The U Thant Peace Award was established by Sri Chinmoy: The Peace Meditation at the United Nations in honour of the third Secretary-General of the United Nations, who was a deeply contemplative world-server. At the invitation of U Thant, in 1970 Sri Chinmoy began conducting at United Nations Headquarters the twice-weekly Peace Meditations, which continue to this day.
To perpetuate U Thant's sacred memory, the Award is presented to individuals or organisations who exemplify the lofty spiritual ideals of the Secretary-General in their distinguished service to the cause of world peace.
Among the luminaries who have kindly accepted the U Thant Peace Award from Sri Chinmoy are His Holiness Pope John Paul II and five Nobel Laureates: President Mikhail Gorbachev, President Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, as well as former United Nations Secretaries-General Javier Perez de Cuellar and Kurt Waldheim, and Daw Aye Aye Thant, U Thant's daughter and President of the U Thant Institute.
Recipients of the U Thant Award
(this is a non-comprehensive list)
- Zennon Rossides – Ambassador of Cyprus to the UN, 7 October 1982
- Jorge Illueca, President of Panama, President of the 38th Session of the UN General Assembly, 3 December 1983.
- United Nations Development Programme, March 19th 1985, received on behalf of UNDP by Uner Kidar, Director of Division of External Relations and Governing Council Secretariat. Bradford Morse, UNDP administrator, gave a statement on 21 March 1985.
- Dr. Russel (Amritananda) Barber, WNBC-TV Religion Editor, Emmy Award winner – November 6, 1986
- Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. Head of the SufiUNICEF Order in the West, April 5th 1991
- Guido De Marco, President of the 45th session of UN General Assembly, Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Malta, 28 September 1991.
- Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Ambassador of India to the United States, 8 August 1993
- C. Subramaniam. President of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 12 September 1993.
- James P. Grant, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director, 20 September 1994.
- Mother Teresa, Nobel Peace Laureate, 1 October 1994
- Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union from 1985-91, Nobel Peace Laureate, 16 October 1994
- Laxmi Mail Singhvi, High commissioner for India to the United Kingdom - 13 May 1995
- Rafael Hernandez Colon, Governor of Puerto Rico (1972-76, 1984-92) – 8 September 1995.
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Head of the Anglican Church in South Africa, Archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Peace Laureate; 20 December 1995
- Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa, Nobel Peace Laureate, 29 January 1996
- Maurice Strong, Senior Advisor to the President of the World Bank, Secretary-General of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio Earth Summit), 2 May 1996
- C.V. Narasimhan, Under-Secretary-General of the UN 1956-78, Chef de Cabinet to three Secretaries-General, 10 September 1996
- Ananda Guruge, Former Ambassador of Sri Lanka to UNESCO, France and the US, Senior Special Advisor to UNESCO’s Culture of Peace Programme 1995-99 – 3 January 1997
- Vladimir Petrovsky, Under Secretary General and Director-General of the UN Office in Geneva, 17 March 1997
- Sudhahota Carl Lewis, legendary Olympic athlete, 7 May 1997
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 28 May 1997
- O.K. Gujral, Prime Minister of India, 21 September 1997
- Dada J.P. Vaswani, Spiritual Head of the Sadhu Vaswani Mission, 5 April 1998
- Pope John Paul II, 17 May 1998
- Claiborne DeBorda Pell, US Senator, Rhode Island, 15 November 1998
- King Tuanku Ja'afar of Malaysia, 30 December 1998
- Mahathir Mohammed, Prime Minister of Malaysia, 4January 1999
- Girija Prasad Koirala, Prime Minister of Nepal, 1 February 1999
- Krishna Prasad Bhajtaraj. Prime Minister of Nepal 1999, 29 September 1999
- Ted Turner, Founder of CNN, Time Warner Vice Chairman and Chairman of the UN foundation, 6 October 1999
- Anwarul Karim Chowdhury, Ambassador of Bangladesh to the UN, 23 November 1999
- Svenn Kristiansen, Deputy Mayor of Oslo, 27 March 2000
- Humayun Rasheed Choudhury, President of the 41st Session of the UN General Assembly, Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, Speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament, 8 May 2000
- Gary Ackerman, United States Congressman from New York, 15 June 2000
- Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, founder and publisher of Hinduism Today magazine and international Hindu leader, 25 August 2000
- Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Prime Minister of India, 13 January 2001
- The Very Reverend James Parks Morton, President, The Interfaith Center of New York, and Dean Emeritus, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 31 July 2001.
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