Invited by the Rector of the Global Academy,  I went to Seoul, Republic of Korea, for October 26- 28. On the 26th I gave the Keynote Address for the Youth Forum to 500 students. On the following days I was asked to respond as a discussant to two of the Panels: Global Governance in the Post-Cold War Era and Empowering Civic Virtue - The Role of Politics and Civil Society.

While there, I had the great pleasure to see Agnes and Katherine Kim and Kim Sook Hee who were gracious in their welcome.

ADDRESS TO YOUTH FORUM at KYUNG HEE UNIVERSITY

CONTRIBUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS TO THE NEW HUMANITY

I come with greetings to your Youth Forum from the NGO Community in New York City. I love your country though I admit I have not had a date at a PC bang to play StarChek yet!

I note the significance of your Forum running alongside of the University Conference on “ Reinventing Universality for the 21st century” – a wonderful manifestation that your university is rethinking education and is looking for a more humane way into the 21st Century. And your interest in the topic confirms my belief that youth will lead us into the new humanity.

To summarize my reflections today, I will:

• describe my understanding of a reinvented universality and reflect on the tremendous importance of this conference,

• give my reasons for counting on the youth of the world to bring a new era into being.

• Then I will offer what I consider to be one major step toward reinventing humanity: the achieving of the United Nation’s Millennium Development goals.

I. First: My interpretation of the topic REINVENTING UNIVERSALITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: BEYOND FREEDOM AND EQUALITY describes what I think is Educating for a Global Citizenry –

The global society is now an evolutionary imperative. Science and technology have given us the means to bring about a new global society. We are ready for a global society, but we are clearly not there yet. Tremendous advantages of globalization in trade, in commerce, in internet communication have made the unity of the human race a real possibility. But the question is whether or not we are going to have a global society, and what kind of global society are we going to have?

We live in a world of multiple contradictions, a world that has become at the beginning of this new century, a very frightening place:

where terrorism reigns, where we see war enacted on our TV screens, and where a serious water crisis threatens India’s technological advance, where nuclear proliferation goes ahead unimpeded because the Non Proliferation Treaty has been compromised (with a great threat in your own region) and where parents in Africa sometimes have to decide to leave one child behind, for war or prostitution or worse, in order to save their other children.

We live in a world of plenty and yet, this very day, over 24,000 people will die of hunger and a lack of clean water.

Importance of this Conference:

It is your great good fortune that it is your university holding this important conference inspiring the search for new paradigms for humanity. Analysis of the deficits of our present view of humanity, shaped by concepts of freedom and equality, and confined within the narrow and stifling parameters of the nation-state and the individual, is of tremendous importance.

To reinvent humanity means that we need to understand our interconnectedness – a basic Buddhist concept, replacing the right of human dominance and human mastery of the world with the realization that we are one – one with each other, with nature and with our artifacts. We are interconnected but separate, we are one but different and unique in our contribution.

Movement beyond freedom and equality toward a greater fraternity permits us to leave behind the conflicting and divisive values of competition, license and uniformity and see ourselves as responsible for the world. In a new Epistemology, subject/object cognition is replaced with the experience of our shared essential nature. If we harm or cheat or misuse the other, we are harming ourselves and the whole universe. Therefore to misuse the natural world for our private benefit will destroy the earth. Hence the emphasis on a new ecology.

The culmination of the conference in the establishment of a World Civic Forum calling for the participation of NGOs, citizens and people from every walk of life reminds me that education for global citizenship is necessary.

I believe it is through education that we will reinvent humanity.

II. Therefore, I come to your Youth Forum with enormous expectations that you will be willing to invent a world of global compassion.

I say this because of my experiences with young people who have interned for me at the United Nations

• In 2004, my student interns , learning about the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were struck by the death from malaria, diarrhea and other water borne diseases, of women and children in India. Seeking a small and practical solution, they determined to raise enough money at school to dig a well that would serve an entire village in India. $13,000. raised and they were able to finance permanent clean well water for an entire village.

• Another group of students decided to make a power point presentation on the MDGs inspiring their peers to work to achieve the MDGs. (I am using the power point they produced as part of today’s presentation).

• Another young woman learned all she could about Micro-Finance in order to go back to her university to start a micro-finance club that will lend money abroad to women in the developing world.

• And you, here in Korea, where your fingers fly on the internet and where you have taken the technologies into your culture so that you are in touch worldwide on a regular basis.

I have witnessed the altruism in your generation of young people who, confronted with unbelievable suffering of their neighbors across the world spent time and energy, intelligence and creativity, to offer a solution. I know you have that potential.

I come to your Youth Forum with the expectation that you will help to invent a new humanity

• Because your elders count on you – we know you will respond to the needs of the world – I’m not up on eSports and don’t belong to a fan club of the top players – but I’m very aware that you are the coming generation. Oren Lyons, Chief of the Onondaga Tribe of the Sioux Nation has said: “I’m an elder now. You know, when they are starting on their own paths, young people look back over their shoulder. They need to see whether the elders are smiling or frowning at them. If they’re on the right path, they need to have that little nod, to know that they have the approval and encouragement they need—to go towards the future! That’s my job now. That’s what I’ll be doing. Working with youth”

• With that in mind at the recent DPI/NGO Conference titled: Unfinished Business: Effective Partnerships for Human Security and Sustainable Development, every participating NGO was required to bring one youth representative of the five people accredited to the conference. Therefore we had close to 400 young people attending.

• Eboo Patel, a young person said the he founded an International Youth movement because when he was invited to attend conferences as a young person, he was called on to greet at the door or to provide posters, etc for the participants. In founding his organization, he wanted to give youth a voice!

• With that in mind and because we wanted youth to contribute more than posters, we made sure that there was a Youth Voice on every panel and at every Round Table. This brought refreshing new ideas and new ways of seeing the world’s problems.

I come here to your Forum with the expectation that young people will invent a new humanity – populated with global citizenry

• Because you are associated with this university and because it is the role of the University – as articulated in the Report of the World Conference of Higher Education, 1998: …”to educate for sustainable democracy and peace, for strengthening the defense of peace as a human value and respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. The far reaching changes now taking place in the world, and the entry of human values into a society based on knowledge and information, reveal how overwhelmingly important education and higher education are.”

• Pandit Nehru rightly noted at the Conference in Delhi, Education for a global Society: Inter-Faith Dimensions: “A University stands for humanism, tolerance, for reason, for progress, for the adventure of ideas and for the search for truth. It stands for the onward march of the human race towards ever higher objective”.

• Today the measure of the university, of education, lies in who you students become! You deserve to be challenged to care, to learn tolerance, respect for differences, compassion in the face of human suffering, and courage to speak up when you see injustice. But even compassion is not enough – it must lead to action.

III. So I suggest that we take one Major Step toward Reinventing Humanity: Taking Responsibility for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The United Nations has many weaknesses and your Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon has a lot of reform work to attend to – if he is finally elected to be the next Secretary General, but that seems certain already.

Despite the need for reform of a vast bureaucracy, nonetheless the United Nations offers our best prospect for reinventing universality – what other institution covers the entire world?

It is the humanitarian work of the UN that is so valuable. Already in the year 1995, following the end of the Cold War period, UNESCO revived the quest for tolerance calling for a Year of Tolerance. Since then tolerance is broadly recognized as essential for peace. In the Millennium Year 2000, the Year for the Culture of Peace was initiated. That year the General Assembly adopted the Millennium Statement including the Millennium Development Goals which 189 Nations pledged to achieve by the year 2015. These goals were recognized at the road to peace and I see them as the indispensable means to a broader, more humane and compassionate universality.

Member States promised to achieve them but it is quite obvious that this will not happen without the commitment of the corporate, business and academic worlds with support from the vast community of young people in the world.

For this reason I challenge you to adopt as a primary concern the achievement of these great humanitarian goals. It will mean looking beyond your own nation state to the needs of humankind all over the earth; it will mean sacrifices in your life- style to eradicate poverty in Africa and India, China and Latin America; it will mean, as it certainly does for western developed nations, careful conservation of resources for the next generation so the earth will be healthy enough for life to continue to flourish here.

How much do you know about these goals? Are you aware of what has been accomplished thus far and what remains to be done? I am going to conclude with the power point presentation prepared by one on my student interns last summer. She will tell you what remains to be done and I hope she will inspire you to join her in the quest for achievement of these goals.

Joan Kirby,rscj, is Chairperson of the NGO-DPI Executive Committee, United Nations.

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PowerPoint: United Nations Millennium Development Goals: Where do we stand?
Mila Buckner, The Temple of Understanding

Download Powerpoint presentation on MDGs