SECRETARY-GENERAL, IN MESSAGE, SALUTES INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY

PRESIDENTS FOR DEDICATION TO EDUCATION AS CRUCIAL PATH TO PEACE, DEVELOPMENT

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message today for the XV Triennial Conference of the International Association of University Presidents, in Vina del Mar, Chile, being held through 2 October:

I am pleased to extend a warm welcome to the participants of the XV Triennial Conference of the International Association of University Presidents.  Collectively, you represent the world’s higher education leadership, influencing the lives of millions of young people around the globe.

Colleges and universities prepare the agents of change -- the business, political, social and artistic leaders who define and build economies, societies and cultures.  Your work addresses, in many ways, the future of our world; and your challenge is, indeed, to educate the next generation of world leaders.

But I would go further.  It is not just the next, it is also the present generation of world leaders that stands to benefit from the energy, research, scholarship and imagination that you and your institutions command.  Only last week, this generation was present at the United Nations as we deliberated on how development could best reach all parts and peoples of our world.  The setting of time-bound targets such as the Millennium Development Goals, and the definition of the ways to reach them, owes a great deal to the projections and pragmatic options offered by the global academic community.

This is why I have entrusted the United Nations Department of Public Information with the responsibility to develop an initiative titled the “Academic Impact”.  I am glad that this will be a subject of both formal and informal discussion at your meeting, and I am certain that this effort for sustained and coherent partnership will be enriched by ideas that emerge from your deliberations.

Your Association and the United Nations have a long and distinguished history of collaboration.  You enjoy consultative status with the United Nations as a non-governmental organization, and helped the United Nations establish an International Day of Peace on 21 September each year.  We are also partners in the Commission on Disarmament Education, Conflict Resolution and Peace.

Today, you are called upon to promote and sustain the concept of the Universal Citizen cutting across cultures, religions and backgrounds, promoting the kind of education that can foster the spirit of universality among your students.  I wish you success in this important endeavour, and congratulate you on your dedication to education as an essential path to peace and sustainable development.

In this spirit, I wish you a most successful conference.

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For information media • not an official record