Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
(l-r)Chair, UNESCO Education Commission, Dr Kris Rampersad consults with Commission Secretary Head of Education Section at UNESCO Borhene Chakroun at UNESCO 38th General Conference, Paris, France
Education towards building a culture of peace in our societies
Immediate implementation of the UNESCO Education
Agenda to 2030 which includes measures to weed out violent extremism both
inside and out formal school arenas becomes more imperative than ever.
The time is now for public officials, politicians, academics, media, the private sector and civil society to come together in solidarity and
consolidate to impact the environment of extremism which devastated Paris.
My sympathies and heartfelt condolences go out to the French
people and indeed all in our global communities who have been rocked by the violence in Paris and in which I was myself caught over the past few days.
The effects of violent extremism we
have all witnessed in Paris these past few days show none of us are immune and
signals more than ever the relevance and significance of the work of our
Commissions and our efforts through UNESCO and otherwise of reaching into its
root causes to grow a culture of peace both inside and outside of schools.
More than ever we see the need for
public officials, politicians, academics, the media, the private sector and
civil society to consolidate and band together against hate, discrimination, prejudice
at local, national levels that feed and lead to violent extremism. The time has passed for rhetoric and postering and for more specific action
and leadership by example, for role models to youths in schools and
communities.
We know the powerful
educational influences of the informal arenas of culture,
information and social spaces as communities, places of worship, homes and
families.
In addition to focussing on reform and revisioning
the education programmes, budgets, systems and structures, is the need to
engage the equally powerful formal and informal systems of the families, homes,
communities and social relations at national and global levels. The Education
Commission commands the largest share of UNESCO’s programme budgets and
premiere programme focus among UNESCO’s aligned functions in Culture, Human and
Social Sciences, Science, and Information and Communication.
It is not business as usual.SDG4 as a central mandate of UNESCO as the
lead UN agency for Education, to “Ensure
inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all”
We
must nurture generations who can rise above prejudice and discrimination
whether it is at political, social or economic levels that are responsible for
so much of the social strife that occupies UNESCO’s attention today.
The new Education agenda mandates us to recognise
that most of learning occurs not inside a classroom wall, but outside: not
within school hours but outside on the streets, in communities, in religious
institutions, in families, among gangs and peers as my friends from the UNESCO
Youth Forum can testify.
The
purpose of our education agenda is not just to form or inform, but also to
remake, reform and transform; to break down the barriers of prejudice,
discrimination, and conflict to respect the natural human rights as citizens
and as global beings
In a State of Statelessness: A stranger took me in.
Last evening’s events in Paris and Beirut that have seen
more than a hundred dead and more than 200 wounded, bring home very sharply the
fragility with which our life and freedoms should be guarded and the important
need for leadership that inspires peace, reconciliation and settlement of
disputes through non violent means.
That has been the raison
d etre of our work at UNESCO, in the last two years: most recently as Chair
of the Education Commission; on the Executive Board and even before since I
have been working with communities across the Caribbean region to strengthen
cultural confidence, identities, mutual respect and promote intercultural dialogue.
Last evening's attacks on Paris and the experience of being so close to the mayhem brought closely home that the spirit of
goodness in people is alive and well, despite the trauma that accompanied and
is only now setting in at the thought of how close a call it was, again, to be
almost accidentally, in the line of fire, of insurrection and siege. And this morning as we braved venturing out
not knowing the extent of the state of emergency, that feeling strengthened as Paris and her admirers reaffirmed that we are not cowing behind
closed doors in cafes, in grocers, at their monuments as we did at the Sacre
Coeur overlooking the city Paris this morning and lit a candle for peace in the
world and for peace in my country.
Searching the Google Map to establish my location, I awoke
this morning to the reality that I was not very far from the districts that had
been bombed when a stranger took me in. In a split second she had assessed that
with the all-round panic I would not make it to where I was staying. Her home
was close by. She ushered me up the hill and some winding roads and into what I
thought was the safety of her home. In my mind the actions of the bombings were
some distance away on the other end of Paris. She knew that it was in the
district neighbouring.
When we got in and turned on the news to see bits and pieces
of the damage. She connected me to her wifi so I could be in touch with friends
and family. She made her couch, got me fresh clothes and hot tea while we
discussed the unfolding news. She must have been trying to find strength in
making herself useful. Sometime, while we were looking at the news she just
started bawling. ‘Why were people like that? Why? It was uncalled for.’ She
could not stop. She was an American living in Paris for some 30 years, a singer.
She had gone out, the first time in a long while, she said, with another friend,
French, also a singer, to listen to the singer in that restaurant, also her
friend.
I was sitting at a table and they asked for the seats next
to me. We started talking about music and Paris, the Caribbean, America.
And just as the singer was about to begin her last rounds
our phones started beeping with news flashes.
We paid bills and grabbed coats and it was then she said I
should follow them. By the time we stepped outside the streets in one of the
most vivacious districts of Paris – Montmatre – was already emptying out. not a cab in sight and we guessed that the metro would have been halted or clogged with the mayhem.
I stranger took me in. Thinking about it now I want to bawl
like she did, kneeling on her bed and bawling. We didn’t need the hate crimes
and the suicide bombings and the lives lost: the impetus of ignorance and
arrogance. We wanted leaders with vision and a passion to do what was necessary
to change, not to perpetuate animosity and negativity. It was not business as
usual. That is what I told the opening of the Education Commission that I chaired. The violence in schools, one of the issues on the agenda of the Education
Commission being debated have roots in the minds of men and women and
politicians and academicians and homes and communities and those had to be
addressed by the education system too because they reached into the schools and
created the problems of violence and bullying there.
A stranger took me in and officials in my country seemed intent
on pushing out.
I had gone to that district at the other end of Paris to
escape the negativity that had been brought into an environment trying to build
peace, encourage dialogue and negotiate compromise and that was threatening to
undermine the work we were trying to do on the UNESCO Education Commission. Many of these were negotiated
positions and actions accomplished through months and in some cases years of discussions, dialogue, debate and compromise, through various fora.
On Monday November 4, at the start of the High Level meeting
on the Framework for Education to 2030, I was escorted by the Secretary to the
Education Commission to the Trinidad and Tobago nameplate which forum I was invited
to address as Chair of the Education Commission, a position proposed by the Executive Board in April, reaffirmed in November and which was endorsed by the General Conference the day earlier.
However, I was told by the Minister who headed the T&T
Delegation that I was not to sit with the Trinidad and Tobago delegation. I was
confused. I was at UNESCO as a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago flying the flag
of Trinidad and Tobago in the work of UNESCO. “You are not needed here,” he
said. “Go.”
I left the room, shocked, I guess, and dejected and rejected.
Sometime later I was told that the speaking time allotted to the. Chair of the
Education Commission had been appropriated as well.
It did not end there.
I was ‘not a member of the Trinidad and Tobago delegation’. That
message came in a note three days later, addressed not to me, but to a member
of the UNESCO Secretariat. I wasn’t copied in on the note, but UNESCO brought
it to my attention as they wanted to understand and thought I could explain as
they had looked and could not find any of the three persons named as the
Trinidad and Tobago delegation on the seats with the Trinidad and Tobago nameplates
in the two rooms where meetings were being held.
I was as confused as they were. It was unprecedented that a
member state would isolate its representative, and one who was chairing a
commission, and not any commission, the flagship education commission at that
and deliver the message in that manner. It raised many questions and no one to
answer them. It had the desired effect to make everyone uncomfortable. On no
man’s land, I began to understand the feeling of statelessness.
Officials in my own country were trying to deny my national
identity? On the other side of town, a stranger would take me in.
“I have a refugee in my house,” the stranger who took me
into her house laughed to her friend who called the check in on her during the night of the attack. She knew
nothing of the situation I had been facing, but somehow the reference seemed
appropriate.
In the week that the ‘delegation’ had been here they could
have asked for an audience with anyone in UNESCO and get it; and I was there
for any discussions as well. I had made several times to dialogue. That was the
modus operandi of UNESCO. Fostering dialogue. But dialogue can only happen if
parties agree to. It takes two hands to clap. And two to make a debate that can stimulate
a flow of ideas and enrich a nation. But we know what has been the fate of calls
for national leadership dialogues and debates. Is it any wonder?
No reasons given. We were all left guessing. We worked out
various scenarios to ensure that the good work of the Commission and its
achievements would not be jeopardised. Some may not know how to put partisan interests
behind them in favour of the national and global interests, but that was the
forte of UNESCO; that was the kind of preparation I had been undergoing for the
last many years, functioning with its sometimes very cumbersome instruments and
processes from community levels across the Caribbean, with other intergovernmental
agencies trying to utilise them and more recently as a member of the Executive
Board trying to refine them, make them applicable and relevant and then
connecting them and aligning the global agenda as Chair of the Education
Commission, to the local needs and interests raised by states.
I had just come from rooms where various international
agendas were being tabled. Leaders were expressing the rhetoric of commitment to
various UNESCO’s and the UN ideals.
In the rooms of the various commissions and committees were
working our way to find consensual ground for these competing interests and
agendas, and on all counts, with a slam of a hammer, the aide of an experienced
and competent secretariat, I found great satisfaction in thumping the hammer -
to signify that we had reached a consensus and the issue was resolved and ‘adopted’.
Moments like that peaked and the room filled with tension when I announced the
item on UNESCO’s role in protecting cultural property in occupied Arab Territories,
a hot topic issue that has been raging in the international arena. We had had behind the scenes discussions with both parties, Isreal and Palestine, on how the matter could be
handled with minimal disruptions but in a room full of a diverse range of Member
States, any State could change the tone and timber of the dialogue. So it was
with relief that when Member States took the floor it was to commend the ‘consensual’
and conciliatory tone of the discussions.
It is in reflecting on that, of what can be done, and at
what we have achieved, and the high commendation of my colleagues, both in the
room and outside, to members of the Trinidad and Tobago delegation, and to
members of the UNESCO Secretariat and the Director General that the trauma
began to set in, on what a fragile place Trinidad and Tobago sits.
I have devoted most my time and energies of the last two
years, and the decade earlier, to these processes; to broadening the space for
Trinidad and Tobago, for the Caribbean, for Latin America, for Small Island
Developing States – all these felt not fully integrated and included and we had
been beginning to broaden those spaces as well as increasing opportunities for
cross regional collaborations through the Commonwealth and across UNESCO/UN
defined regions. I felt proud that from a small island state I was able to win
the approbation and confidence and support of my colleagues to represent UNESCO
interests at both governing organs of UNESCO – the Programme and External
Relations Commission of the Executive Board four consecutive times is quiet a vote of
confidence; and thereafter to Chair the
Education Commission of the General Assembly – especially as education was the
flagship programme area of UNESCO and member states had tremendous ideas and expectations
of what needed to be done to meet the needs of the next generations.
Except for the tremendous show of support, confidence and
strength from international colleagues and the UNESCO family, I am left a
refugee it seems, by officials of my country.
No one has called or attempted to contact me to find out how
I am faring, except relatives, the social media and conventional media friends.
The second letter had come unsigned at the end of day on the
day before the Divali holiday in Trinidad and Tobago, and signed the day after.
The workload of the Commission was occupying my time so mails didn’t get
cleared until the end of the week. That’s when I saw the instructions that I
was to not attend any other Executive Board meetings in a letter that tried erroneously
to link the representation on the Board 2013 to 2017 to the post of Chair of
the National Commission for UNESCO which four year term 2011 to 2015 ended in
August 2015. They are unrelated. That the instructions have come while I am in
Paris, away from home, performing functions raise their own questions.
I am awaiting an explanation, reasons: whether my performance or competence is being questioned, and dialogue as I had
requested before I left Trinidad and Tobago as I commended the new office
holders and wished them success in carving a way forward for Trinidad and Tobago.
That way forward should not be one that leaves citizens
isolated and marginalised. That was the feeling that had me looking for a space
away from the meeting rooms and cocktail chatter at the close of the work day at UNESCO to the
other end of Paris where the vitality of people singing and dining and reaching
out to each other in easy and difficult circumstances, when amidst the bombings
and explosions in a foreign country, a stranger took me in and convinced me
more than ever, as the UNESCO motto reads:
Since wars begin in
the minds of men and women, it is in the minds of men and women that the
defenses of peace must be constructed.
THE EDITOR: The Leader of the Opposition recently said the Government was on auto-pilot. This is untrue.
The Government is alive and well. If anything, the Opposition seems to be on auto-pilot.
Maybe because of its upcoming internal elections. How else can it explain its silence on issues haunting our nation currently.
How is it that our representative for UNESCO can be left stranded in Paris amidst the terror attacks and citizens were only made aware of this from reading international news? My heart goes out to Dr Kris Rampersad who was forced out of the UNESCO meetings in Paris by the minister heading the TT delegation without any explanation, just a cold-hearted “you are not needed here.” Thank God for the kind heart of a local who took Rampersad in amidst the siege.
The Opposition must be on auto-pilot as six-year-old Ezekiel McIntyre from Sea Lots pleads with the public for assistance in raising $150,000 for open-heart surgery in Cuba as he has been turned away by the Government and is nearing his deadline.
Three million dollars in paintings and trips to London for $1,900-a-plate dinners for Balisier House have taken precedence over the life of a child and the Opposition is yet to be heard.
While they battle each other, touting their achievements and who is more for the people, the people are being abused and neglected.
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