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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 00:24:57 +1200
From: Misty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: SNET <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Armageddon or New Age? <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: SNET: UN initiates peace prog in schools in 30 countries
-> SNETNEWS Mailing List
Here comes the unity for one world govt. Disarm the world next, by getting
kids to promote this? Nicky
Published on Monday, April 29, 2002 in the Christian Science Monitor
UN Gambit: 'A Little Child Shall Lead Them'
United Nations Launches an International Movement to Tap the Peacemaking
Creativity of Young People
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0429-06.htm
by Alexandra Marks
NEW YORK -- Krista Riley turns and reaches for Akello Betty Openy's hand.
The two teenage girls, one Canadian the other Ugandan, smile, then slip
easily through the crowd outside an auditorium at the United Nations.
In a few minutes, they will stand onstage and explain to several hundred
adults why policymakers should consult young people like themselves if
there's to be any real hope of ending the brutal and deadly conflicts
brewing around the world.
"There's a lot of creativity, a lot of insight that can be brought to it,"
says Krista. "Often, adults try to do the same things that they've done in
the past � they don't always work."
With the energy, determination, and innocence that young people bring to a
seemingly intractable problem, a small group of teenagers from around the
world gathered last week at the UN to launch an international youth
movement. But this is not the model UN of generations past where students
mimicked their seniors to learn about what they do. Instead, this program is
designed for the benefit of the international policymakers themselves, who
for the first time in recent history are trying to harness the power of the
young to bolster international peace efforts and improve their own
decisionmaking.
"Young people share deeply and instinctively the ideals of the rights and
well-being of other children � instinctively, they relate to that," says
Olara Otunnu, the special representative of the secretary-general for
children and armed conflict. "What better way to use that connectedness of
young people than to link up young people from this country [and others] to
young people in Sierra Leone, in Kosovo, in Somalia to work for the same
cause."
The teens' first chore is to raise international awareness among their peers
about the toll that war takes on millions of children each year. And they
hope to do it with the help of the United Nations. The Office of the Special
Representative, in conjunction with the Muhammad Ali Center, Global Kids,
and several other international groups, has launched the Schools for Global
Peace Program. It provides a high-school curriculum based on stories and
role-playing that vividly illustrates the pain and chaos inflicted upon
children and their families caught up in armed conflicts.
Once a school finishes the course, it will be designated a "Global Peace"
school and be linked to others around the world.
"We believe that this will become an international movement with 10,000
schools around the world all discussing, reading, and becoming active," says
Laura Miller, a New York City educator who designed the curriculum. "So far,
children in Mexico, Germany, and the US have read and raved about the first
book in a series of eight [that are part of the program]."
An estimated 300,000 children under 18 in more than 30 countries are
currently fighting in either government or rebel organizations, according to
the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. And those wars have claimed
the lives of more than 2 million children and left more than 6 million
injured or permanently disabled over the past decade.
The lives of war-affected children, as Betty Openy can attest from her own
experience, can be terrifying. She was raised a refugee in a
poverty-stricken camp where jobs were scarce and healthcare even rarer. In
school, she lived in constant fear of being abducted for sexual servitude or
forced into military service.
"The pain of children caught in war around the world is difficult to
imagine. Without help, the next generation of leaders are doomed," Betty
says. "But solutions to these problems are in reach."
Betty cofounded Gulu Youth for Action, which is working for the education
and protection of children, particularly girls, in the northern part of
Uganda, where at least half of the residents are refugees.
It's exactly that kind of energy and enthusiasm that Mr. Otunnu hopes to
tap. Betty is one of eight youths who are working with him to develop a
youth advisory council with young representatives from both war-ravaged and
peaceful countries. The group will advise and help shape the policies of the
Office of the Special Representative.
It's one of several UN programs that are designed to embolden and empower
young people. There's the Youth Network, which links schools and churches in
Western countries with those in various war zones. A media program called
the Voices of Children gives youths video cameras to tell their own stories
as well as to produce educational and health programs.
"In situations of war, one of the hungers I see in the faces of so many
young people is the absence of any information � entertainment, music,
drama � things we take for granted, they don't have," says Otunnu. "The
Voices of Children is trying to fill that vacuum."
>From the young people's perspective, the growing number of programs
represent an excellent beginning. But they're just that � a start. "Our aim
here is to build a youth-to-youth network that can create face-to-face
exchanges with youth in war-affected countries," says 20-year old Alexandra
Meierhofer of Switzerland. "We found that youth listen more to youth than to
grown-ups. We can tell them that you don't have to turn 30 to be able to
change something, or be wise, or come from the US to change something. We
can do it ourselves."
Copyright � 2002 The Christian Science Monitor
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