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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Children Ready to Solve Adult Problems

10 November, 1998 - 00:00

Anton Pryma, a student at Kyiv's business lyceum, was appointed Chairman
of the UN General Assembly last Monday. This was not a joke. The UN office
in Ukraine is holding a conference called The Model UN, Ukraine.

The idea is for local high schools students to form commissions involving
representatives of different countries working on key UN issues (like education,
environment, health, social protection, and human rights). Boys and girls
arriving from 50 schools in Ukraine are expected to work out and submit
programs aimed at solving world as well as local pressing issues.

Too much burden on their young minds? A convincing answer to the opposite
was provided by school students from Artemivsk and Donetsk oblasts. They
said they were ready to face a "new responsible stage" in their lives.
They also declared, "We must be raised and educated, but not at the age
of 19 or 20, but literally starting with our first tentative steps," adding,
"because everything turns out to be our responsibility in the end." The
latter is perhaps their way to reproach the grownups for showing today's
lack of initiative and unpardonable conformism. In any case, the younger
generation says we all must learn to make important decisions.

After the conference The Day's reporter asked Hennady Udovenko
whether there was something one ought not to borrow from UN experience.
His reply was, "The United Nations has remained rather conservative for
a long time. The UN General Assembly session which I had the honor to preside
over made apparent a certain resistance to reforms within this world body.
Yet the organization retains tremendous potential which must be tapped."

Valentyna Dovzhenko, Ukraine's Family and Youth Minister, spoke during
the conference, wondering whether the younger generation could be trusted
to cope with life in Ukraine in the twenty-first century and had to admit
that there was simply no alternative.

 

 

 

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