# University for Peace Established (1980)

URL: https://allhistories.com/costa-rica/timeline/1980-university-for-peace-established
Location: Ciudad Colón, San José, Costa Rica
Themes: main-event

Rodrigo Carazo, president of a country without an army, proposed to the international community the creation of an institution dedicated to education for peace. He presented the idea to the United Nations General Assembly in 1978, arguing that peace, like war, needed to be studied and taught, and offered land in Costa Rica for its campus. On 5 December 1980 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 35/55, approving the International Agreement for the Establishment of the University for Peace and its charter. The university was given a mandate to promote among all human beings the spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence through teaching, research and dissemination of knowledge. Its campus was established at El Rodeo, near Ciudad Colón in the canton of Mora, west of San José, in a protected forest. The University for Peace, a treaty organisation affiliated with the United Nations, struggled for funding in its first decades but later developed postgraduate programmes in peace and conflict studies, environment and development, and international law, attracting students from around the world. Its creation reinforced Costa Rica's diplomatic identity as a peace-promoting nation, a theme that culminated later in the decade in Óscar Arias's Central American peace plan. At this point in the timeline (5 December 1980), the President of Costa Rica was Rodrigo Carazo Odio (8 May 1978 – 8 May 1982).

## Why it matters
The University for Peace embodied Costa Rica's identity as an unarmed, peace-promoting nation on the world stage.

Ruler at the Time: [Rodrigo Carazo Odio](https://allhistories.com/costa-rica/rulers/rodrigo-carazo-odio)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — University for Peace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_for_Peace)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — University for Peace](https://www.britannica.com/search?query=University+for+Peace)
- [University for Peace](https://www.upeace.org/)
- [Wikipedia — The Second Republic (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Costa_Rica)