International Day has a dedicated website that provides versions in the six official languages of the United Nations.

International Day is also an indicator of the level of attention paid to a specific theme around the world. For this purpose, we will study the level of participation of people from different regions and languages around the world in various international day commemorative activities. A particularly noteworthy example is Human Rights Day on December 10th. On this day, commemorative events will be held around the world, such as the "Put Down Guns, Change into Running Shoes" event for the military and police in South Sudan, a student competition in Russia, and an exhibition in Brazil. In short, many people from various industries will participate in commemorating this special day in different ways.

Other popular international days include International Women's Day (March 8th), World Water Day (March 22nd), and International Day of Peace (September 21st).

Do you know? There are five international days set on March 21st, and June is the month with the most international days.

Celebrating the use of multiple languages
There is a special type of international day celebrating the use of the six official languages by the United Nations. The Department of Global Communications has established language days for the six official languages of the United Nations. The United Nations Language Day aims to celebrate linguistic and cultural diversity and promote equal use of the six official languages at the United Nations. Under this initiative, six celebration events will be held at United Nations duty stations around the world to commemorate each working language of the United Nations. UN Language Day is not only for entertainment, but also to remind the public to strengthen respect for the history, culture, and achievements of the six working languages of the United Nations.