A Speech At HRC Geneva

A Speech At HRC Geneva

 The themes of this conference, "protecting children", and "peace building", do not apply to us," was the common response I heard from many citizens in my country. "Our children do not emerge fresh with life and vigor. Our women are unable to work on peace building when we are not offered peace to build on.""With the history we've had with international organizations',"inspiring" peace, love and unity, the only words we have are those of cynicism, frustration, bitterness, and despair." "Our children have created frightening survival mechanisms; our women are fighting for equality. These messages of peace at these conferences do nothing for the people on the ground but plant seeds of false hope."
But, according to the very wise Rumi, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing is a field. I will meet you there." And I met few people there. They were unpretentious, spontaneous, and fresh. They were my students. I have had two modest experiences with these earnest young people, who could be any other teacher's students in any given country, that have given me hope for my country and if I may, I'd like to share them with you ladies and gentlemen.
Universal Peace Federation, Lebanon, has been engaging middle and high school students across Lebanon in service projects, namely, reforestation. As a UPF member, I had previously assisted in the logistics and in providing some connections. But for the past couple of years, I've been actively engaging my 10 and 11 grade students in these projects, and the sense of empowerment and possibility these projects have yielded has been palpable year after year. The students accepted the involvement in the program mainly because they needed to complete the required community service hours, and because they liked their teacher. They were not told who they'd be working with. All they knew was that they were "some local kids their age".It's important to understand that Lebanon is a very small country where many communities coexist...

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