INTRO

But just in case you’re needing further convincing -- or maybe it’s your friends and classmates who aren’t here today who need it -- I’ll try to offer you a few thoughts and reflections this morning on why its important for young people to be interested and involved in world issues.

Let me begin by talking about how I became interested in these issues and how my involvement in the Model United Nations benefited me. My interest in world issues really began in high school. It grew out of a number of factors -- from my family and I learned a sense of responsibility to other people -- and I learned about some of the great tragedies and injustices occurring in the world at that time -- I remember in particular the terrible famine in Ethiopia in the early 1980s -- and I learned that actions by ordinary people, working together, can have a tremendous impact for the good.

One year -- it was grade 10 or 11, I think -- I had to give a speech as one of my assignments for English class -- I decided to do one on “world peace” -- looking back, I have to laugh a bit -- such a big topic, and so vaguely defined -- I really didn’t know a lot about it -- but it seemed like such a noble idea –

The speech went over pretty well in class -- and my English teacher – Mr. Cockburn – I think he later went on to become a principal -- encouraged me to go on to the regional speaking contest -- so I did -- I can’t remember how I fared there. -- I think I came in second -- but the important thing that happened was that another one of my teachers -- I think it was my geography teacher, Mr. McMahon -- heard about the topic and told me about a speaking contest that was being sponsored by a community service club known as the Oddfellows and the Rebeccas. I think they’re still active in this community – but I don’t know if they’re still sponsoring speaking contests.

The topic for the contest was “What the United Nations means to me?” And the prize for winning was a two-week, all-expenses paid trip to the UN! Well that just sounded too good to be true -- so despite the fact that I knew almost nothing about the UN at the time -- I decided to enter. So I did some research -- without the aid of the Internet I might add!! -- and came up with what I guess was a fairly decent speech. In any event, I ended up winning the contest and going to New York.

The trip itself was wonderful -- it was the first time I had ever been to New York City -- and for a girl from Fort Erie, Ontario, that’s a pretty big thing. But the most important thing about that trip was that it introduced me to some amazing people and allowed me to make some wonderful friendships. And it was through those friendships that I learned about something called the Southern Ontario Model United Nations association.

So I came back to my high school the next fall, all on fire with the idea that Fort Erie could become involved in this model UN. And with the support and guidance of Mr. Keenan, a group of us did just that -- and the rest, as they say, is history.

We are witnessing today just one of the wonderful after-effects of that sequence of events.

And in telling you this, I don’t want you to think that I was personally responsible for this – because I wasn’t. The main point I’m trying to convey is that there were many, many people who contributed to this story – ordinary people in ordinary towns like this – can have an extraordinary impact.

Let me share with you how those events affected me personally. After graduating from Fort Erie High school in 1985, I went on to take a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Western Ontario – where, incidentally, I also happen to teach today.

My experiences with the Model UN had given me a taste for international affairs – and for politics in general – I think that somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I might like to become an ambassador some day. So I studied political science at Western – and French – I had always loved languages in high school, and I figured – hey, if I’m going to become an ambassador, I’m going to have to speak French!

Now, one of the interesting things about education is how it can change a person – change your outlooks, change your goals and interests. And that’s precisely what happened to me during my years of study at Western. While my interest in World issues continued – and probably grew stronger – my initial goals changed somewhat.

I discovered that I loved learning for its own sake – and decided that I would go on learning for as long as I possibly could (that, in a nutshell, is what professors do – they spend their lives learning)

After taking my degree at Western, I took a year off and went to France – to improve my French, and to learn what it was like to live in someone else’s country for a while. It was a wonderful experience, for many reasons – first, because France is a wonderful country, with an incredibly rich culture and history.

And secondly, because the experience of living in someone else’s country for a while – of being “a foreigner” -- was very instructive to me. I learned that every time I opened my mouth to speak, the people around me could tell I was not one of them – it gave me a tiny taste of what it must be like to be an immigrant – to find yourself in a different culture, with a different language and different customs -- and to be constantly reminded that you were different, that you didn’t quite fit in – it made me a little self-conscious at times – and also a little lonely.

I came back to Canada with an enormous respect for people who, for whatever reasons, must leave their own countries to try to make for themselves a new life somewhere else – and I came back determined that I would not make those people feel that they didn’t belong. After returning to Canada I decided it was time to pursue my learning experience in a more structured environment. I still didn’t know quite what I wanted to do – I had loved my French classes, and after the year in France was pretty fluent -- but I had also enjoyed political science.

So I decided I would continue to combine them – and that’s how I ended up pursuing a Master’s degree in political science at a French-language university in Montreal!

During my years at the University of Montreal – I stayed to do my PhD – I learned a great deal about politics, both from my formal coursework and from the events that were going on around me.

I had decided I would study political participation – I had become very interested in understanding what it is that makes people want to participate in their political systems – and I was particularly interested in understanding how people in immigrant communities become involved.

So my PhD research focused on the political participation of ethnic communities in Montreal during the federal, the provincial and the municipal elections of 1993 and 1994. It was interesting research – it allowed me to learn a great deal about a number of communities in that city -- and it taught me a number of things about why people become involved. You see, I had been coming at this subject of political participation from the point of view of a political scientist. And political scientists tend to be a rather cynical bunch – I’m not sure why – maybe it’s because we spend so much of our time studying politicians.

In any case, my main hypothesis – my main expectation – when I started my research – was that I would find that people become politically involved primarily for reasons of self-interest. In other words, I thought that I would find that people vote because they believe there’s some benefit in it for themselves – or at the very least, for their own communities.

This is what is referred to as the rational actor theory – and it’s a very popular theory among political scientists – I told you we were a cynical lot. But the problem with this theory is that it really didn’t hold up when I tested it among ethnic communities in Montreal.

Instead of finding that self-interest was the main motivation for voting, I found that it was a sense of civic duty that got people out to the polls. Imagine that – a sense of civic duty! I didn’t think such a thing existed any more! But the more research I did – and I have done subsequent research on voting since then – the more I discovered what an important thing this civic duty is.

And I’m not the only one. There’s a political science professor at Harvard University – by the name of Robert Putnam – who has written a book recently entitled “Bowling Alone” – it’s a study of American political culture, and how it has changed over the past 40 years.

He found that Americans have become less civically engaged – they are joining fewer groups and organizations than they used to – they’re even less likely to join bowling leagues than they used – this is where he got the title for his book. But most importantly, this decline in civic engagement has extended to the political sphere as well -- he found that Americans are less trusting of one another and of their government – and they’re less likely to become involved in politics – and this includes voting. And he believes that all of these things are related.

Now we’ve heard a lot lately about American elections – we still don’t know who the winner of the presidential election is – and that’s attracting a lot of attention from the media. But in all of the hoopla about the presidential race – with the cancelled ballots, and the court challenges and so on – one important fact has gone almost unnoticed.

And that fact is – that only about half of the American electorate bothered to vote in this election! So Putnam’s observations about declining civic engagement in the United States appear to be as relevant today as ever.

Now I don’t know what he would find if he were to conduct a similar study in Canada. We tend to vote in higher numbers than they do in the US – about 67% of the population voted in the last federal election in 1997 – but on an international scale, that is not very high. So I fear that things might not be quite so different here as we might hope. But maybe you’re asking – well, so what, why should we care whether people vote in elections or not? Why should we care whether people are civically engaged?

There are a lot of reasons why we should care about civic engagement

-- social conflicts are fewer -- our communities are stronger and they are happier places to live in when people trust one another and interact with one another –

In other words, civic engagement is one of the building blocks of a strong and healthy democracy. So we should be very concerned when we hear of indicators that civic engagement may be declining.

This is why I think the story of how I became involved in Model UN s is so instructive – because it had a great deal to do with the civic engagement of the people in my own community – the churches and the community organizations – and the teachers who took the time to encourage me and other students to pursue this interest.

It might not seem like it to them – but those acts were, in a sense – very political.

And I mean that in a positive way – not in the cynical way we political scientists often like to talk.

This brings me back to the main purpose of my talk this morning – why should young people get involved in world affairs?

Thus, one of my first answers would be – because involvement itself is important – it creates this thing we call civic engagement – and civic engagement is essential if we are to build healthy communities and a healthy democracy.

So your becoming involved in world affairs is a good thing for your communities – the effects may not be immediately visible – but they will be very apparent over the long term. But that’s a reason for becoming involved period – why should young people care specifically about world issues?

Well, I think there are several reasons: For one thing, almost every issue today is a world issue – it’s no longer possible to talk about these things as if they are happening in some far-off corner of the world and to think that they will have no effect on us.

- the world is a very integrated place – and in many ways, a much smaller place than it ever was – what happens on the other side of the globe has profound implications for us – whether they be economic or environmental – or the result of war.

- here in Fort Erie, for example, I know there are many people living among us – refugees – who have experienced war first hand and who have witnessed terrible tragedies.

So world affairs are very much our affairs.

There’s another reason why I think young people should be involved in world issues – and that is that so many of these world issues involve young people.

I did a quick tour of some Internet sites when I was preparing this speech – to refresh myself on what some of the leading issues facing the international community and organizations like the United Nations are today. And what struck me almost immediately was how many of them involve children.

It is estimated that some 2 million children have been killed in armed conflicts over the past decade. Some 12 million have been left homeless, and approximately 10 million have been left psychologically traumatized. In recent years, in some 25 countries, thousands of children under the age of 16 have fought in wars -- the so-called child-soldiers in countries like Sierra Leone, Uganda.

In 1995, 53 million people – one out of every 115 people on earth – were uprooted from their homes. Women and children usually comprise 80% of refugee and displaced populations. Children are witnesses to the worst things human beings can do to one another.

In 64 countries of the world there are an estimated 110 million landmines -- these hidden killers cause up to 800 deaths every month – with thousands more maimed for life. In Rwanda – which was the sight of one of the worst human tragedies of this century, approximately 95% of the children have witnessed massacres – over a third have seen the murders of their own family members.

And that’s just war – I could go on at length about how the effects of poverty fall disproportionately on children – in the forms of disease – and in exploitation of all sorts – most of them too despicable to speak of.

Why am I telling you all these dreadful things? To bring home the fact that world issues are very much the business of children and young people. To admit that we adults have not always done a particularly good job of running the world – and to acknowledge that we have a great deal still to learn – and that perhaps we can learn a great many things from you.

Judging by what I have seen of this weekend’s events so far – by the issues you are addressing, and by the very exciting and innovative ways in which you are addressing them – I think we have reason to be very hopeful. I want to close by going back to where I began. By going back to 1985 when I first became involved in world issues. Quite a bit has changed since then – and I don’t just mean that we have the internet now – or that my old high school teachers have more grey hairs than they used to. I mean the world has changed quite a bit as well – both for the better and, in some ways, for the worse.

On the negative side, it seems clear that the effects of human activity on the environment have continued to deteriorate – global warming is a real issue – one that our political leaders continue to try to deny – even as we meet here today, some of our Canadian political leaders are at an international conference on global warming, trying to convince the other nations of the world that Canada should be entitled to some sort of leniency when it comes to our greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, Canada continues to be one of the most wasteful countries on the planet when it comes to natural resources – this is a trend that has not improved over the past 15 years – and it is one that will have very serious and catastrophic consequences for future generations if it is not reversed very very soon.

So there are reasons to be concerned. But there are also reasons for hope.

In the 15 years since I first became involved in world issues, we have witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall – and with it, the end of the political and military divisions between Eastern and Western Europe.

We have witness the fall of apartheid in South Africa – we have watched as Nelson Mandela was freed after more than 2 decades in prison and went on to become the President of that country – and we have seen that country become transformed with remarkably little bloodshed or violence – indeed, South Africa went from being the pariah of the world to being a model for conflict resolution.

And we have witnessed victories that were quieter, but no less important – the eradication of small pox, for example -- once one of the leading killers of children in the Third world.

Yes there are many problems that remain to be solved – but these examples that I’ve just cited should give us reason to hope – because they show how the efforts of ordinary citizens – including children and young people – along with the efforts of organizations like the UN and the its agencies, such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF – can and do have a significant impact.

Why should young people care about world issues?

Because they’re your issues. Because you can make a difference.

Thank you.

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