Frederik Dezutter

From 30 September to 2 October 2005, more than 200 young people from around the world gathered at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris for the 4th UNESCO Youth Forum. There were 184 official delegates, and 45 NGO-representatives were present with observer status.

The theme of this year's Forum, held in connection with the 33rd session of the UNESCO General Conference, was Young people and the Dialogue among Cultures and Civilizations - ideas for action in education, the sciences, culture and communication.

There were three thematic working groups:

• All different, all unique: celebrating cultural diversity through dialogue
• Safeguarding the future: practising dialogue for sustainable development
• Learning to live together: promoting dialogue for peace and reconciliation

IHEYO's representative Frederik Dezutter participated in the first working group and in the plenary sessions - this was the first time IHEYO was represented at the UNESCO forum. Since this was just the 4th forum there were still some teething problems. Formal procedures such as the election of the presidency and the rapporteurs took a whole day, and the time available to discuss the final recommendations/resolutions was too short. But despite these shortcomings the youth representatives, coming from all over the world, succeeded in formulating concrete operational projects for UNESCO and the Member States to work on. These concrete steps are in contrast to the sometimes noble but non-committal talks that international conferences tend to produce.

Although IHEYO had only observer status we were nevertheless able to convince UNESCO Member States to broaden the concept of religion to include philosophical convictions. In that way we tried to open a door to include convictions (such as Humanism) that cannot be primarily seen as religions. Needless to say, many young representatives are concerned with education. This resulted in the following statements and recommendations related to education:

1. Concerning All different, all unique: celebrating diversity through dialogue

• Education is the key to cultural diversity: most civilizations can only be protected if the people are actually able to read and write and therefore learn to protect their heritage. Therefore, it is very important for all young people to have real access to education and be given the same opportunities regardless of ethnicity, origin, background, conviction and religion, nationality, gender or economic position.
• The media and education complement each other and constitute the pulse of society. Efforts must be made by all countries to deploy a media and educational strategy to combat any kind of intolerance.
• The Ministry of Education or the appropriate body in the Member States should include in the curriculum of every school the Model of the United Nations programme. Further, governments should ensure special workshops for educators, to train them to work in situations where any kind of discrimination exists, or when there are cultural conflicts among the students. NGOs working in this area should be supported by UNESCO.

It will take time to create an environment of cultural harmony but we must work together to enhance the appreciation of cultural diversity.

2. Concerning sustainable development

The forum recognized that sustainable development is the biggest challenge of the 21st Century, and acknowledges the gap between talk and practice.

• Institutionalizing youth participation in the formulation and implementation of sustainable development awareness programmes.
• Peer-to-peer education for sustainable development is the most likely way to achieve result in behavioural change. As such, we should encourage peer education within the formal education system.
• Introducing education on sustainable development at an early age with a focus on educating young women and girls as well as out-of-school youth and other marginalized youth.
• Facilitating inter-regional and inter-cultural discussions on sustainable development at international, regional and local levels throughout the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development.

Local, indigenous and informal, non-formal knowledge must be on an equal footing with formal education. The forum requested UNESCO's assistance in:

• Facilitating the development of educational curriculum to be undertaken to cover the value and importance of local, traditional and indigenous knowledge and take into account the formulation of sustainable development projects.
• Facilitating a youth-generated magazine, for sharing youth experiences of integrating local, traditional and indigenous knowledge into all forms of education.

Sustaining youth: support of youth-led initiatives for our sustainable future. The forum recommended:

• The development of knowledge and skills through informal, non-formal, extra-curricular and voluntary activity. UNESCO should encourage its Member States to officially recognize such personal development within their education systems.

3. Concerning learning to live together: promoting dialogue for peace and reconciliation

• The commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) should be re-affirmed by all the countries and this, together with human rights/civic education should be an integrated part of the school curriculum.
• The creation of opportunities for exchange, allowing people from conflicting parties to get to know each other and to define their commonalities should be encouraged, and a database of best practice in conflict resolution and conflict transformation should be created and made available to schools, and NGOs and youth parliaments in order to exchange information and evaluate actions.
• UNESCO should promote the dissemination of information on international conventions, declarations and United Nations decades at schools, amongst student organizations and at the community level.

UNESCO's youth forum sent a clear and welcome invitation to the NGOs to get involved. IHEYO gladly accepts the invitation and will try to contribute to realising the goals set out. There is definitely a role to play within UNESCO youth for IHEYO.

Frederik Dezutter is Treasurer of IHEYO.