Summary: Opening ceremony of the Youth Forum

Guest Speakers

After words of welcome from Mr. Hubert Schneebeli, Chair, and Mr. Sébastien Ziegler, the three panel speakers expanded on the themes of the world that today's youth will face and how best to prepare for a future that will be significantly different from that experienced and controlled by the current adult generations. 

HE Martine Brunschwig-Graf spoke of the preparatory role that must be played by education, not only to provide the basis of knowledge, but also the ability to maintain a continuing balance between the environmental, economic, and social elements of existence. Education should encourage a willingness to act for the common good, even on small and local levels. HE Brunschwig-Graf cited as concrete examples the modest beginnings of the worldwide anti-landmine movement and the introduction of schooling for girls in a remote Mali village.

Mr. Alain Modoux, Former Assistant Secretary-General of UNESCO, noted that each generation had to work within its own context and for today's youth that meant coping with the shift from an industrial to an information society. Problems he foresaw included bridging the digital divide between the industrial and third world, ensuring the free flow of information, and providing access to that information. These problems would be basic to the work of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003. A first solution to all of the difficulties inherent in the Information Society was the provision of education in the broad sense, not just education in the skills of information technology.

Dr. Sfeir-Younis, Special Representative of the World Bank to the UN and WTO, pleaded for a shift from the materialism of the Industrial Society and his generation, to a society where decisions would be made on a more humanistic basis. He enumerated five requirements to bring this about:

• A global vision to bring about dialogue
• Knowledge of what was happening
• Ability to listen and listen again
• Refusal to lean on the past
• Creation of new boundaries

Youth must fill the vacuum that now exists between generations while facing the challenges of: poverty and isolation, war, revolutions, conflict and environmental degradation. More attention must be paid to issues of less, rather than to issues of more that we see today.

The floor was then given to various speakers from youth organizations. Mr. Jonah Wittkamper of the Youth Employment Summit said that the global decision making process is not working, and a participant from Switzerland urged that youth should enter the political process at earlier ages, following the precept of 'thinking globally and acting locally'. After giving examples of youth activity in India and Colombia, Mr. Nick Moraitis noted the negative aspect of youth activities such as lack of continuity and lack of formal organization, but placed these against the positive aspects of being able to network in the globalized world.

The afternoon was devoted to the meetings of working groups and the final plenary was to hear the reports of the working groups and vote on the action statements to be presented to the WCSF the following week.

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