A clarion call to youths

The following is Bautista's keynote address to the Model United Nations Summit (MUNOS) in Seoul on July 25. MUNOS is a simulation of the United Nations conducted in English for Korean high-school students. Focus of the three-day summit was on developing young diplomats and leaders who will take on global problems even in their youth.

A prophet of old has told: The young will see visions with the wisdom of age, and the old will dream the dreams of youth!

Young people, do not abandon your visions of a brighter future. You can act on these visions now. When you abandon your visions today, in older years in retrospect, you may only dream of such visions again. You may regret the nightmarish world you yourselves will have bequeathed your children, just like the world you are now in and may inherit unless you act upon such a world.

Young people, do not abandon your visions of a brighter future.

Young people surely have a stake in making this world more friendly and tolerant, more just and secure, more peaceable and sustainable, more participatory and democratic.

The time is now to shape the world in which you live.

Youth is time in a hurry. I understand. My oldest son is already 25, and my daughter is 22. Both seem to be catching up with father and mother. They are becoming themselves, fulfilling their visions, albeit in a precarious, unpredictable time and world.

Technological innovations

The fast-paced world has you whirling with the technological innovations that have mesmerized, but also mystified and perplexed, many of you. It was the imagination of young people, even the hacking skills of the more subterranean enterprising youths that have spurred improvements upon these innovations.

I believe a high degree of anxiety exists among you about your future.

You Googled and Tagged. You Blogged your exploits. You claimed territory in MySpace. You documented your lives in YouTube. You Twittered and “Flickr”ed. You smiled and laughed, you cried and sobbed in each other’s Facebook.

But in all this, I believe a high degree of anxiety exists among you about your future. It is heightened because you know you are not being involved in shaping that future. It is heightened even more so when you are told that you are too young to be significantly involved in shaping today’s economics, politics and culture.

Spare no time to assert what has now become a maxim among those marginalized and excluded: Nothing about us without us. Indeed, nothing about youths without youths participating directly in the development and implementation of policy about them.

I want to congratulate you for joining MUNOS 2009. You are making a claim upon your future, which is now. Your presence here is a major step to claiming a stake in fashioning a world that will make you and your societies prosperous, but also socially responsible; mighty and secure, but peaceful and non-interventionary; progressive and developed, but sustainably and ecologically responsible; sovereign but multilateral in resolving many of the intractable, confounding national, regional and global problems we have before us.

A clarion call

The principles of the United Nations beckon upon you as a clarion call mandating us to secure our nations and our world, and make security a shared burden and responsibility.

There is no place for unilateralism in a world burdened with unbridled globalization.

That clarion call is to secure our world from unduly incursive, imperial, occupationary and interventionary designs. There is no place for unilateralism in a world burdened with unbridled globalization.

That clarion call is to secure our world from epidemics and pandemic diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and recently, the influenza A(H1N1) virus. Our medical expertise, our epidemiological knowhow, and our social infrastructures cannot sustain and be saddled with these if we are to realize health as a human right, and health care as an issue of access for all. These, too, form part of the clarion call.

That clarion call is to secure our world from debilitating and dehumanizing hunger and poverty. No longer must they be allowed to paint a picture of a hungry child going to bed with an empty stomach, especially when we know there is so much food wasted elsewhere.

That clarion call is to secure our world from endemic hunger and poverty. It is to secure food, fuel and finances so that whatever development and financial architecture is being put in place, it will redound to the betterment of everyone, not just a few.

Unvarnished assessments

Mahatma Gandhi said it most compellingly: “In nature, there is enough for every one’s need, but too little for one’s greed.”

In nature, there is enough for every one’s need, but too little for one’s greed.

I am always in awe of young people’s unvarnished assessments of the world and peoples they encounter. On many occasions my own sensibilities have been pleasantly, albeit uncomfortably, challenged by youthful, and at times, irreverent critique. I welcome the occasion to offer these thoughts and be open to critique by young people.

Let us exchange ideas on how to better our world from the mess that we in the older generations are bequeathing to you. I must say mea culpa because in your present and in your future is a formidable challenge to undo much of the follies and failings, mistakes and missteps, of my and older generations.

The Model UN Summit is a venue to initiate you into the adult world of diplomacy. Indeed, it preparation into today’s rather undiplomatic world where it is far easier to go to war than to convene a table of peace. I continue to be perplexed how many of today’s leaders cannot imagine how much cheaper it is to feed a hungry mob than to exterminate an imagined enemy.

The reform of the United Nations — of the Security Council and the Economic & Social Council — two of the U.N. organizations you are simulating, must address the urgent longing and struggle for food as much as freedom, for jobs as much as justice, and for land as much as liberty.

Initiation in world

This conference is to initiate you into the world of multilateralism, to prepare you to confront the rather unilateralist world of today. It is far more convenient today to be hegemonic rather than cooperative. It is often more convenient to excuse global cooperation in favor of perceived sovereign threats and veiled notions of national security, rather than be a team player in an international community.

I apologize for the mess created by my generation and the ones before it.

This is your century. Own it. Define it. Shape and mold it. I apologize for the mess created by my generation and the ones before it. I offer myself at your service for a present and a future you and your children and mine, will want, will love and will live in.

You are harbingers of a new world. It is a world you will fashion so that you and your descendants will live with fullness and wholeness. It will be a world animated by relationships that affirm, protect and promote human rights. It will be a world where citizenry is beyond political allegiances, for it will be citizenry to our common humanity.

NGos and civil society

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society at large are generally with you in no longer missing local and global targets for a more just, peaceable, sustainable world, which the Millennium Development Goals envision. NGOs and civil society at large are with you in no longer continuing to mess up an already-failed economy. NGOs and civil society at large are with you in no longer continuing to knot up even more the many tangled governmental and intergovernmental political bureaucracies that fail to gather political will to move us to sustainable global living.

To young people like you belongs not latent, but active power that must be harnessed now.

To young people like you belongs not latent, but active power that must be harnessed now. You are not hope for the future, but are hope for today. You have the power to redirect your energies to better, more peaceful and just uses.

From your ranks, at a year or two older, come most of the soldiers sent to wars and battle zones to kill and to die. You hold such power that you may yet reverse this, so that the penchant for war becomes a longing for peace. It will be peace and justice in your world and your children’s world.

Millennium Development Goals

Is it really that hard to achieve the eradication of poverty and elimination of hunger among the least poor by 2015? Is it really that hard to realize the right to education, to health, to maternal health care, to sustainable development, and to have freedom from diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis? How unrealistic are the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?

Wars must no longer be thought of as simply a form of diplomacy by other means.

In 2003, the world spent more than $900 billion on its militaries, with the United States contributing nearly 50% of the total ($417 billion). World military expenditure in one year is greater than would be required to fulfill the MDGs by 2015.

Last year, the United States accounted for 42% of global military spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The United States spent seven times more than the second-biggest military spender, China. In fact, the United States spent more on its armed forces that the next 14 countries combined: That includes France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia and India, all in the top ten and in that order.

The Economists Allied for Arms Reduction maintains that if 10% of world military outlays, or 20% of the U.S. military expenditure, were diverted yearly, the MDGs could be fully funded. And yet, this is not being done. Military spending continues to grow so fast that the U.N. is concerned the MDGs may not be met by 2015.

Failure of human imagination

Wars must no longer be thought of as simply a form of diplomacy by other means. Wars are a failure of the human imagination. Our human rights to peace are at stake during wars. Indeed, wars and conflicts, and situations they spawn — refugees, child soldiers, destroyed economies and broken lives — must not occupy our imagination if we are to truly embody the ideals of the United Nations.

Our human rights to peace are at stake during wars.

Consider this with urgency. Your action is equally for you today and into the future.

The Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CoNGO), an umbrella organization of more than 600 NGOs, recently concluded its Civil Society Development Forum in Geneva just a couple of weeks ago. As CoNGO president, I surprised the forum participants by ceding to a youth representative my time to deliver the closing remarks.

The forum focused on civil society’s contribution to the U.N.’s Economic & Social Council (ECOSOC) review of the development goals and commitments with respect to global public health. At least one fourth of the participants of the forum were young people who made remarkable contributions to the discourse and debate that produced the Outcome Document that we submitted to ECOSOC.

The youths at the development forum said:

Empowering youth is an investment for today and the future for their meaningful participation in decision-making for themselves and for society … Young people need a voice in global governance systems. It is crucial that they can feel a sense of purpose and respect.

When encouraged to speak with their opinion being valued, recognizing that “youth speak truth,” they are empowered to talk about their experiences. For young people, meaningful participation includes being immersed and knowledgeable about the issues they mostly only hear about. New approaches of communication and dialogue must be explored to relate the daily experience of young people. These dialogues can help initiate change in communities.

I cannot agree more. What you do today demonstrates an empowerment that claims you for the present and the future. Among you will be engineers and scientists, artists and humanitarians, politicians and international public servants, government officials and NGO practitioners. You will build the infrastructures of justice, enable a culture of peace, and animate human rights learning and living.

I hope this and a better world is what you will imagine to act upon. If that is so, I am very hopeful.

Bautista (at right) is shown chairing the Civil Society Development Forum in Geneva last month.

 Editor’s note: The Rev. Liberato Bautista is assistant general secretary for the United Methodist General Board of Church & Society’s United Nations and International Affairs work area.

Bautista is also president of the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CoNGO). He is former president of the Council of Organizations (New York) of the United Nations Assn. of the USA.

This was his second address to an international Model U.N. conference. The first was in October 2008 at the International Conference of the Americas held in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

MUNOS, held at COEX Conference Center, Seoul, is an affiliate of THIMUN (The Hague International Model United Nations), NGO in Roster Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the U.N. In line with many International Model United Nations hosted all over the world, the object of MUNOS is to seek, through research, discussion, negotiation and debate, solutions to various problems in the world. Young delegates learn to develop views and attitudes other than their own, allowing students to see that every conflict has two sides, thus encouraging peaceful cooperation between nations.