Note No.5651

                                                      27 February 2001

Note to Correspondents

ANNUAL STUDENT CONFERENCE AT UN HEADQUARTERS WILL FOCUS

ON PROBLEMS AND PROGRESS OVER PAST QUARTER CENTURY

The twenty-sixth annual United Nations International School (UNIS)-United Nations Student Conference will be held on 1 and 2 March in the General Assembly Hall at United Nations Headquarters.  This year’s theme, “Twenty-five years of the UN International School-United Nations:  Problems and Progress over the Past Quarter Century”, will review issues of international significance which have been discussed at previous UNIS-United Nations Conferences and which the students would like to revisit.

The annual Conference is organized and run by the students of the UNIS, which was founded in 1947 by a group of United Nations parents to provide an education for their children that fostered global sensibility.  What began modestly as a nursery school for 20 children is now a college-preparatory school with two campuses enrolling 1,500 children from 111 countries.

Nearly 700 high school students from 19 countries around the world, representing over 100 nationalities and 16 schools from the United States, including 10 from the tri-state area, will participate in this year’s Conference. For the second time, the Conference will be broadcast live over the Internet.

In preparation for the Conference, students work together for a year in order to solve the many problems and issues that have to be dealt with, from choosing the topic to organizing the Conference schedule.  They contact the speakers, write a working paper, organize topic debates, raise funds, handle public relations and communication within the UNIS community, and invite local, national and international schools to attend the Conference.

This year’s Conference will focus on four areas:  technology, communications and medicine; war and disarmament; ethnic struggles; and human rights.  They will hear the perspectives of experts on each topic and then debate the issues among themselves.  “We are taking the opportunity of the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Conference to assess the current global situation and attempt to discover whether progress has been made in any of these areas”, student representatives explained.

The two days of speeches and discussion will examine the issues of the last quarter century which still preoccupy us today, and, to mark the twenty-sixth anniversary, the student organizing committee chose to revisit some of the topics dealt with by their predecessors.  The current working paper endeavours to assess

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                                                            27 February 2001

both continuing problems and progress made in the four areas of international concern.  Though much has changed in the world, particularly in the domain of technologies, since the first of these conference, wars, ethnic struggles and human rights violations still continue.  These issues, aside from being important to the international community, affect us all as individuals.

Speakers at this year’s Conference include Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director, United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM);John Langmore, Director, Division for Social Policy and Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations;Shashi Tharoor, Interim Head, Department of Public Information, United Nations; Harry Belafonte, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador; Elizabeth Bloomer, student spokesperson for The Kids Campaign; Catherine Dumait-Harper, representative of Médecins sans frontières to the United Nations; Sylvia Gordon, representative of the International Baccalaureate Organization to the United Nations and founder of UNIS-United Nations; William R. Pace, Executive Director, World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy; Nawang Rabgyal, representative of the Dalai Lama; and Joshua Rubenstein, North-east Regional Director, Amnesty International USA.

Further information can be found on the UNIS-UN Web site:  www.unis-un.org; e-mail: unis-un@unis.org; phone: 212-584-3009 or 212-584-3056; fax: 212-684-1382.

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