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Committee on Teaching about the United Nations, Lance McNeill, LBJ School of Public Affairs, Maher Nasser, Promoting Tolerance: Solutions for Change, United Nations, United Nations Association, University of Texas
On Saturday, September 24th, I attended a conference hosted by the Committee on Teaching about the United Nations (CTAUN). The topic of the conference focused on promoting tolerance: solutions for change; a timely discourse. The recent killing of Americans overseas in response to the anti-Muslim video and this week’s UN general assembly gathering made the conference immediately relevant.
The event’s keynote speaker, Maher Nasser, underlined the importance of our gathering saying “intolerance was the base for the incitement in the recent violent protests in response to the anti-Muslim video.” Mr. Nasser is the United Nations’ Director of Outreach in the Department of Public Information. In his 25 years at the UN he has served in Gaza, Jerusalem, and Cairo, three places among many where tolerance and understanding could mean the difference between peace or large scale war. Indeed, he noted quite viscerally that “to have a sustainable future, we need a sustainable peace, to have a sustainable peace we need human rights, development, and tolerance.” He then outlined the six principles of tolerance, composed by a group of Nobel laureates:
- Respect all life
- Reject Violence
- Share with others
- Listen to understand
- Preserve the planet
- Rediscover solidarity
Reflecting upon these principals, I imagined them simply, as a set of rules posted on the wall of a kindergarten classroom; they appear self evident as undeniable laws stemming from common sense. Yet, they are more so commonly ignored. Individuals could easily adopt these principles as dogma, but instead “the fear of the other is [the] prevalent experience” and as Mr. Nasser concluded, “unless the myth of the other can be alleviated, peace cannot prevail.” Mr. Nasser ended his keynote address with a quote from the UNESCO charter, “Since war starts in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men where we must fight war.”
Many may hear this quote and immediately dismiss its naivety, but I tend to believe in it. When people criticize the UN, they usually bring up outstanding points and highlight accurate flaws, but I would rebuke the criticism by saying we haven’t given the UN a fair fighting chance, not even close. As Mr. Nasser acknowledges, “since the UN inception of peace keeping, all expenditures sum to the equivalent of six weeks of world wide military spending.” In fact, the budget of the NYPD is larger than the entire budget of the UN! This is an unconscionable handicap in the pursuit of sustainable global peace and more bluntly, looking holistically upon humanity, I find it shameful and disheartening.
With that said, I genuinely believe that the UN can be a change agent for sustainable peace. Along the breadth of recent human history and the history of war, the UN is merely a recent experiment. With proper funding, staffing, and strategic direction, I believe that the UN can be successful as a channel for promoting tolerance and innovating solutions for real change.