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United Nations
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& the United Nations |
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International Level-a Role Play
Time
Cast
DIRECTOR OF FILM DIVISION: SHIB RAWAT RAWAT: The purpose of our meeting today is to choose a topic for our next film-something for secondary schools appropriate to the UN in the twenty-first century. Antonio, Irina and Sven will each propose an idea and suggest how it might be developed. Then we will all discuss the pros and cons of each. HOWE: What are we looking for? On what basis do we make our Choice? RAWAT: As you know, we ordinarily cover some aspect of the work of the UN "family of organizations". This time we have to do something broader-to somehow convey why the UN is special and how it has evolved since its founding in 1945. Antonio, help us out with your idea. GARCIA: I would like to make visible to young people something new in human history-what you might call "world-mindedness". Not only have people begun to recognize that water, air and other physical elements are part of a single organic system; they are also beginning to realize that people's actions in one area affect people elsewhere on earth, that people are one species and that all of us must work together to develop the world as a whole. LING: That sounds dreadfully abstract for a film. GARCIA: Agreed. But we could show this new development in terms of specific human beings-in other words by doing a film on the UN Secretariat. The growing global awareness of our staff can be illustrated in many ways. AZIR: Would you try to show the range of activities of the UN's 8,600 workers from more than 170 countries the interpreters, the technical assistants, the secretaries, the security guards and photographers here and in all the different countries? ANDERSEN: No, of course not, that would be too vast. We might focus on a person or a section whose work would be especially interesting to young people ... or on the Secretary General. As the most important and visible international civil servant, he exemplifies world-mindedness. GARCIA: Actually we could give an idea of how the UN has changed over the years by filming highlights from the terms of several Secretaries-General. All of them tried to carry out the UN Charter and to reflect the wishes of Member States, but each had a different style of leadership suited to the UN of his period.
Law of the Sea RAWAT: Let's move on to the second idea. Irina... IVANOV: Recently in the General Assembly the Secretary-General called the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea a "milestone in the building of a true community of nations". If we did a film telling the remarkable story of the law of the sea, young people might realize how far the UN has come. For 50 years the UN has been moving away from a world of competing member states and towards--well, here we have something totally new-a legal order for the oceans. LING: There's even more than that. The Convention declares the seabed and its resources as the common heritage of humankind. It could unite the world community in its quest to preserve our planet for generations to come.
ANDERSEN: Of the UN's three major tasks (peace, human rights and sustainable development) 80 per cent of the UN's time and effort has been devoted to "development". If we were to follow how that development work evolved, we would have a good overview of the UN's 50 years. OLAMA: But the story would have to be told simply. Perhaps one could cover a few major stepping stones as development became less profit oriented and more people-centered, less top-down and more bottom-up. Those stepping stones could include "sustainable development", "grassroots development" and "human development". AZIR: We certainly would need to explain something as fundamental as the need for a fairer world economic system. Secretary-General U Thant already said in 1970: "A situation in which three fourths of the world's people subsist on 30 per cent of the world's income is politically. unwise, economically unworkable and morally untenable." OLAMA: It's been a long and complicated story, and the film would be hard to bring alive. But at least it shows that the UN has tried to find ways around the difficulties. I liked the first two ideas because they could make clear that the UN is a daring international experiment slowed by national self-interest. The part about development, however, could show the importance of individual effort at the grass-roots level. IVANOV: All right. What if our film were about an experimental project initiated by local youth? Such a topic may not be all about the UN's first 50 years, but it could tell much about the next 50. And it would show that the Secretariat staff members are not the only ones serving the world. LING: It would certainly be more appropriate for secondary school. You could film several community projects, such as those by NGOs or UN Volunteers or UNESCO Clubs.
RAWAT: Let's discuss now the relative merits of each, keeping two things in mind: (Student actors complete the scene, discussing the three possibilities and making a final choice.) |
