JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo yes­ter­day ad­vised par­tic­i­pants in the 25th Mock UN Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing that while peace­ful res­o­lu­tions are im­por­tant, im­ple­ment­ing them in to­day’s di­vi­sive cli­mate will be chal­leng­ing.

Ad­dress­ing some 200 young par­tic­i­pants from Montser­rat, Grena­da, An­tigua, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and Cu­ra­cao, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of ap­ply­ing the lessons learned in the pro­gramme to re­al-world com­mu­ni­ties.

“The chal­lenge for par­tic­i­pants is not on­ly to mas­ter the skills of re­search and pub­lic speak­ing re­quired to suc­ceed in the pro­gramme,” she said. “It is al­so to ap­ply these lessons to achieve peace in the com­mu­ni­ties you in­hab­it.”

She ac­knowl­edged that the preva­lence of con­flict and di­vi­sive dis­course, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go, makes this task dif­fi­cult. “Par­tic­i­pants will have to con­tend with lan­guage and be­hav­iour in the pub­lic space that of­ten di­vides and tears down rather than heals and builds up—lan­guage that runs counter to the val­ues and core pur­pose of the Unit­ed Na­tions.”

De­spite the daunt­ing na­ture of the task, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo stressed that dif­fi­cul­ty does not mean im­pos­si­bil­i­ty. “Dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions are not dead ends but tests of per­sis­tence, re­silience, and ef­fort. What you are reach­ing for is valu­able enough to re­quire great ef­fort.”

High­light­ing the growth of this year’s pro­gramme, she not­ed that the co­hort had dou­bled from last year, sig­nalling her con­fi­dence in their abil­i­ties to fos­ter peace­ful so­lu­tions.

“The plain truth is that with­out your ef­forts, the world risks plung­ing in­to con­flict, and the Unit­ed Na­tions it­self could fail, much like the League of Na­tions,” she warned. “You have a sa­cred du­ty to guard against these risks.”

The 25th Mock UN meet­ing was host­ed by the Ro­tary Club of Cen­tral Port-of-Spain at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann’s.