Cartooning for Peace Celebrates 20 Years
Cartooning for Peace celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2026, two decades after the international network was founded following an initiative by French cartoonist Plantu and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Since 2006, Cartooning for Peace has brought together editorial cartoonists from around the world while defending freedom of expression, press freedom and the place of political cartooning in democratic debate.
The anniversary comes at a particularly pertinent moment. Pressure on journalists and cartoonists, disinformation, censorship, war and increasingly polarized public debate are hardly peripheral subjects in 2026. They are part of the daily territory of the press cartoon and political cartoon.
Twenty years of Cartooning for Peace
Cartooning for Peace was established in 2006 after a meeting organized at the United Nations headquarters in New York by Kofi Annan and Plantu brought together twelve international editorial cartoonists for a conference entitled Unlearning Intolerance.
From those beginnings, Cartooning for Peace developed into an international network of cartoonists using humour, satire and drawing to engage with political and social questions while supporting fellow cartoonists whose freedom to work is threatened.
Much has changed in the media during those twenty years. The speed at which images circulate has transformed completely, as has the relationship between cartoonists, publishers and their audiences. A press cartoon that once appeared in a newspaper the following morning can now travel internationally within minutes, crossing languages and borders while accumulating entirely new contexts along the way.
The basic economy of the editorial cartoon, however, remains surprisingly intact: an observation, an idea and a drawing. A good cartoon does not necessarily provide an answer. Very often its job is to introduce an awkward question.
Démocratie sous pression : dessiner pour résister
On September 24, 2026, the anniversary will be marked at the Théâtre de la Concorde in Paris with a special evening, « Démocratie sous pression : dessiner pour résister » — Democracy Under Pressure: Drawing to Resist.
Against a background of increasing pressure on the media, the spread of disinformation and restrictions on freedom of information in many parts of the world, the evening will examine some of the challenges facing contemporary democracy and the means available to defend it.
Editorial cartooning will be at the centre of the programme, with debates, encounters and live drawing bringing together members of the Cartooning for Peace network and representatives of organizations working in journalism, human rights and the defence of democratic freedoms.
Cartoonists from around the world in Paris
The participating editorial cartoonists include Chappatte (Switzerland), Liza Donnelly (United States), Kak (France), Kichka (Israel), Kroll (Belgium), Landschulz (Germany), Marie Morelle (France), Mykaïa (France), Piet (France), Plantu (France), Lars Refn (Denmark), Rodho (France), Sié (France), Truant (France), Urbs (France), Vadot (Belgium), Yas (France) and Zohoré (Côte d’Ivoire).
It is an appropriately international group for an anniversary devoted to editorial cartooning. Cartoonists may be responding to many of the same wars, elections, political movements and social changes, but they do so from very different political, cultural and personal positions. There has never been a single visual language for political satire, nor should there be.
The evening will take place under the patronage of Plantu, founder and honorary president of Cartooning for Peace, and will be hosted by Kak, president of Cartooning for Peace, and Vladimir Vasak, grand reporter at ARTE.
Also participating are Gilles Finchelstein, Secretary-General of the Fondation Jean-Jaurès; Magali Lafourcade, magistrate and Secretary-General of the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l’homme (CNCDH); Thibaut Bruttin, Director-General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF); and Anne Savinel-Barras, President of Amnesty International France.
The freedom to draw
The anniversary also provides a less comfortable reminder that the freedom to draw and publish a cartoon cannot be taken for granted.
The evening will pay tribute to cartoonists Ashraf Omar of Egypt and Al-Hazza of Saudi Arabia, who are currently imprisoned, and to Russian cartoonist Semyon Skrepetsky, killed in June 2026.
It will also recognize Palestinian cartoonist Safaa Odah, recipient of the 2026 Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award and supported by the PAUSE programme.
The circumstances of these cartoonists need little embellishment. They are also a reminder that what can appear to be a very modest medium — ink, paper, a few lines and perhaps a caption — is not always regarded as harmless by those being drawn.
Défendons la démocratie !
The anniversary event will also highlight Défendons la démocratie !, published by Éditions de La Martinière under the direction of Cartooning for Peace.
The book brings together 150 press cartoons from around the world alongside texts examining democracy, journalism, human rights and some of the political pressures surrounding them.
Contributors include Gilles Finchelstein, journalist Sylvie Kauffmann, Magali Lafourcade, Thibaut Bruttin and Paula Forteza, with an afterword by Amnesty International.
A collection of 150 editorial cartoons also makes a useful case for the peculiar breadth of the form. The same subject can be approached through satire, metaphor, caricature, understatement, absurdity or a single visual observation. The cartoonist chooses where to stand; the reader is not obliged to stand in exactly the same place.
My contribution to the 20th anniversary
To celebrate the anniversary, I created the above cartoon which will also be one of the drawings exhibited at the Théâtre de la Concorde in Paris during the 20th-anniversary event on September 24.
Cartooning has been part of my professional work alongside editorial illustration, comics and visual storytelling for many years. You can also see more of my work in comics and sequential illustration.
Happy 20th anniversary to Cartooning for Peace ! Friendship and Solidarity to my fellow Cartoonists!
Cartooning for Peace — 20th Anniversary
« Démocratie sous pression : dessiner pour résister »
Théâtre de la Concorde, Paris
September 24, 2026 — 7:00 PM
Free admission with reservation
