Young people around the world have held activities to mark International Youth Day this year with a call for inclusion while recognising diversity. However, in the Swiss city of Geneva, delegates from over 160 countries converged at the World Health Organisation Headquarters to observe the day as part of the 31st Youth Assembly of the AFS Intercultural Programs co-organised by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).
The day saw speeches by AFS CEO Daniel Obst, UN diplomats, and youth activists among others. Speaking on this year’s theme, “Different Contexts, Common Aspirations”, Director of Multilateral Diplomacy Division of UNITAR, Rabih El-Haddad, urged the youth to take charge in their respective countries on causes that promote international cooperation and peace despite having different cultural backgrounds. According to him, the common factor that has made a global organisation like the United Nations very successful despite present challenges is the shared values it operates on. For him, these values of the UN: human dignity, respect for fundamental human rights and human person are the fruit of hard work borne several years ago that has kept the world together post first and second world wars.
He said, “Now, of course if you are going to ask the sceptics and those who don’t believe in the values of the United Nations they will tell you well this difference is an indicator that these people in Geneva are building the Babel Tower, right, people who don’t speak the same language they come here they meet, they come up with some documents and they go back home and that’s it. Well, there is something that they are missing I think the second part of this conference the main theme is what binds us together”
“So what binds us together is what? Is a set of values that are at the substructure of the work of the United Nations, for example human dignity, the respect for fundamental human rights and the human person. Okay, don’t take it for granted. This was the fruit of a lot of effort that took hundreds of years and you have the proof the first world war and second world war what happened here on European soil as a testimony to the absence of these fundamental human rights.”
Again, world leaders and diplomats have a role to play in shaping the global order and preserving peace but it is grassroot movements in various countries that remind the heads of state to respect the UN charter among several other treaties and conventions nations have signed on with one another. As Mr. Haddad noted in his address, diplomats with all their efforts at maintaining international cooperation and peace around the world, but community mobilisation that transcends national borders go a long way to achieve maximum impact. He cited the issue of climate change where funding and political will by various governments in the world is low however without mounted pressure from civil society there would be no action against the global phenomenon.
International Youth Day, observed annually on August 12, was instituted by the UN to celebrate young people’s leadership and addresses global cultural, economic, and legal challenges.