Education, Science, and Technology at the UN

On May 16, a forum of the civil society and the United Nations Economic and Social Council took place in the UN Headquarters in New York, USA, in the acclaimed ECOSOC Chamber, the subject on the agenda being "Building Partnerships in the Field of Education through Science, Technology and Innovation". The debate was organized by a committee composed of the Legion of Good Will (LGW), the World Association of Former United Nations Interns and Fellows, and the Global Millennium Development Foundation, in support to the UN’s NGO Branch of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The opening ceremony was attended by the President of ECOSOC, H.E. Néstor Osorio. The LGW also gave a presentation on "Using Education and Technology to Promote Social Inclusion and Development".

The forum brought together speakers from universities of various countries and specialists in the use of the information and communication technologies that are applied in the latest forms of teaching.

BRAZILIAN WILL HEAD THE WTO

The choice of diplomat Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo, who was born in Salvador/BA, to be the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), as from September this year until 2017, is a great recognition for Brazil. The formal announcement was made on Tuesday (05/14) in a meeting of WTO’s General Council. This will be the first time someone from Latin America has presided over the body since its creation in 1995.

We would also like to greet his esteemed wife, Ambassador Maria Nazareth Farani Azevêdo, Head of the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva. In 2011, we had the honor of her participation on the themed panel organized by the LGW at the ECOSOC High-Level Segment in Geneva.

BLUE HEART CAMPAIGN

unodc.org

For some years I have been emphasizing in articles and books that the abominable trafficking in human beings must be strongly opposed. Mothers are hugely concerned with the safety of their children. Our country’s joining of the “Blue Heart Campaign against Human Trafficking”, therefore, is very timely. The campaign was launched by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on May 9 in the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice in Brasília/DF.

The Legion of Good Will—a blue heart that for more than six decades has been beating for Solidarity in the world—supports this action and invites you to take part in the chain of Good and share this initiative.

In the book "É urgente reeducar!" [It is Urgent to Re-educate], when bringing statistics from 2000, which even at that time were alarming, I commented:

Brotherhood, therefore, is an urgent measure for opposing social Darwinism, which has been expanded by a globalization that is sorely lacking in any solidarity-based characters: the stark and crude survival of the fittest — a deviation caused by an erroneous sociological interpretation of the scientific evolutionist theory of the still widely discussed and famous English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882).

(Well, the human being cannot be reduced to the uncontained outbursts of an irrational animal and, in this way, be classified according to impulses that lead to aberrations. According to the dossier distributed in several languages by the Vatican’s Agenzia Fides, “The New Slavery of the 21st Century — the terrible drama of thousands of women treated as ‘merchandise’ in a very profitable trade”, the trafficking of girls, boys, and women is a tragic example of this. Because of its importance and length, the study was published in several parts in August 2004. Below is a small example of the seriousness of the problem:

Vatican City (Fides Service) — "(...) Over the last two decades prostitution and human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation have reached alarming proportions all over the world. Some figures give us an idea of the seriousness of the problem. (...) In its September 2000 report, the United Nations calculates that 4 million women are sold every year for one of the following purposes: prostitution, slavery, or marriage; and that 2 million girls between the ages of 5 and 15 are forced into the sex trade".)