The United Nation’s Director of Strategic Planning in the Secretary General’s Office Mr. Abiodun Williams gave an informative keynote address at a fundraising ball hosted by the United World Colleges (Cayman Islands) National Foundation recently.
Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile of First Baptist Church with Caymans first UWC alumnus Linburgh Martin at the CIUWC Charity Ball Saturday. Photo: Elphina Magona |
The event, staged to send Caymanian students on two-year scholarship programmes to UWC colleges worldwide, raised over $25,000, according to the local foundation’s Director of Fundraising Katrina Jurns.
Around 240 people from the worlds of finance, government and commerce attended the event at the Ritz-Carlton. Included in that number were 20 UWC alumni from Cayman.
Mr. Williams, a former UN peacekeeper in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti and Macedonia and a UWC alumnus spoke briefly about how his time as a UWC student had informed his decision to join the UN.
‘The missions of the United World Colleges and the United Nations are inextricably linked,’ he said.
‘UWC’s mission is to make education a force to unite peoples, nations and cultures. Like the UWC, the United Nations has placed great emphasis on promoting education because education helps us to realise [we all] share the same hopes and dreams.
Mr. Williams then discussed the historic role of the UN and the ways it is evolving to shape a safer and more stable planet.
‘I am convinced that the United Nations has an essential, indeed indispensable role to play in bridging the great divides among nations, faiths, and cultures in the world today,’ he said.
‘The United Nations’ fundamental tasks are to provide a forum where consensus-based action can be decided, to serve as an instrument for joint action by the international community and to promote shared values.’
He placed education front and centre of efforts to build a peaceful and prosperous world.
‘The values the UWC movement promote international and intercultural understanding, compassion and service, mutual responsibility and respect and respect for the environment, which are also the values of the UN. The United Nations was founded in the belief that dialogue can triumph over discord, that diversity is a gift to be celebrated, and that despite our separate identities we are united by our common humanity.’
Peace building
Mr. Williams suggested that disparities in wealth and opportunity lay at the root of many conflicts.
‘An estimated 1 billion people in the world survive on less than a dollar a day. Each year, more than 10 million children die before their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable causes. Half the developing world still lacks access to sanitation, and a fifth has no access to safe water,’ he said.
Mr. Williams said UN’s increasing role had placed greater demands on the organisation’s personnel and resource allocation. He also suggested that ‘despite notable successes… peacekeeping and peace agreements have not always led to sustainable peace or prevented the recurrence of war.
‘By some estimates roughly half of all countries that emerge from war relapse into violence within five years… requiring the return of international peacekeepers. When peace building fails and civil war resumes there are not only serious consequences for the society in which conflict occurs, but often there are significant spill over effects in neighbouring states,’ he said.
Mr. Williams also spoke about the newly-formed institutional structures that had been developed to strengthen the UN’s peace building machinery.
Decade’s of lessons
He outlined the key lessons learned by the UN from 10 years of peace building. Foremost among these is the need to co-opt the tactic support of local and national leaders, he said.
He also said that reform of police, the army and the judiciary are vital in maintaining peace citing recent conflicts in Bosnia and Haiti.
Mr. Williams said that there no quick fixes in conflict resolution.
‘A final lesson learnt repeatedly is that peace building means staying the course, particularly after the TV crews have left and as other new crises erupt. Unfortunately, the attention of the media to the latest crisis of the day often drives politicians, governmental bureaucracies and donors. Peace building is a long term process which requires sustained political engagement,’ he said.
Given the enormity of the task, Mr. Williams suggested input is increasingly being sought from outside the UN within civic society.
Calling for an end to prejudice in all its forms, he urged an expanded world view beyond petty, parochial concerns.
‘Our common future lies within ever-larger spaces – social, cultural, educational, economic and political. We cannot afford exclusivity or isolationism. In our interdependent world what affects one nation affects us all. States today face common challenges and mutual vulnerabilities. We cannot address the problems we all face if we do not cooperate and maintain a global dialogue to seek what we can accomplish together.’
The Cayman foundation’s Chairperson Marilyn Conolly was happy with the night’s success.
‘The Multiculturalism for a United World Charity Ball was a tremendous success both in terms of raising funds and raising awareness of the benefits of a United World Colleges education,’ she said.
‘A UWC education enables young people to broaden their minds and creates critical thinkers who live and learn in a multi-cultural environment. The opportunity to develop an understanding of other cultures paves the way to peace and international understanding. By sowing these seeds one student at a time, we look forward to reaping the benefits of an appreciation of diversity and multiculturalism,’ she said
The CIUWC Charity Ball also included live and silent auctions. The evening’s entertainment was provided by the Montessori by the Sea and First Baptist Church choirs, which sang Build a Bridge and Just One Candle and You Raise Me Up as well as a performance by Dance Unlimited.
FYI
For further information about on becoming a corporate or individual sponsor and general details on the United World Colleges contact Marilyn Conolly 525-6323 or Katrina Jurns 926-5876.
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