Speaking Up for Youth at UN’s CTAUN 2108

By Rachael Kelly, WNBA Youth Representative to the UN

On April 6, 2018, theCommittee on Teaching About the United Nations (CTAUN) invited teachers, NGO representatives, and other community members to its 19th annual gathering at UN Headquarters. The one-day conference to help educators “incorporate global awareness into curricula and school activities” focused on protecting at-risk children around the world from violence, child labor, and human trafficking.

According to UNICEF, a child dies as a result of violence every five minutes. 28 million children around the world have fled violence and insecurity in their home countries. Children and young adults are the most vulnerable parties in times of war and crises, yet they also have the potential to play a crucial role in promoting peace. Giving the tools and encouragement they need to become decision-making partners is one way to promote stability in otherwise unstable environments.

Likewise, in more stable environments, the UN urges youth to see themselves as agents of change. Programs likeNYC Junior Ambassadors, “an initiative focused on empowering 7th graders in all five boroughs of New York City to become actively engaged with the United Nations,” are designed to address the world’s pressing challenges.

Penny Abeywardena, New York City’s Commissioner for International Affairs, and panel moderator Anne-Marie Carlson, Chair, Committee on Teaching About the United Nations and Chair, NGO/DPI Executive Committee. (Photo: Rachael Kelly)

New York City’s Commissioner for International Affairs, Penny Abeywardena, spoke to the program’s impact: “We use theSustainable Development Goals as the window through which participants can understand their chosen issues. Educators…engage their students and…allow youth to lead lessons and activities in the classroom and community. Our Junior Ambassadors advocate for inclusion and equity. They represent the best of New York City’s values.”

TRANSFORMING APATHY INTO EMPATHY

Lehigh University student Sara Boyd is an example. In the wake of February’s Parkland shooting, she and two other first-year students decided to take a stand against gun violence, and arranged for 180 students to join the March for Our Lives protest in Washington. Boyd, a political science major, is now president of her school’s Student Political Action Coalition, which champions non-partisan political activism on issues that affect college students.

“What my generation sees as being politically active is a product of our times, and doesn’t match the mass counter-cultural movements of the past. Thus, our political involvement doesn’t look the same at all. People call this ‘slacktivism,’ which is advocacy on issues on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Snapchat, but our complete absence at the polls.”

Boyd feels this is due to being told that youth’s wants and needs “don’t matter, aren’t relevant, or are illegitimate.” This narrative has contributed to political disengagement. Recent events, however, have encouraged young people to “reclaim their civic agency” and participate in the political sphere, including the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements.

Boyd’s participation in March for Our Lives struck an emotional chord for Mark Barden, Managing Director ofSandy Hook Promise, an organization that “trains students and adults to know the signs of gun violence so that no other parent experiences the senseless, horrific loss of their child.” In 2012, Barden’s son Daniel was one of 20 first graders murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He agreed with Boyd that thoughtful, open dialogue was the avenue through which change should be instituted. (He also asked Boyd to run for US President.)

Siddharth Kara, Harvard Professor and Expert on Contemporary Slavery; Craig Mokhiber, Director, New York Office, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Sara Boyd, student, Lehigh University (Photo: Rachael Kelly)

CHILD LABOR

Siddharth Kara, Professor at Harvard, has written three books on human trafficking. In 2017 he produced the film Trafficked. At the beginning of his presentation, Kara asked everyone in attendance who owned a smartphone to raise their hands.

“Child labor has touched all of your lives in that single example,” said Kara, primarily through the mining industry in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Expand that to the clothes you’re wearing, the food you eat—seafood, agricultural products, rice, et cetera—your sporting goods…and children are disproportionately impacted by and pulled into this.”

168 million children are involved in child labor. They are not going to school full-time, they are not enjoying their childhood, they are not protected from physical, emotional, and sexual harm.

Child labor, said Kara, finds its roots in poverty. It is often the direct result of a family being unable to buy food without children’s wages. “[Parents] have to barter and trade away childhood for survival. Sometimes that’s used as a justification…but that means that as a society and a civilization – a civilization that [the UN] is meant to steward into a better place – we have failed…the children of the world.”

Kara pointed out that this was not cruelty for cruelty’s sake; child labor is cruelty for profit.

“That is…the dark underbelly of the global economy that doesn’t get enough discussion.”

The Committee on Teaching About the United Nations was founded in 1996 by Sally Swing Shelley, of the UN Department of Public Information, and Barbara M. Walker, an educator at the Washington International School. #CTAUN2018