A Keynote Address by Professor Sheriff Folarin at the Closing Plenary of Covenant International Model United Nations (CIMUN) Conference on Wednesday, July 8, 2020.
To realise our collective dream of a better United Nations; of a more stable, peaceful, pandemic-free and prosperous world; and ultimately of a desirable future, we will not only be reaffirming our commitment to multilateralism as responsible nations or peoples of the global community, we will also need to meet other demands this agenda places on us.
Education is fundamental in the drive towards a world of our dreams. By education, we do not necessarily mean ability to read and write, but the general development of the human mind through quality knowledge. All-round education is critical to produce men and women of reason. The mind is nourished, malnourished or emptied by what is fed into it. And, with only 45 per cent of the world’s adults educated in a global community of 7.8 billion people (CIA Factbook and Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD), the world is grossly under-educated.
How many political leaders today, whose careless decisions can spark off another round of international conflicts, even know the ordinary statistics of deaths in the First World War and Second World War? For our information, it has been estimated that between 50 million and 67 million lives were lost in the Second World War alone. How many young people who join in ethnic diatribes and expand ethnic and xenophobic frontiers know that about 2 million and 1 million people died in Sudan’s protracted conflict and Rwandan 100-day genocide respectively, both caused by ethnic violence?
Therefore, a special branch of knowledge we all need from adolescent age is historical knowledge. It is important to know how our world was formed and be taught how to avoid troubles that look similar to previous ones, and how to adopt or adapt solutions that worked for society in the past.
Aside the foregoing, how many youths do critical reading or research today? Addiction to Netflix, Syfy, YouTube and social media fake contents over and above good knowledge is a recipe for disaster. The platforms are not bad for social bonding, but are bad when we are addicted to them and rely on them as our sources of knowledge. What we are seeing in the world today is a social media that breed a new gang of miseducated individuals who can only contribute chaos to already chaotic world.
Again, a world in which the only source of knowledge are PowerPoint slides and where young people only read for school examinations, cannot be a world with adequate knowledge to confront numerous challenges requiring lasting solutions. For those who are not in school, nothing stops them from reading, land, if they cannot read and write, they could learn how to. This is the direction of the world today- everyone must or should be literate, to be able to learn and get educated. No one should be left behind.
Someone once chided us saying, “if you think education is expensive, try ignorance”. We dared him and tried ignorance and we can see l, right now, the bizarre consequences of ignorance.
Good leadership at national and international levels is sinquanon for regional, international or global stability. Everything rests on leadership.
Development, underdevelopment, conflict or peace, corruption, literacy level, healthcare quality, pandemics or lack of it, progress or otherwise, et cetera- all depend on national or global leadership.
Sometimes, leadership is a reflection of society; but most times, leadership is defined by the quality of persons occupying that role. The world was thrown into wars twice by national leaders. The Palestinian Question has remained unsolved because of global (mis)leadership. The global COVID-19 pandemic curve is flattened in some places because of leadership; yet, it is worsening in some areas because of leadership.
The Concert of Europe of the 19th Century Berlin Conference to settle colonial disputes in 1884-85, League of Nations and even United Nations were/are the products of national, regional or global leadership. If the world must move forward, leadership will have to do it. But leadership not only starts with national politicians or movers and shakers of regional blocs; leadership should begin with everyone. Vision defines leadership.
Your vision can take you to the very top of your game and be the Launchpad for reaching national and global leadership. Leadership starts with a vision and a personal decision. Then it evolves through initiatives and innovations and creativity of individuals. These are nourished again by education and a sustainable resolve. Airplanes, submarines, cars, computers, cures for diseases, drugs, architectural successes, et cetera were/are the ideas of men and women. We talk of a flattened world today because of the ideas of these men. Therefore, to attain a world we want, we must push the boundaries of ideas.
Building bridges and flattening walls and boundaries should be the obsessions of states to realide a future we want. The United Nations stands for multilateralism. This cannot happen by keeping or solidifying political, social, physical, psychological, emotional, economic and artificial boundaries. The growing trend of some nations, particularly the great powers, going on self-isolation or withdrawal from global treaties, organisations and all such platforms is ominous to a multilateral and cohesive global system or community we desire.
These acts of national withdrawal take us back to pre-15th Century when nation-states distanced themselves from one another for vain glory and lack of understanding of each other; and more accurately tell us something about the dangerous nationalism that caused the global wars in the past. That is not the kind of world we will want to see again.
PGA, delegates, ladies and gentlemen, permit me to make this brutal observation: until world leaders stop paying lip service to the actualisation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we may never realise that dreamland of a better global community. The SDGs are the express road to actualising the United Nations 75th anniversary agenda of “The future we want, the UN we need and Multilateralism”.
But I have seen leaders of nations who make grandiose statements and parade commitment like good consciences and national identity card to the SDGs at the General Assembly, but return home to double down on what is wrong or worsen the socio-economic disequilibrium at home, initiate polices that will further increase poverty and escalate ethnic and religious tensions. I have seen poster-boys of freedom and justice who leave the floor of the General Assembly and return home to celebrate or remain insensitive to issues of gender and racial/ethnic inequality. I have seen leaders of greatly diverse nations who say things that please the cameras but, in reality, exhibit a body language and make careless remarks or polices that tend to endorse or entrench racism, religious bigotry, gender inequality, global warming, poverty, miseducation, poor healthcare and so on.
At this juncture, let me reemphasise that a more realistic approach to attaining our desired future will be a total commitment to actualising the Sustainable Development Goals. If you meet the SDGs, we may have set the path to the desired future. It is pertinent to note that the SDGs fit squarely into what should give us a better world. Anything less than meeting the 17 goals will keep our desired world a mere phantom.
As we round off the 2nd Session of CIMUN today, I implore us to return to our various destinations with this new bag of knowledge and consider the resolutions for speedy and smooth implementation. I ask for commitment to each one of them.
Let me conclude with the following remarks. It has been a most delightful experience to have all of you here for these past days and indeed a wonderful opportunity to have the virtual space for the first time in CIMUN. I have come to understand that virtual conferences are much more difficult to organise, but if you do it successfully, you have had the greatest conference. Congratulations to all of us!
My profound thanks to the United Nations Information Centre for this productive partnership and to all the students and delegates who participated in this virtual conference. We are glad to meet and work with you.
On behalf of the Chancellor, Dr David Oyedepo; Vice-Chancellor, Professor AAA Atayero (who gave a beautiful keynote at the opening plenary); and on behalf of the entire management team, faculty, staff and students of Covenant, I wish you all a most prosperous future and more wisdom to transform this current global system into a true global society.
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