125 Years City of Peace and Justice
2024 marks the 125th anniversary of the first Hague Peace Conference (1899). A historic moment that marked the beginning of a new era for The Hague. Celebrate with us the time journey of a city that grew from local government city to the global center for peace and justice; a PeaceTimetravel!
On this page you will find all the information about what will be organized in The Hague in this anniversary year “125 years City of Peace & Law”! Throughout 2024 events will take place around this theme. We learn from the past and express wishes for the future.
The first Hague Peace Conference
In 1899, The Hague hosted the first Hague Peace Conference. This conference came at the end of a bloody century full of major wars and an arms race in Europe. On the initiative of the Russian czar, the great powers decided to come together to devise another way to settle their conflicts. From May 18 to July 29, 1899, representatives of 26 countries met in the Orange Hall of Huis Ten Bosch. The outcome were a number of agreements on rules of the game during a war. But the most important decision was the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), a court to which nations could go on a voluntary basis to resolve their conflicts peacefully.
Why was The Hague chosen as the location for the first Peace Conference?
An important factor was the neutral status of the Netherlands in international conflicts. In the late 19th century, politics in The Hague were seen as stable, reliable and impartial. Moreover, Queen Wilhelmina was the second cousin of the Russian Czar (initiator of the conference) and strongly believed in the importance of a peace conference.
The Peace Palace, The Hague's main peace icon, was eventually built for the PCA. In the years that followed, more international organizations came to The Hague in the field of peace and (international) law, such as the International Court of Justice of the League of Nations, which would later be replaced by the United Nations International Court of Justice. Tribunals such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the Rwanda Tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and the International Criminal Court also found their way to The Hague. With this, the city is also known as the “legal capitol of the world”.
Other major international organizations such as Europol, Eurojust, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), NATO Communication and Intelligence Agency and the European Patent Office followed from the 1990s.
Did you know that...
At present, The Hague e.o. has 491 international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), knowledge institutes and embassies.
