Poland in the UN

The event, held on June 3, 2021, in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York, gathered numerous UN diplomats and employees with their bicycles. The celebrations were attended by the President of the UN General Assembly, Volkan Bozkir, and the Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Khaled Khiari. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres in his message on the occasion of World Bicycle Day 2021 underlined: “Further embrace of cycling must be accompanied by heightened efforts to improve road safety and integrate the bicycle into sustainable transport planning and design”.

Polish Chargé d'affaires a.i. Polski, Mariusz Lewicki pointed out: "The main goal of the event was to promote the importance of the bicycle as a means of transport which contributes to the implementation of the long-term sustainable development goals defined by the UN". 

World Bicycle Day was established by resolution 72/272 adopted by the General Assembly in 2018. The initiator of the resolution was a Polish sociologist and former competitive cyclist – prof. Leszek Sibilski, currently living in the USA. As a bicycle promoter and initiator of the World Bicycle Day, prof. Sibilski took part in this year's event. The celebrations also had a virtual dimension - Twitter users posted occasional posts with hashtags #June3WorldBicycleDay and #WorldBicycleDay.

Permanent Mission of the Republic of Poland to the United Nations in New York