STUDENT CONFERENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS AT HEADQUARTERS 6 DECEMBER;

VIDEOLINK TO CONNECT 12 SITES, 6 COUNTRIES

In observance of next week’s Human Rights Day, the Department of Public Information (DPI) will host, for the fifth consecutive year, a student conference on human rights on Friday, 6 December 2002.  The event brings together students from locations as diverse as the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Northern Ireland and the United States in a video-conference programme connecting 12 sites in 6 countries.  The theme for this year’s student conference, “Human Rights and Sustainable Development:  A Better Future for All” is intended to link the issues discussed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development with the overarching Millennium Development Goals under the umbrella of human rights.

The 2002 student human rights conference will have a small, representative group of students participating here at Headquarters, in Conference Room 8, and the rest joining via video-conference from sites throughout the United States, Canada, the Dominican Republic and Mexico, as well as at schools in Prague, Czech Republic, and in Magherafelt, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.  The proceedings will also be Web cast, and hundreds more will be following the programme on-line and participating through chat forums for the conference set up on the United Nation’s CyberSchoolBus.  They will join in drafting a plan of action on human rights and sustainable development for ways, individually and collectively, they can contribute to the promotion of both processes. 

The programme organized by DPI and co-sponsored by a number of non-governmental organizations, including United Nations Association-USA (UNA-USA), Global Education Motivators, Interconnections 21, the Carol Baur Foundation (Mexico), LePages Educational Consultants (Canada), and UNA-Dominican Republic, will be opened at

9:30 a.m. by Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Bertrand Ramcharan, via video-conference from Geneva.  At the close of the programme, in the afternoon, the Acting President of the 57^th General Assembly, Clifford Sibusiso Mamba of Swaziland, will be on hand to receive the plan of action from the student delegates, and to address the conference.

For more information, please call (212) 963-6984; for media accreditation, (212) 963-6934.

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