UNODA Vienna Office celebrates Disarmament Week with interactive exhibition

Disarmament Week seeks to promote awareness and better understanding of disarmament issues and their cross-cutting importance. To celebrate this remembrance week, central to the work of the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), the Vienna Office organised an interactive exhibition from 24 to 27 October 2023. It was housed in the Rotunda of the Vienna International Centre, which is home to various international organisations relevant to UNODA’s work, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), and the UN Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The full exhibition in the centre of the Vienna International Centre Rotunda.

The UNODA Vienna Office aspired to highlight disarmament week among the Vienna community by creating an interactive, educational exhibition space aimed at making the concept of disarmament more relatable and accessible for the public. Building on the Vienna Office’s work earlier this year around the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the “Vienna +30” anniversary,[AK1] [VM2] the exhibition highlighted the linkages between disarmament and other global issues, such as human rights and sustainable development.

Passers-by stopped to explore the exhibition and its posters.

Visitors were welcomed to the exhibition with flyers, postcards, pens, and disarmament pins and were encouraged to engage with a Q&A poll, inquiring about their opinion on effective outreach tools on disarmament. An interactive totem invited visitors to take a disarmament trivia quiz and enter a competition to win one of the winning Posters for Peace – a global contest which ran in 2016 – that were on display. Visitors could also learn more about UNODA’s disarmament education work, including through continuous screening of, among others, UNODA’s #Intro2Disarmament explainer videos.

Visitors were invited to take part in an interactive quiz on the totem screen. Materials for further perusal were available on the table.

As the Rotunda is centrally located within the Vienna International Centre, personnel from various Vienna-based organisations passed by throughout the days. It is also a well-established stop for guided tours, drawing visitor groups from all over the world to the special exhibit.

Visitor groups pass by the Rotunda multiple times a day as part of the guided tour. The trivia quiz was displayed on the totem.

Keen to test your knowledge about disarmament issues? Check out the online quiz here!