Emma Diab
With the International Year of Youth culminating on 12 August, the United Nations has been busy with various High Level Meetings on Youth. Within the General Assembly hall, member state representatives discussed youth-related issues at length, while across the street from the UN Secretariat, adolescents actively engaged in issues directly affecting them, such as embracing diversity and tolerance for peace-building.
The high level meeting on Youth Interfaith Dialogue and Mutual Understanding held at Labouisse Hall in UNICEF House brought together an array of guest speakers—adults and adolescents alike—to discuss ethnic and faith-based differences and to stress the importance of nonviolence and communication. The event was hosted in part by the Manhattan Multicultural Summer Youth Program, which invited four youth activists ranging in age from 16 to 21, to discuss their experiences interacting with peers of different religions and ethnicities.
“Difference is merely important when you place importance on it,” said Benjamin Muhammad, 18, to MediaGlobal. “A lot of the times we focus on what’s different of other people. When we realize that we actually have things in common, that’s how we can come together.”
Director Jeremy Gilley, director of Peace One Day, a documentary aimed at reducing global violence, was the event’s keynote speaker and addressed the audience of teenagers, NGO representatives, and politicians from his London home via Skype. Gilley’s efforts led to General Assembly’s adoption of 21 September as the UN International Day of Peace, which encourages societies around the world to observe a ceasefire of all hostilities if only just for a single day.
Speaker Farah Pandith, Special Representative of Muslim Communities at the US Department of State, encouraged the youths in the audience to reach out and make their voices heard through social media outlets and to push back against a world that has become less respectful of different religions in the past decade, especially of the scrutiny that has befallen particularly Islam. Her campaign, 2011 Hours Against Hate, asks adolescents to pledge a certain number of hours working for the good of a community different from their own.
“UNICEF put together a terrific group of young people,” Pandith told MediaGlobal. “The questions that were raised on the issues of mutual respect and how you can make a difference were very inspiring to me. I think one of the things I’ll take back to Washington is that a group of 200 young people from all over rallied around a common thread and that thread was building a positive future.”
Ambassador Josephine Ojiambo, of the Permanent Mission of Kenya to the UN, underscored the importance of embracing diversity in everyday life.
“As a goal to achieving a more pluralistic society, the youth are in the driver’s seat,” Ojiambo told the assembly. “The heart of this afternoon’s event focuses not only on tolerance, but also a deep understanding with those whom we consider different, not like us, or others.”
Many representatives of faith-based and culture-based organizations were present in the audience and provided their own opinions on how to establish relationships with people of different beliefs to promote tolerance and peace. Frank Fredericks, executive director of the World Faith Organization, thought that a panel-style event that engaged youth and adult leaders in discussion was a step in the right direction, but only set the stage for more work to be done.
“We need youth taking action,” he told MediaGlobal. “Look around the room. Everyone has at least a master’s degree. They represent the top 2 percent of the educated world. I’m really interested in what’s happening on the ground. This was the best thing I’ve seen for youth at the UN, but I think we should only have the youth talking. The very format of something like this, the UN format, doesn’t speak to millennials. They did a great job—way better than anything I’ve seen—but this is step one.”
Though the International Year of Youth comes to an end in a couple of weeks, it is doubtful that the issues facing youths around the world will fade in importance. Hopefully, awareness of youth issues will only grow as the youth matures into the next generation.
(Source: www.allafrica.com )