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The United Nations
INTRODUCING THE UNITED NATIONS & ITS REFORM AGENDA
Since its formation in 1982, PCI has worked with, and for, the United Nations, creating books, conferences, seminars, broadcasts and other events to promote UN goals to youth and the wider public around the world. But what is the UN? Where did it come from? How does it work? Why is it important?  PCI’s resources help you answer those questions in a fun and accessible way.


INTRODUCING THE UNITED NATIONS

Resources

Introduction
What is the UN? Where did it come from? How does it work? Why is it important? Peace Child International has worked with, and for, the United Nations since its formation, winning the UN Peace Messenger prize in 1986, and being awarded Consultative Status with UN Ecosoc in 1997. Each of our learning resources explain, in simple language, how the UN works, how it has developed over the years and how young people can re-imagine the way it works so that it can actually deliver some of its magnificent global ambitions – like saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war;” and achieving health, education and decent work for all,” or “Halting and reversing climate change, biodiversity loss and planetary pollution ….”
 
All these, and many other threats to life on earth remain for the generation passing through our schools today. The least we can do is to educate them about those threats and introduce them to the United Nations – the only institution that has the potential to resolve them in a global way.


A Short History of 80 years of Achievement and
Thought Leadership by the United Nations

Start your journey around the World of the UN with this short 25-slide PowerPoint presentation. (Download Here) The slides will introduce your audience to the different dimensions of the UN system, and the enormous range of its activities and ambitions around the World. Each slide has accompanying notes and it also includes a video introduction to the various components of the UN, and Greta Thunberg's short, iconic speech to UN delegates on Climate Change.

Our UN Day Concert looked back at key people and moments in the UN's history:


(Left to Right - CLICK to watch Video))
San Francisco Founding of the UN - Human Rights Champion Eleanor Roosevelt - Dag Hammarskjold Secretary General of the UN
UNICEF Director James Grant - Legendary Peace Negotiator Sergio Viera de Mello - UN Nobel Prize-Winner Kofi Annan
UN Staff = UNsung heroes and heroines -  "I hate the UN!" - "Happy Birthday UN" from Gorky Park, Moscow

EXPLORING UN REFORM


The young people of Peace Child have been thinking about UN Reform since the 1990s, starting with Be the Change - the book made by young delegates to our Millennium Young People's Congress in Honolulu, Hawaii. Following a global canvass of youth priorities for the new millennium, it established and explained a set of policy ideas for the UN of the 21st Century. This provides a robust foundation for thinking about how to organise the human family so that it meets the needs of generations yet unborn.



Our 1995 book, a Children's History of the Past, Present and Future of the UN (sponsored by the UN Secretariat) celebrated the UN's 50th anniversary;


PCI's 2020 online UN75 event marked the UN's 75th Anniversary with by examining 6 x aspects of global security (see Report.)

THE UN OF THE FUTURE
"Our World does not have a Climate, Peace or Biodiversity problem: It has a global governance problem." - John Vlasto, Chair, World Federalist Movement



Sir Partha Dasgupta’s Biodiversity Review expresses it thus: "Our World lacks the global infrastructure to protect the global commons."  The UN is not that infrastructure. In its current form, it cannot save Life on Earth for future generations. Once you know a little about the UN in its current form, you can start the task that your generation has to complete to create the global institutions that can protect the planets biosphere / environment, so that it can sustain the lives of your children and grand-children.
 
Peace Child International has created a number of resources to empower teachers and students to explore how young people can succeed in re-inventing the UN to rise to the challenges of the 21st century - an effort that their parents and grand-parents generations have spectacularly failed to do.



"The choices we make, or fail to make, today could result in global breakdown
- or a breakthrough to a greener, safer future."
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, announcing the Summit of the Future.
 
All governments have systems of laws to regulate their citizens' behaviour supported by courts that administer penalties and prison sentences to enforce them. Corporations have shareholders and boards of directors to ensure that they abide by national and international laws. Schools and universities have senior management teams, charities have boards of trustees; farms and fisheries have page and pages of detailed regulation with incentives and fines to enforce them.
 
Everything and every one is regulated, EXCEPT - poor old Planet Earth on which we all depend for life. It has nothing; we can tear down her forests, trash her oceans, pollute her atmosphere, cause catastrophic climate change and equally catastrophic biodiversity loss without fear of reprisal. The Planet's only protection comes from a UN System that was never designed to protect it. Although it only spends in a year what national governments spend on their militaries in a few hours, it is cash-strapped, beleaguered, marginalised and almost utterly powerless.
 
If we are to survive, reform of this global governance system is not an option: it's an imperative. The Summit of the Future in September 2024 - with its hopeful declaration on Future Generations - was designed to herald that reform.
 
The Pact for the Future
PCI was deeply involved in the development of the Pact for the Future - the outcome document for the UN's Summit of the Future. It had 2 x Annexes: The Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations. As the most recent effort by UN Member Governments and Civil Society to deliver UN reform, we encourage any students who want to explore in depth the challenge of reforming our World's system of global governance to review the following documents and PCI's commentaries upon them just to get a sense of the complexity (-and mystery!) of UN negotiating processes. Though it’s difficult, and the acronym soup is baffling, you have to start by learning the cold realities of the impasse in which national governments find themselves. Without that knowledge, you, like them, will flounder!
 
 
UN SUMMIT OF THE FUTURE DOCUMENTS:
A. Our Common Agenda - the Secretary General's report calling for the Summit of the Future;
B. Peace Child Youth Introduction & Suggestions for the UN Summit of the Future;
D. People’s Pact for the Future
E. PCI's Commentary on the 1st Draft of the Peoples Pact for the Future;
F. Peace Child International Commentary on the Zero Draft of the Declaration on Future Generations
J. “It’s the Economy, stupid….” - Peace Child article on an approach to UN Reform


WHY celebrate the UN’s 80th Anniversary?
 
What is there to celebrate? The world is on fire – literally – with ever-more frequent forest fires and hurricanes; nuclear-armed superpowers are at each others’ throats and poverty, ill-health and inequality increase even as the rich devour ever more of our world’s resources.  Ukraine and Gaza have shown the UN to be powerless and the climate emergency has shown it to be supine in the face of fossil fuel interests. Bodies like the G20, SCO and BRICS+5 already appear to be competing with it but, as a global society, we need Global Solutions, and the UN is the only institution able to deliver them. So let’s celebrate the fact that we still have the UN, and DO SOMETHING about making it more effective!
 
HOW do you celebrate the UN’s 80th Anniversary?
“Think Globally – and act Locally!” Start by reading our Introduction to the UN; or our book on the UN: A World in Our Hands. Then host an Intergenerational Conversation Café on war or climate change – and how to prevent both.  The best Conversation Cafés happen with an audience that’s worked up and involved – after a performance like the Peace Child Time Travel Chat Show, or the UN Centenary musical or platform performance. Do what you can to inform and stimulate the discussion.



WHERE to start? Try Peace Child’s State of the Planet Report
We start with a basic question: "Just how bad is the state of our planet?" Though statistics abound, it’s really hard to give a simple answer. Even harder is the follow-up question: "What exactly do we have to do to turn the situation around?"  But Peace Child’s instinct is always to step boldly into areas where angels fear to tread. So we did a pilot for a youth-presented annual UN Day State of the Planet Report: set in a fictional UN-based Earth Situation Room, the programme looks at 5 x key planetary indicators:
 
1. Population; 2. Economy; 3. Natural Capital / Biosphere; 4. Inequality; 5. Peace.
 
It looks at critical measures on each issue as they were in 2022 – and then as they need to be in 2100 if Future Generations are to survive on Planet Earth. These 5 x issues must be managed globally in a way that the UN, working with competitive nation states, found almost impossible these last few decades.
 
The UN’s Summit on the Future had big ambitions to solve the problems raised in PCI’s State of the Planet Report, but it didn’t come close to delivering the solutions required. The UN was never set up to do so: it’s now too deeply encrusted in national hostilities even to try. In 2025, the UN’s 80th Anniversary year,  “We the Peoples….” have another chance to deliver the Giant Leap in consciousness required to create the kind of UN we need to protect and conserve life on earth for ourselves and future generations. That Giant Leap can never come from UN member governments, especially not the P5 Veto-wielding nations. Our 4 x new Peace Child stories tell stories of how P5 Youth might achieve that Giant Leap because that is their generational challenge. So please, use this 80th UN Anniversary Year to empower and enable young people to use their energy, talent and intelligence to hack out a clear path to Global survival.\
 
FOUR  New Programmes
In this UN 80th Anniversary year, we invite you to join us as we seek to empower and enable young people to make these stories their own, and tell them to their teachers, peers, parents, friends and political leaders. For, at base, they are about hope! - Hope that this generation can create a UN that solve the existential crises which we have so ungenerously bequeathed them. Together, we must sear these stories into the hearts and minds of every member of the human family so that all of us are engaged in the mission to transform the UN into an institution powerful enough to ensure the survival of our wonderful planet for generations yet unborn.



1. Video Introduction: GRAB THE WHEEL:  A 1-minute animation showing why young people must grab the steering wheel of the planet if their generation is to avoid going over the cliff of planetary catastrophe and steer a safe course towards the sunlit uplands of Sustainability. A place to start!



2. The 2024 Time Travel Chat Show: an Inter-active Theatre event designed to promote the UN’s Declaration on Future Generations. Like every Peace Child show, the cast are expected to re-write the dialogue, imagining that they, themselves, are the lead characters in the story. This Base Script is adapted from an earlier version of the Time Travel Chat Show which introduced school and community audiences to the Rio+20 Earth Summit. Using the simple technique of bringing a member of the young audience back from the Future 50 years hence – community audiences can imagine the future as it could be if they follow UN policies, and as it may be if they don’t. The dramatic conclusion is that the human family only has one shot at this: we have to get it right first time, or Future Generations will have to live with the consequences of our laziness or foolishness until the end of time.



3. Peace Child Platform Performance Scripts ONE and TWO: Peace – a Dream Unfolding: both of these are designed to mark and celebrate the UN’s 80th Anniversary and chart a course towards the Future we all want. The first is designed to be done by schools, communities and faith groups with a choir, piano or organ + 3 narrators: a male & female youth + an Elder. The second has the same cast but with a full orchestra. Both convey a message of hope that, though there have been – and will likely continue to be – many setbacks, the Dream of Peace is unfolding around us and this generation of young people will accelerate its progress in their lifetimes.



4. The new UN Centenary Peace Child empowers young people – and their audiences – to explore serious existential questions how can we ensure the survival of life on earth? Without defining which two countries the protagonists are from, it explores the idea that young people must become ferocious Conscientious Objectors, not just to war – but to everything and everyone who, by their actions, threaten the survival of life on earth. Vignettes and Lesson Plans are currently in preparation to enable casts to explore the issues in more depth but the background papers included here will give you a sense of what the world’s governments have committed to. And the very fact that they have agreed a Declaration for Future Generations means that they share young people’s thirst for survival. And – far more than our Platform Performances – this Peace Child is a real story, with strong relationships, twists and turns – and the opportunity for young people to express themselves with real passion on issues that concern them.



5. PCI’s youth-led TV Series on the Past, Present and Future of Global Collaboration: studying this outline will give students the essential context for the study of UN reform: Part 1 shows the history – from the demise of empires to the foundation concept of International Law, on through the creation of the International Court of Justice, the League of Nations and why it failed, on to the UN which arose out of the ashes of the 2nd World War; Part 2 shows the immense scope of the UN’s work now; Part 3: is about how the UN needs to reform: it will record conversations between young people preparing their version of the new UN Centenary Peace Child and diplomats from the UN and from the 5 x Permanent Members of the Security Council (USA, UK, Russia, China and France.) Also if, as we hope, the UN Centenary Peace Child does a world tour, it will record conversations between the cast and audiences in the Forum Theatre section of the show – and in discussions afterwards.

6. Model Citizen Assemblies(MCAs) and Intergenerational Conversation Cafés (IGCCs) can enable youth and elders to research UN  reform together. MCAs look at the 3 x main existential threats to the survival of Life on Earth which only a reformed United Nations can resolve: 1. Climate Change; 2. Global Pandemics; 3. Nuclear War. An MCA proposes a controversial solution, like –
 
“The Human family must criminalise the production, sale and use of Fossil Fuels by 2040 if it wishes to save life on earth”
– or –
“The people of the world must unite to demand the elimination of all thermo-nuclear weapons from the face of the earth by 2045”
– or –
“The world’s doctors and health professionals must be supported by their national governments to work together and do whatever it takes to identify, contain, and vaccinate the entire human family against any potentially global health pandemic before it spreads beyond local, provincial or national borders.”
         
 
7. The Projects of the Mobilisation for Environmental Governance Alliance (MEGA): PCI has been involved in MEGA since our President, David Woollcombe, managed the Environmental Governance strand of the People’s Pact for the Future process.  We fully subscribe to the MEGA view that the challenge of conserving Life on Earth is a governance problem, not a science or engineering problem. Our role in the MEGA process is to use Peace Child story formats to tell a plausible, not fanciful story of HOW that governance problem is overcome. Novels like the Ministry for the Future and Nuclear War: A Scenario provide additional incentives for us all to take action. Use the UN’s 80th Birthday to read these and remember why the UN is so important.
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