HELBI

Personalities from all around the world attended the opening of the Peace Studies Institute in Egypt, which is a joint endeavor by the Suzanne Mubarak Women’s International Peace Movement and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Its aim is to promote the culture of peace and enhance human security as well as expand the role of women and young people in the process of peace building. The Peace Studies Institute will also try seek to engage in a series of partnerships on both regional and international levels, the first of which is a collaboration with The University for Peace in Costa Rica. After seeing a film about the library’s activities, the guests heard addresses from Suzanne Mubarak, who is also the wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Professor Julia Martin Lefevre of the Peace University, former Romanian president Emil Constantinescu, and Nobel Peace Prize laureates Betty Williams and David Trimble. Among those present were Marianna Vardinoyianni, who is on the board of both the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Peace Movement, Greek Ambassador to Cairo Panayiotis Vlassopoulos, Greek Consul in Alexandria Theocharis Lalakos, and Friends of the Bibliotheca President Andreas Zaimis. Vardinoyianni suggested to Mubarak and Serageldin that they promote the idea of an institute for the study of Greek culture and language. After all, the Library of Alexandria was created in the Hellenistic period and it was there that some great figures of Greek antiquity, such as Eratosthenes, Euclid, Archimedes and Callimachus, were active.