YFWP-THAILAND Hosts Millennium Development Goals Summit at United Nations Conference Center in Bangkok

Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, providing basic education and health care, protecting the environment, and combating HIV-AIDS, malaria, and other diseases are ambitious goals agreed upon by UN member states at the 2000 Millennium Summit. But achieving all of the goals by the target of 2015 is not simply the responsibility of politicians: “Nothing could be further from the truth.” said Bangkok’s Governor and YFWP Ambassador for Peace Apirak Kosayodhin.

To achieve the goals, he told YFWP-Thailand’s First International Youth Leadership Conference, “the world needs everyone: young people, AIDS activists, religious leaders, environmentalists, unions, civil society organizations, and women’s rights activists — everyone concerned about our future to work together and make sure the Goals become a reality.”

Hosted at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok on July 31-August 1, 2007, the conference, “Developing Youth Networks for Peace and Achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” looked to a new generation of youth leaders empowered by ideals of service and the unifying ethical principles of the world’s faiths to respond to the critical human needs in the developing world.

The UN community in South-East Asia is a center for both policy makers and YFWP’s growing contingent of Young Ambassadors for Peace. Combining the expertise of UN and other government agencies and the practical experience and motivation of nongovernmental organizations will be essential for both an effective plan of action and on-the-ground implementation to achieve the MDGs.

“As we pursue this goal,” said Dr. Pradit Chareonthaitawee, president of the Universal Peace Federation in Thailand, “we can set up a standing network of young leaders, allow them to work across the region to monitor the progress of their projects, and to give them a voice globally on issues of key interest.

“The main theme of this international conference corresponds with the underlying principles of the Thai Constitution,” observed Paiboon Wattanasiritham, an Ambassador for Peace and Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister of Social Development and Human Security: “to promote and empower Thai civil society. In addition to inspiring and stimulating social harmonization, Thailand’s principle of National Reconciliation and National Peace can be introduced at this conference in order to motivate youths to become leading actors in fostering regional peace that can be leveraged into world peace.”

“One of my major concerns is the promotion and development of both national and international peace,” Wattanasiritham added. “Human rights, human dignity, expansion of opportunities, particularly for the poor and low income generators, extension of community development to rural localities, social cohesion, sharing and voluntarism—achievements in these endeavors require the active participation of youths and youth leaders as they will assume the mantle of social leaders for the next generation.”

Building a network of Young Ambassadors for Peace, emerging leaders informed by a vision that transcend ethnic, religious, and national boundaries, YFWP-Thailand is assuming greater responsibility in Southeast Asia to create a critical mass of peacemakers to bring sustainable development and lasting peace to the region’s people.