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REMARKS BY THE
HON.
FRED MITCHELL MP
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
LYFORD CAY SCHOOL
INTERNATIONAL
DAY
11th
November 2005
I am pleased to be here this morning.
It is an honour to be able to address you about what you have
displayed here this morning. You have displayed and acknowledged by your demonstration
this morning the diversity of human life, and the multi cultural and
multi-ethnic nature of the school and the community of which you are a
part.
The Bahamas is a
country that was built by immigration. People from Africa and Europe
replaced the original inhabitants of these islands.
After that people from as far afield as Asia, the Pacific and the
Antipodes came to live within our shores.
All of us make an exciting and dynamic society.
It is important that we salute our diversity, and acknowledge
that each of us different, yet the same.
We must learn to acknowledge those differences and see them as
something of which we ought to be proud, yet at the same time recognize
that it is by our varieties that we make the world a more exciting and
dynamic place.
The one fact which
unites us all is that we are a part of the human family, the stewards of
the world, and that we have a primary role to play in the protection and
survival of our own species and the other species of the world
community.
As students if you
come to accept and understand the diverse but complementary nature of
human life, it equips you to go out into the world, work anywhere, live
anywhere, and contribute to any community.
This small demonstration this morning is an important building
block in some fundamentals about human life.
Way back in 1945 on
the 24th October, the founders of the United Nations came
together in San Francisco, a city on the west coast of the United States
to officially create the United Nations.
Today few are able to successfully impugn the idea that the
United Nations has been good for the world.
The political aspects of the United Nations get most of the
publicity but there are some other areas that touch and concern human
life that I bring to your attention this morning.
The International
Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva is important in protecting and
promoting the rights of workers throughout the world.
The World Health Organization in Geneva is important in the
promotion of the health care of all human beings on the planet. The United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) in Paris promote what its title says education,
science and culture. The
Bahamas has an ambassador to UNESCO Sidney Poitier and he does an
excellent job in representing our interests there.
There is UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund which
promotes the rights of the child. Out
of the United Nations has come the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, a charter which outlines the basic human rights to which each
person on the plant is entitled. Then of course, you have the Security Council, part of the
U.N. itself that deals with issues of peace and war.
In our own region,
the United Nations has a peace mission in the sister nation Haiti to our
south trying to bring peace and stability in that land.
These are but a few
of the areas in which the United Nations touches and concerns your
lives.
I hope some of you
will seek to find careers in the international civil service as workers
at the U.N. I hope some of
you will choose careers in the Foreign Service.
It is exciting and will take you places far and wide.
You will make a great contribution to your fellow men and women.
In the year 2000 at
the United Nations, The Bahamas committed itself to the millennium
development goals. We renewed that commitment just this past September.
Those goals included ensuring gender equality, universal access
to primary school education, a commitment to sustainable development,
and cutting poverty in half by the year 2015.
We are well on our way. The
statistics show that in 2001, some 9.3 per cent of the people of the
country lived in property. We
are committed therefore to cutting that in half by the year 2015.
Just as some of us would wish a goal of reaching the status of a
developed country by the year 2020.
As you students,
join the work world, you will all play some part in how the world
develops, whether you continue to live in The Bahamas or abroad.
Your education, and this experience is a part of it, has been so
designed that wherever you go, you will take that abiding respect for
our human diversity, pluralism of nationalities and the profound respect
for the rule of law.
The United Nations
stands for all of this and more. Now
more than ever we need the United Nations.
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