Students discuss UN issues in ambassadors' chairs - UN International Student Conference, Mar 3-4, 1994 at NY headquarters

UN Chronicle, June, 1994

The meeting that took place on 3 and 4 March in the vast General Assembly Hall of the United Nations looked like a typical UN event: Hundreds of "ambassadors" from different nations milled about, looking for their seats, chatting with delegates from neighbouring countries, and sifting through position papers.

Of course, most ambassadors don't shout out such things as: "I want Zambia. That's a cool country!" And, most of them aren't under 18 years of age.

The two-day United Nations International School (UNIS) Student Conference brought together approximately 500 high school students from around the world to discuss the central theme, "International Responsibility: Power and Politics". Consisting of four panels, the meeting addressed the political, economic and social aspects of responsibility, as well as the role of Governments and the UN in finding solutions to international conflicts.

"People, as well as Governments, must become committed to thinking internationally", said James Hoge, Editor of Foreign Affairs, as he addressed the first session on the nature of UN peacekeeping missions, development, population growth and human rights.

Speaking on the situation in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Ambassador Muhammed Sacirbey said that using labels like genocide, civil war or ethnic strife was the international community's way of accepting different levels of responsibility. "The manipulation of labels is one of the most direct threats to the New World Order", he said. "When we talk about intervention, we must free ourselves of labels."

During a panel discussion, Napoleon Chagnon, anthropology professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, outlined the Yanomamo Indian crisis in Venezuela.

Another discussion--on the role of the UN in the twenty-first century--included Uner Kirday, Senior Adviser to the Administrator of the UN Development Programme; David Malone, Canada's Ambassador to the UN; Leonard Silk, economic writer of The New York Times; and Sir Brian Urquhart, former UN Under-Secretary-General, now a resident scholar at the Ford Foundation.

Students offered their views on what the UN should be doing in the areas of human rights, military intervention, protecting the rights of children, promoting the economic responsibility of nations, and education.

To assist in the discussions, a UNIS-prepared "working paper" focused on the responsibility of all nations to the world and its problems. "We live in an interdependent world where we cannot escape the consequences of someone's action", the introduction stated. "We can survive with a difference in beliefs, but we cannot survive without each other."

Andrea Woodhouse, a UNIS senior, said: "The world is simply becoming a smaller place. We interact with each other more and more and are becoming world citizens."