Thursday, January 11, 2007

Starting 2007 by supporting the UN

The United Nations and its work bring you into the exciting real world, with all its complexities and the desires and aims of its 6 1/2 billion people. This is too exciting, too important, to sit on the sidelines.

Did you know that the United Nations System includes agencies devoted to human rights? refugees? children? women's development, reproductive rights, and promotion of the advancement of women? the environment? housing/habitat? meteorological events? aviation? funding for development? and many more?

How can you support the work of the United Nations? By telling others about the UN and its programs. By keeping up-to-date on UN activities. By encouraging your school system to teach about the UN. If you're a student, by joining Model UN or forming a UNA Student Alliance.

To learn more about the UN, visit:

www.UNWire.org Sign up for a daily briefing on UN-related activities. Produced by the UN Foundation.

and www.un.org

To learn about how you can be involved with the United Nations, through the United Nations Association at the national and chapter levels, visit:

www.unausa.org and, for the Westchester Chapter,
www.stratdev.com/UNA-USA/

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

UN Millennium Development Goals


What can Westchester County do to help the UN and the world meet the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?

These goals represent real people -- a hungry old man living in a shack, a child who has to work rather than go to school, a little girl who wants to learn to read but whose family can't afford school clothes and books, a baby dying of malnutrition, a mother of four who dies in childbirth, a teenager who has suffered from malaria all his life--and now has contracted HIV and tuberculosis. A community where the water supply has dried up, a rainforest, whose biodiversity is being sacrified for ranching. Over one billion people live on less than $1 a day and barely survive.

1. Learn about the goals:
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

For more information about targets and indicators -- and how we know whether we're meeting these goals, visit:
http://www.undp.org/mdg/basics.shtml

2. Interact with your Congressional representative and Senators and their staff members to bring the MDGs to their attention. Urge them to support funding for the United Nations to work on the MDGs. Congressional representatives who serve Westchester include Nita Lowey, Eliot Engel and John Hall. NY Senators are Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton. SEE THEIR CONTACT INFORMATION AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POSTING.

3. Contribute to www.one.org; to UNICEF at www.unicefusa.org ; to the HERO project of UNA-USA (www.heroaction.org), which works to help educate children affected by HIV/AIDS in South Africa and several other African countries; to www.savedarfur.org to urge immediate U.S. support for UN involvement in Darfur.

4. Post a comment to tell others what YOU are doing to help.


CONTACTING OFFICIALS:
http://www.house.gov/lowey/contact.htm
http://johnhall.house.gov/contact.shtml
http://engel.house.gov/index.cfm?SectionID=3&ParentID=0&SectionTypeID=5&SectionTree=3
http://clinton.senate.gov/contact/
http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/contact/contact.html

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

UN Secretary General's remarks

The new UN Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, met today with the UN Press Corps. He highlighted the current challenges he and the UN Face. For a full record, see the link below.

"SG: Happy New Year to you all.
I am very much delighted to see you out in full force, and I thank you very much for welcoming me most warmly.
I think I have met most of you during the last several months, either during the campaign process or the transition period. But only today, taking office as Secretary-General, I can see the full power of the UN press corps. I am very much overwhelmed by all this warm welcome and much attention you have shown to me. In fact, I am meeting all of you even before I meet my own staff.
I was just in the Meditation Room to pay my tribute to those colleagues fallen in the line of service to the United Nations.
Your presence this morning is very good proof that the United Nations is much alive, in the front lines, addressing all the challenges and issues, and trying to give hope to all the people around the world. It is a force to be reckoned with among governments and people everywhere.
I start my day as Secretary-General of the United Nations with much expectation and hope and promise. I need your strong support. I start my duties at a daunting time in international affairs, starting from Darfur to Middle East, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, North Korea - many other crises that trouble our world - from defending human rights and to the need to step up our efforts to reach the target by 2015 the Millennium Development Goals.
These challenges and issues need to be addressed collectively, with collective wisdom and collective efforts. Not a single person, including the Secretary-General of the United Nations; not a single country, however strong, powerful, resourceful, maybe, cannot address this. We need to have some common effort, therefore I need your support. In that regard, I think I am privileged to be able to draw upon the experience and expertise of many distinguished colleagues of the United Nations family; many distinguished predecessors, Secretaries-General, and throughout the wider community I have come to know while serving as Foreign Minister of the Republic of Korea.
My first priority today will be to meet my own staff. I am going to have my first staff meeting today. During the transition period, I have been very much impressed by the high level of professionalism, exemplary professionalism and dedication of my Secretariat staff. At the same time, I am determined to help my staff to serve even more and better for the international organization, by persevering in our efforts to change the United Nations, this Organization, and by building a staff equipped to address all the challenges in the 21st century, and also by trying to bridge the gap and divide and mistrust which have been plaguing too much the United Nations.
I am very much eager to get down to my work today, and I regard you as a very important, essential asset and persons who will connect the important works of our United Nations to all the people around the world, and I need your strong support and I promise you that I will try to have, as often as possible, contacts and discussions and dialogue with press corps members, and I wish you again all the best and Happy New Year, and I count on your continued support and friendship. Thank you very much, Ladies and Gentlemen."

http://www.un.org/apps/sg/offthecuff.asp