STUDENTS TO CREATE ACTION PLAN ON ‘EDUCATION FOR ALL: EVERYBODY’S HUMAN RIGHT’ AT VIDEOCONFERENCE EVENT AT UN HEADQUARTERS

Note to Correspondents

STUDENTS TO CREATE ACTION PLAN ON ‘EDUCATION FOR ALL:  EVERYBODY’S HUMAN RIGHT’

AT VIDEOCONFERENCE EVENT AT UN HEADQUARTERS

Students from locations as diverse as Argentina, Canada, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ireland and the United States will create a youth action plan at the sixth annual student conference on human rights on Friday, 5 December 2003, in Conference Room 4, hosted by the Department of Public Information.

The theme for this year’s student observance is “Education For All: Everybody’s Human Right”, focusing on an issue which represents both a fundamental human right and one of the Millennium Development Goals.  The topic also ties in with this year’s launch of the International Literacy Decade (2003-2012), and with the conclusion of the International Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004), all under the umbrella of “Know Your Human Rights”, this year’s overall human rights theme.

The Department of Public Information, in partnership with the Carol Baur Foundation (Mexico), Global Education Motivators (USA), InterConnections 21/ASPnet/USA; LePage Educational Consultants (Canada), the United Nations Association of the Dominican Republic, the United Nations Association for the United States (UNA-USA), and the United Nations International School, has arranged for some 100 students and teachers to come to Headquarters, where they will act as representatives of the hundreds of others joining via videoconference from 10 sites.  Also joining those at Headquarters will be a group of 13 students from Ireland, who have taken part in a year-long peace education/human rights programme, called New Responses, initiated by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Mairead Corrigan McGuire.

The morning session of the videoconference will begin at 9:30 a.m. with welcoming remarks by the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, Shashi Tharoor, followed by an address by Craig Mohkiber, acting interim Deputy to the Director of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  In the afternoon, the students will discuss and vote on a plan of action they are drafting on the ways they, individually and collectively, can contribute to the promotion of human rights in general and, especially, “Education For All”.  At approximately 4 p.m., the Student Drafting Committee will then present their final Plan of Action to Dirk Jan van den Berg of the Netherlands, Vice-President of the fifty-eighth General Assembly.

The conference will be webcast on the United Nations Web site, and the United Nations CyberSchoolBus will offer the opportunity through an electronic bulletin board for all interested students to discuss their views on human rights and what can be done to promote respect for them.  The conference at the United Nations, the adoption of the students’ Plan of Action, and especially the opportunity to interact with United Nations officials –- albeit electronically for most of the participants –- are seen as the culmination of the students’ study of issues related to human rights in their schools.

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

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