DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL DARES GRADUATES TO DREAM BIG, IN ADDRESS

TO UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT CEREMONY

Following is the address delivered today in New York by UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro to the graduation ceremony of the United Nations International School (UNIS):

Welcome to the United Nations!  I am delighted to see you all here today.  I congratulate the graduating students for their hard work and accomplishments.  Let me also congratulate all the family members who I can see beaming with pride.

As a parent, I know that today is a triumph not only for the class of 2007, but also for the siblings, the parents, the grandparents, even the gathered aunts and uncles, of the class of 2007.  They may not all receive diplomas, but they all deserve our recognition.

Let us give them a hand.  They have made us what we are.

But this day ultimately belongs to the graduates.  I find it immensely gratifying to see so many promising young minds gathered in this great Hall.  You may not know this about me, but my first job was as a university professor.  And what I’m seeing today represents a teacher’s ultimate dream: some of the best and brightest students of all nationalities eagerly listening to my every word!

Your presence here in this General Assembly Hall is striking in other respects as well.  The United Nations Charter begins with a pledge to “succeeding generations”; it therefore seems especially appropriate to have so many leaders of tomorrow’s generation gathered here today.

Indeed, your class -- and UNIS itself -- represents much of what is best about the United Nations: people of different backgrounds joining hands in friendship and in search of knowledge and understanding.  Your classmates hail from six continents and speak more than three dozen languages.  This makes you perhaps the most diverse graduating class of any high school in America, or the world for that matter!

If the United Nations is the international community’s most universal organization, UNIS is its earliest training ground.  It is a place to prepare all of you for the responsibilities of global citizenship.  In its classrooms and in its playgrounds, you have been exposed to the best strands of academic thought and world cultures.  I hope your experiences together have opened your minds and prepared you to view afresh the most intractable social and political issues of our time.

Now as your class disbands, your paths will diverge.  Some of you will go directly to college.  Some may travel or work for a while.  Some may even start a rock band.  But whatever profession or activity you pursue, I hope you will always be united by the bond of global citizenship that this school has created among you.  And I hope you will always identify with the United Nations and its mission.

After all, you graduate just as the UN transitions into a new era of its own.  This Organization has changed nearly beyond recognition even in the decade that many of you have attended UNIS.

Today, in places as far apart as Bogota and Bangkok, Dili and Dakar, UN staff members are hard at work breathing life into the UN’s founding ideals.  Their efforts reflect the reality that today’s United Nations has moved from being a Headquarters-weighted Organization to a much more field-focused operation.

As this happens, the success of the UN’s ambitious agenda no longer rests with Government representatives and international officials alone.

Instead, it lies with committed world citizens everywhere.  In other words, it lies with you.  This is your century, and this is your United Nations.  As educated and empowered young men and women with promising careers, your support is particularly crucial in the years ahead.  I hope you will go on to practice in the world what you have learnt within the walls of the United Nations International School -- understanding, tolerance, community service, seeking out different viewpoints -- then the best attributes of global citizenship will come to you naturally.

As you step forward today, I hope you will dare to dream big.  I hope you will imagine how you would like to shape the world if you could.  Imagine hate turning to respect.  Imagine poverty and greed yielding to development and justice.  Imagine conflict giving way to peace.

If you develop this vision, you will also see myriad ways to contribute. Indeed, I expect your service to these ideals to come in many subtle, yet powerful ways.

It will come late at night as you research a new vaccine to cure an infectious disease.  It will come as you pen a play to highlight a social wrong.  It will come when you take time from your law practice to fight a pro-bono refugee case.

It will come as long as you retain a sense of obligation to a broader ideal, a greater good and a higher purpose.

If you subscribe to this sense of mission, the sky will be the limit, for you and for all of us whose hopes ride with you today.

Class of 2007, your teachers have tremendous confidence in you.  I understand that you have actually cooked a farewell gourmet meal for them, when others before you called up the caterers.  These teachers are in no doubt that you are a class that will go above and beyond.

Now, the rest of us wonder what feast you will cook up next!

Congratulations and good luck!

* *** *

For information media • not an official record