Editorial, March - In order to concentrate minds and organize our work with partners in Europe and beyond, we have selected a few international days to celebrate, or mark for those that don't call for celebration.

The month of March is a particularly charged month with 13 international days!

Not that we have any problem with an overload of international days, on the contrary, each issue needs to have its day and some issues are more important than others to different peoples.

In March we at UNRIC are putting particular emphasis on three international days - International Women's Day, on 8 March, the theme of which for 2013 is Violence Against Women; World Water Day (22 March) and one I am particularly looking forward to celebrating is a new international day on 20 March which is the International Day of Happiness. This delightful idea was presented by Bhutan and will be celebrated every year from now on. We look forward to your ideas and thoughts on how best to mark the day.

As a reminder we have amazing ads by European creatives, on both Violence Against Women and Water, that you are most welcome to use (archive.unric.org/slideshow/2011/ | archive.unric.org/slideshow/2012/).

And finally on 27 February we celebrated the life of Stephane Hessel, a great humanist and a true and relentless friend of the UN.

Afsané Bassir-Pour, UNRIC Director