All posts by CPNN Coordinator

About CPNN Coordinator

Dr David Adams is the coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the International Year for the Culture of Peace, proclaimed for the Year 2000 by the United Nations General Assembly.

Parents should buy peace toys for their children

.. EDUCATION FOR PEACE ..

An article from El Dia

After spending the Christmas holidays and those of Reyes approaching, as an expert in Alternative Conflict Resolution and Mediation, I invite parents to purchase peace toys for the entertainment, recreation and reflection for children and adolescents in the coming Kings Day.


Alexis Peña Céspedes, special event guest.

It all started through a campaign in 1999, at the initiative of civil society organizations and the Attorney General’s Office of the National District, so that the family should not give games to their infants that incite violence and aggression in the community, school and family.

The “Let’s play for peace … with life toys” campaign influenced the owners of toy companies to avoid traditional violent games; such as guns, submachine guns, tanks of wars; which have an impact so that the minor can learn from them to handle conflicts aggressively.

I have argued that to prevent domestic violence, the “Christmas Campaign Give Toys of Life”, can help initiate a process of awareness among citizens to promote a “culture of peace” through the media and a wide range of activities in the communities.

It is unfortunate that adults (fathers / mothers, parents, teachers and tutors) have favored a culture of violence due to their ignorance in relation to toys. In addition, this has a strong unfavorable influence on the harmonious development of minors. It is the population of “adults” that most often buys war toys.

This campaign invites the promotion of greater awareness among fathers, mothers, adults and family groups, of the need to promote a climate of harmony and peace within the family to foster a culture of Peace, discarding every type of domestic violence.

I congratulate the importing entrepreneurs, since they are aware thanks to the Let’s Play Peace campaign, where personalities from journalism, arts, social leaders and entrepreneurs have been empowered together to promote a culture of peace in the Dominican Republic.

What boys and girls learn with toys

As an expert in conflict mediation, I understand that minors require age, play and recreation. The toys used by the boy, girl and adolescent can influence the type of person that they will be when adult.

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(Click here for the Spanish original of this article)

Questions for this article:

Do war toys promote the culture of war?

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I recognize that forever, boys and girls of all ages and all peoples have played, responding to the need for activity, the need to move, browse, to pick up objects that are close to them, manipulating and experimenting with them.

I understand that as the boy, girl and teenager develop, the game changes. According to their stage of development, the young person may substitute real action for imaginary action, creating a world to suit him, between his imagination and the world of adults, to which he wants to belong.

It is through play that the child can express himself and communicate freely. As the girl and the boy grow older, they will adapt their game to that of others, taking common symbols and rules that will respect, exercising their capacity for self-control and autonomy and thus be peaceful and tolerant people with others.

From this approach, the game, in addition to being the activity that gives the child the most pleasure, helps him to develop all his psychic, physical and social functions, allowing him to get to know the outside world better and become aware of the role he will play and affirm his own particular personality.

In general we need to respect the time and space for the child’s play and be very aware of the role it has in his personality development. We need to take into account that through toys we can channel negative energies towards the positive one that the human being possesses.

In the first 18 months of development of the minor, his reality is seen through the senses and at the same time, is seen acting on it. He does activities with a pacifier, moving with dolls, stuffed animals and crafts.

We should encourage toys that motivate construction, that motivate children to be aware of the nature of their context and games that encourage cooperation in the community, family, school, club and churches.

Through play, children tend to achieve a peaceful organization, management and resolution of conflicts; as well as valuation of the environment, cooperation, solidarity, teamwork and, above all, understanding of rules and respect. In addition, attention and creativity can be positive results of games.

I suggest that in these times of violence and aggressiveness in school and school, it is possible to promote a culture of peace and coexistence through toys. For example, the educational entity can build a mural with student participation where the values ​​of peace are contemplated, recognizing the heroines and heroes of peace in humanity and the country.

I also recommend encouraging the educational community to work in teams, cooperation and communication as effective tools to solve and improve coexistence in school or college.

Also as some school have found, you can use recycling material to build toys.

The school can also promote the reading of stories, fables, stories that promote peace as a value for living together and for personal development. We may encourage in addition, that at Christmas parties and kings, cildren can write to the child Jesus and the kings about their lives and requests for games.

Parents can exchange violent toys for life toys through neighborhood and church organizations. These activities are supported by the Ministries of Education, Culture and Sports.

EDUCATION FOR PEACE, Latin America

Book review: Cultural Diplomacy: No Bullet, No Blood

EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

From: Jay Holdings

“Emerging from financial crisis, world faces growing social inequality, mass immigration, diverse populations, extremism, radicalization, and various forms of threats. Disruptive strategies, expansion of technology and digital communication are transforming societies – changing lifestyles and consumer behavior, which is affecting the balance of economic power, stability, and world order. In such changing and volatile environment, the role of culture is more important than ever.” – Mosi Dorbayani, Author


 

Question for this article:

What are the most important books about the culture of peace?

This publication is a concise researched based material, which shares a multidimensional factual evidence on the influence and effectiveness of the subject matter worldwide. It furnishes its readers with the concept of ‘Cultural Diplomacy’, and it redefines the strategic thinking and applications of arts and culture for public engagement and public diplomacy.

Where to buy the book.

EDUCATION FOR PEACE, global

Tens of thousands march in southern India to protest citizenship law

…. HUMAN RIGHTS ….

An article by Vinod Babu and Manoj Kumar from Reuters (reprinted by permission)

Over one hundred thousand protesters, many carrying the Indian tricolour flag, took part in a peaceful march in the southern city of Hyderabad on Saturday [January 4], chanting slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new citizenship law.


Demonstrators hold placards and flags as they attend a protest rally against a new citizenship law, in Hyderabad, India, January 4, 2020. REUTERS/Vinod Babu

The protest, dubbed the ‘Million March’, was organized by an umbrella group of Muslim and civil society organizations. More than 40 percent of Hyderabad’s estimated population of nearly 7 million are Muslims.

Demonstrators were still pouring into the protest site late on Saturday afternoon, according to a Reuters witness, despite police saying no march would be allowed and that permission had only been granted for a 1,000-person gathering.

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Questions related to this article:

How effective are mass protest marches?

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The Indian government has faced weeks of acrimonious and, at times, violent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which was passed by Modi’s government in December.

The Hyderabad protesters held placards with slogans including “Withdraw CAA immediately,” and “India’s only religion in Secularism.”

The Reuters witness said the protest remained peaceful, and estimated that more than one hundred thousand people were in attendance.

The new law eases the path for non-Muslim minorities from the neighboring Muslim-majority nations of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan to gain Indian citizenship. But, if combined with a proposed national register of citizens, critics of the CAA fear it will discriminate against minority Muslims in India and chip away at India’s secular constitution.

Modi’s government maintains the new law is necessary to help minorities facing persecution in Muslim-majority nations, and it has called the pan-India protests politically motivated.

At least 25 people have been killed in protest-related clashes with police since early December.

Elsewhere, protests against the CAA also went ahead in several other Indian cities on Saturday with hundreds turning out for protests in cities in the southern state of Karnataka.

Hundreds of men and women gathered at a rally in the tech hub of Bengaluru, with some accusing Modi’s government of trying to divide India along communal lines, to distract from a sharp domestic economic slowdown and job losses.

HUMAN RIGHTS, South Asia

USA: Sanders and Khanna Introduce New Bill to ‘Stop Donald Trump From Illegally Taking Us to War Against Iran’

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

An article by Jake Johnson in Common Dreams (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License)

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna Friday night unveiled new legislation that would bar any Pentagon funding for “military force in or against Iran” without congressional approval, an effort to forestall what many in the U.S., Middle East, and around the world fear is a march to war by the Trump administration.


Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)  and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)

“Today, we are seeing a dangerous escalation that brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East,” Khanna and Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said in a joint statement. “A war with Iran could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars and lead to even more deaths, more conflict, more displacement in that already highly volatile region of the world.”

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Questions related to this article:

Where in the world can we find good leadership today?

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Sanders and Khanna criticized their fellow members of Congress for handing President Donald Trump a $738 billion military budget that did not include any safeguards against a war with Iran. An amendment sponsored by Khanna and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was approved by the House last year, but the measure was stripped out of the final budget in bipartisan negotiations.

“Congress now has an opportunity to change course,” Sanders and Khanna said. “Our legislation blocks Pentagon funding for any unilateral actions this president takes to wage war against Iran without Congressional authorization.”

“We know that it will ultimately be the children of working-class families who will have to fight and die in a new Middle East conflict—not the children of the billionaire class,” the lawmakers added. “At a time when we face the urgent need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, to build the housing we desperately need, and to address the existential crisis of climate change, we as a nation must get our priorities right.”

In an interview on MSNBC Friday night, Khanna called on the House of Representatives to take up his and Sanders’ legislation as its first order of business when it returns from recess next week.

Sanders and Khanna’s legislation came just 24 hours after the U.S. assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike ordered by Trump.

Soleimani’s assassination sparked enormous protests in Iran and outrage from U.S. progressives, who warned the strike could result in a catastrophic regional—or even global—conflict.

“Right now is the moment to decide if you are pro-peace or not,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted Friday. “The cheerleaders of war, removed from its true cost, will gladly convince you that up is down—just as they did in Iraq in ’03. But war does not establish peace. War does not create security. War endangers us all.”

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, North America

CPNN prior to 2015

The Ikonboard system used by CPNN prior to 2015 is no longer fully supported and the discussion links are no longer valid. See below for instructions to access them.

CONTINUE TO CPNN 2014
When you click on a discussion link, it will go to a URL like the following:

http://cpnn-world.org/cgi-bin/ib3/ikonboard.cgi?s=;act=ST;f=32;t=254 [where 254 is the topic number]

and it will tell you that there is an INTERNAL SERVER ERROR:

However, it is still possible to go to the discussion by using the topic number..

Simply plug the topic number into a new URL as in the following example:

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FOR AN OVERALL VIEW OF ALL DISCUSSIONS PRIOR TO 2015 CLICK HERE

Uncategorized

English bulletin January 1, 2020

. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING .

The world went to Madrid last month in the hope that the countries of the world would finally take serious action to stop global warming.

An example came to us from Lok Raj Joshi in Nepal.

He writes that “a government team from Nepal led by the Minister for Forests and Environment, Shakti Bahadur Basnet, is taking part in COP-25. . . . Nepal is going to propose formulating a plan for coping with the adverse conditions resulting from global warming. Nepal is also lobbying for the Green Climate Fund. Highly affected countries like Nepal are entitled to receive it as compensation from the responsible countries that are releasing large quantity of carbon into the atmosphere.”

Lok explains that “climate change is an urgent matter for Nepalese people. First, its northern region is comprised of the snow-covered Himalaya mountains . . . The region of the Terai which supplies food to the rest of the country depends on water from the north. This relationship makes the adverse effects of global warming even more complex, more intense and more widespread creating a vicious cycle of disasters in Nepal. Second, agriculture and tourism based on natural beauties including the Himalayas, rivers, glaciers, lakes, jungles and wild animals are the major sources of income for Nepal. Hydroelectricity is the most potential area that is expected to contribute to realization of the Nepalese dream of prosperity. Unfortunately, these all have been the first targets of global warming.”

Environmental activists came to Madrid from around the world to urge action, especially young people (See CPNN, A Global Youth Movement ? ) The 500,000 people who marched in Madrid were addressed by Greta Thunberg who told them “We have been striking for over a year, and basically nothing has happened . . . The climate crisis is still being ignored by those in power, and we cannot go on like this.”

Many of those coming to Madrid were representatives of indigenous peoples who are especially threatened by climate change. Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, put it this way:  “We’re here to stand in support of the people of Chile. We’re here to support the people of Colombia and Ecuador and Brazil who are fighting climate capitalism. We have to stand together with the people of the streets and of the forests and the land and the oceans, fighting neoliberalism, fighting imperialism. We’re fighting against the United States and its white supremacy, militarization. We have to look at these things and stand together in solidarity with the people.” CPNN readers might recall Tom Goldtooth from the Peru Climate Summit of 2014.

But those who came to Madrid, and the rest of the world, were to be disappointed by the results of the COP25 conference, as they were after previous COP conferences. In 2009, the rich countries pledged to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 for the United Nations Green Climate Fund. But only $3.5 billion has been committed  out of $10.3 billion pledged. Now not only is Trump attempting to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, but last year, he straight-up canceled $2 billion in promised climate aid to poor countries.

At the end of this year’s conference, civil society groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Oil Change International, and Friends of the Earth said, the deal that had been hammered out by the parties included an agenda brought by big polluters “straight to the halls of the U.N.” with the help of countries “historically most responsible for the climate crisis.” The deal as it stands would “condemn those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, while hiding the crimes of polluters . . . And it would lead to increased inequality with no increase in ambition, no real emissions reductions, and no pathway to 1.5 [degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.]”

“I’ve been attending these climate negotiations since they first started in 1991,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the  BBC. “But never have I seen the almost total disconnect we’ve seen here at COP25 in Madrid between what the science requires and the people of the world demand, and what the climate negotiations are delivering in terms of meaningful action.”

The issue of military pollution does not even make it onto the agenda of the COP. According to the study cited by the International Peace Bureau, “The US military is not only the most funded army in the world, it is also “one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries”. The Department of Defence’s daily consumption alone is greater than the total national consumption of countries like Sweden, Switzerland or Chile.”

However, the relation of militarism and pollution is increasingly on the agenda of the global movements for peace and the environment. As we wrote in the November bulletin: The Pope’s propsal “that the money spent for these works of death should be devoted to human development and the struggle for the climate corresponds to the slogan adopted by the 160 or so organizations of the Collective “En marche pour la paix” which called for September 21 (International Day of Peace) to march for peace, climate, social justice and nuclear disarmament.”

          

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT



In Final Hours, COP 25 Denounced as ‘Utter Failure’ as Deal Is Stripped of Ambition and US Refuses to Accept Liability for Climate Crisis

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION



Groundswell of support for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange

HUMAN RIGHTS




PAYNCoP Gabon Pleads for Youth Involvement in the National Commission for Human Rights

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION



International Cities of Peace in China

EDUCATION FOR PEACE



Xalapa, Mexico: International Film Festival for a Culture of Peace

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY



Bolivia: Post-Coup Update

TOLERANCE & SOLIDAIRTY


UN commemorates International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

WOMEN’S EQUALITY



The world went orange: Putting a spotlight on ending violence against women
Uncategorized

Mainstream media silence on OPCW Douma scandal ‘ridiculous’, says journalist gagged by Newsweek after scandalous leak

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

An article from RT news dated 28 December

The refusal of almost every Western media outlet to cover the leaks [published by Wikileaks] implicating the chemical weapons watchdog of doctoring its Syria report has become ridiculous, says a journalist who was barred from reporting it by Newsweek.


A damaged house where OPCW inspectors are believed to have visited in Douma in April 2018. ©REUTERS / Ali Hashisho

The refusal of almost every Western media outlet to cover the leaks [published by Wikileaks] implicating the chemical weapons watchdog of doctoring its Syria report has become ridiculous, says a journalist who was barred from reporting it by Newsweek.

“These documents are very conclusive in what they show,” Tareq Haddad told RT after the latest release of internal emails from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Friday. The latest batch indicated an effort by the OPCW management to silence dissenting voices and cover up the very fact that there was evidence contradicting the West-favored narrative about the April 2018 incident in Douma, Syria.

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Question related to this article:
 
Free flow of information, How is it important for a culture of peace?

(Article continued from the column on the left)

The OPCW report stopped short of accusing the government of President Bashar Assad of dropping chemical weapons on the Damascus neighborhood, which was held by jihadists at the time, and killing scores of civilians. It gave a post-factum rationale for airstrikes conducted by the US, the UK and France in the wake of the incident.

He told RT the point when the story could be legitimately reported came several weeks ago, so the continued media obfuscation “has reached the point where it’s a bit ridiculous,” and amounts to abdication of responsibility to inform the public.

“I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands of well-meaning journalists, who understand what the essence of journalism is. I am sure they want to write this story,” he said. “All I can say is: please, push this story. Even though I have resigned I don’t want the mainstream media to be dismissed as ‘fake news’. I want it to be respected.”

[Editor’s note: As of 31 December, a search in Google reveals many Internet publications have referred to the reports published in Twitter by Wikileaks about the OPCW cover-up. These include publications based in Russia, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon and Portugal, as well as numerous alternative media (but no major commercial media) based in the UK, Canada and USA.]

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, global

Sustainable Development Summits of States, What are the results?

The failures of COP26 and COP28, the United Nations Climate Change Summits, are nothing new. For 25 years now these summits have failed to deal with the enormous problem of global warming.

An exception is the UN Ocean Treaty finally adopted in 2023 after 20 years of negotiations.

Here in the right column are articles about the summits published by CPNN from since the landmark Rio+20 conference in 2012.

CPNN has published several bulletins critiquing the summits. One was published in January 2020. Another was published following COP21 at the end of 2015 which produced the so-called “Paris Agreement.”

At that time we said:

There are many contradictory opinions about the results of the Paris Climate Agreement, so CPNN turned to two of the most independent and scientific authorities, James Hanson, the former Nasa scientist, who first alerted the world to climate change in 1988, and Naomi Klein, Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization (see CPNN review of her most recent book, This Changes Everything).

According to James Hanson the agreement is a complete fraud, diverting us from the real cause of global warming. which is the continued reliance on oil and coal. According to his most recent research, if we do not radically cut this reliance, “the sea level could soon be up to five meters higher than it is today by the latter part of this century [which] would inundate many of the world’s cities, including London, New York, Miami and Shanghai.

According to Naomi Klein, the Paris agreement takes us backwards. At least the Kyoto Accord of 1997 included binding language, while the Paris Accord does not. And Klein makes the link between the reliance on oil and the disastrous wars of recent years: “Do we think Iraq would have been invaded if their major export had been asparagus [as journalist Robert Fisk once asked]? Probably not. We wanted that prize in the west, Iraq’s oil. . . This destabilized the whole region, which was not particularly stable to begin with because of earlier oil wars and coups and support for dictatorships.”

In our bulletin following Rio+20 in 2012, we wrote:

“The events surrounding the Rio + 20 summit of States from around the world have exposed a turning point in history. The states have been unable to advance in the face of the world’s environmental crisis. Instead, it is the civil society, including cities, youth and indigenous peoples who have taken the leadership in preparing for the next stage of human history.”

Here are the CPNN articles on this subject:

The Summit of the Future

COP28 Fails to Deliver a Fossil Fuel Phaseout

Amazon Rainforest Nations Gather to Forge a Shared Policy

United Nations: Behind at halftime, but all still to play for in race to 2030 as top political forum closes

G77 Statement to High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development

Historic UN Ocean Treaty agreed – Greenpeace statement

Greenpeace on COP15: A bandage for biodiversity protection

The Elders welcome historic breakthrough on loss and damage at COP27, but call on G20 leaders to phase out fossil fuels faster

Amnesty International: Leaders’ catastrophic failure on climate at COP26 shows they have forgotten who they should serve and protect – humanity at large

Amid rain and wind, Catholics join 100,000 demonstrators at COP26 climate march

COP26: Thousands of young people take over Glasgow streets demanding climate action

At Major March in Madrid, Indigenous & Youth Activists Slam Global Leaders for Climate Inaction

In Final Hours, COP 25 Denounced as ‘Utter Failure’ as Deal Is Stripped of Ambition and US Refuses to Accept Liability for Climate Crisis

The U.S. is trying to get out of paying climate damages to poor countries

‘Morally Unacceptable’: Final Deal Out of COP24 Sorely Lacking in Urgency and Action, Climate Campaigners Say

‘We Have Not Come Here to Beg World Leaders to Care,’ 15-Year-Old Greta Thunberg Tells COP24. ‘We Have Come to Let Them Know Change Is Coming’

Naomi Klein: We are going backwards, COP21 is the opposite of progress

ICLEI Declaration to the Ministers at COP21, Paris, France

Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela Agree to Defend Mother Earth at COP21

‘The World Is Watching and Expectations Are High’, Secretary-General Says at Intergovernmental Negotiations on Post-2015 Development Agenda

ICLEI’s evaluation of the outcomes of Rio+20

Youth: the Spirit of Cosmopolitanism

People’s Summit Closing Press Conference

d-sustainable

International Peace Bureau: the ‘carbon boot-print’

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An information paper by Jessica Fort and Philipp Straub from the International Peace Bureau and a press release from the IPB

The US military is not only the most funded army in the world, it is also “one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries”. The Department of Defence’s daily consumption alone is greater than the total national consumption of countries like Sweden, Switzerland or Chile. And the US has been continuously at war, or engaged in military actions, since late 2001.

War and militarism, and their associated ‘carbon boot-prints’, are severely accelerating climate change. However, the military’s significant contribution to climate change has still received little attention. It is not only the US army that has a severe impact on climate change, Europe’s military is also running its bases and its various operations and contributing to the rise in carbon emissions. However, obtaining accurate data about any form of military energy consumption is very difficult.

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Question for this article:

What is the relation between the environment and peace

Despite the vested interests of companies and governments, Can we make progress toward sustainable development?

(continued from left column)

The entire IPB Information Paper by Jessica Fort and Philipp Straub is available here: IPB Information Paper – the carbon boot-print

IPB stresses the COP25 to include the military in its climate action work and to adopt provisions covering military compliance. The COP25 must include military emissions in their calculations and the CO2 emissions laundering has to stop. It should also include a blueprint to reduce military emissions.

IPB urges the State Parties to the Paris Agreement to adjust its provision to military emissions, not leaving decisions up to nation states as to which national sectors should make emissions cuts.

IPB calls for an inclusion of military greenhouse gas emission into climate change regulations. Moreover, countries need to be obliged, without exemption, to cut military emissions and transparently report them.

IPB calls for more academic studies (in line with the study from Brown University report) and an IPCC or equal special report. The report needs to be a common project of academics and the civil society. [Crawford N (2019). Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War. Brown University, USA ]

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

UN committee adopts youth resolution on disarmament and non-proliferation

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

An article by Marzhan Nurzhan in the Astana Times

The First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly at its recent 74th session adopted the resolution Youth, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation.

The resolution recognises the role of young people as key agents for social change and acknowledges the positive contributions of youth engagement to sustainable peace and security.

There were two resolutions previously adopted by the United Nations Security Council highlighting the importance of engaging youth in processes related to peace and security:  resolution 2250 (2015) on youth, peace and security, and resolution 2419 (2018) on the role of youth in peace negotiations and implementing peace agreements.

Furthermore, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres released a non-paper entitled Securing Our Common Future: An Agenda for Disarmament, where the role of young people as drivers of change was emphasised, along with the need for sustainability and long-term engagement of youth and further investment in disarmament education. Inequalities connected with geographical location of youth coming from developing countries can limit access or create barriers towards representative participation in the international opportunities in the field of disarmament and non-proliferation.

Despite these challenges, young people are open to new experiences, use creativity to generate novel ideas, have enduring energy, pursue high levels of cooperation and regard themselves as world citizens standing up for one planet. They believe in a common future and simultaneously seek opportunity for actions at local and national levels. Young people can be identified as more inclusive, cosmopolitan, with solution-oriented mindsets. They also promote impactful activities that affect the well-being of everyone.

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Question(s) related to this article:

Youth initiatives for a culture of peace, How can we ensure they get the attention and funding they deserve?

What is the United Nations doing for a culture of peace?

(continued from left column)

Climate change is now included as mandatory subject in formal learning process in Italy. This could serve as an example to follow by incorporating the theme of disarmament and non-proliferation in public education. However, non-formal education and online courses have changed the way we obtain, apply, and disseminate knowledge. These approaches have also altered practice we reach out to young people worldwide, especially in the specific area of disarmament and non-proliferation. It is important to raise awareness about the history of nuclear testing and humanitarian consequences, which is mainly associated with the Cold War. For that reason, fostering intergenerational cooperation and promoting peer-to-peer distribution of information, knowledge and skills are crucial.

Thus, the resolution “stresses the importance of realizing the full potential of young people through education and capacity-building, bearing in mind the ongoing efforts and the need to promote the sustainable entry of young people into the field of disarmament and non-proliferation.”

Therefore, CTBTO Youth Group (CYG) prior to the adoption of the resolution established this network to involve youth in a constructive and inclusive manner, considering regional balance. CYG equips next generation with extra-curricular education, such as e-learning modules  about the CTBT and its verification regime. In addition, CYG portal provides supplementary lists of educational resources  that comprise not only information about nuclear issues but also other weapons of mass destruction. CYG members have opportunity to participate in a meaningful way at the various international events, in particular the Science and Technology conference series and the Science Diplomacy Symposia. At these events, CYG members can enjoy mentorship networks with GEM filling the generational gap in the area of disarmament and non-proliferation.

Empowering youth through education means promoting leadership and courage to build presence and future we want without nuclear tests and explosions. Research and development of innovative initiatives can lead to the transformative changes for global peace and security through science and diplomacy with the direct impact and influence of actions  conducted by young people. With the adoption of the resolution Youth, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, it re-affirms work and endeavour of the CTBTO Youth Group and serves as an impetus for even more youth engagement to finish what we started.

Full text of the resolution is available at https://undocs.org/en/A/C.1/74/L.48

List of educational resources: https://youthgroup.ctbto.org/node/2237

The author is an intern, External Relations, Protocol and International Cooperation Section, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO). This opinion first appeared at CTBTO Youth Group website here.

[Editor’s note: The resolution was drafted by South Korea.

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, global, United Nations,