United Nations Radio

Nine students from five continents traveled to United Nations headquarters to prepare for the Model United Nations Conference in Geneva next month.

UN Radio's Lindsay Lazarski met with a few of the Model UN delegates to hear them weigh in on the Millennium Development Goals.

NARRATOR: End poverty and hunger, gender equality, health care for children and expecting mothers, combat HIV and AIDS, are a few the Millennium Development Goals the UN has committed to reaching by 2015.

In August more than 1,000 university students from more than 70 countries will come together to discuss these goals at the first annual Model UN Conference in Geneva next month.

The Model UN is an international program that educates youth about the work of the UN and trains them to become future leaders. The theme of this year's conference is "The Millennium Developments Goals: Lifting the Bottom Billion out of Poverty."

Eighteen-year-old, Melissa Seif, an elected delegate from Lebanon, says finding solutions to a sustainable environment is most important in her region at the moment.

SIEF: First of all there are many private groups that are taking advantages of the mountains. And just building towers and skyscrapes and this is really hurting the environment, one. Two, in the war of 2006, there were many bombs and there were many firearms and this really hurt the waters, and this is a problem that will go on for more than 20 years. To actually clean the ocean is a really, really big problem. So, I think that these private organizations should stop thinking about the money they're going to make, and start thinking how they are going to be living in ten, twenty, or thirty years, and how their kids are going to be living. Because they're not only hurting themselves they're hurting, I mean this is one world. You can't just hurt one country environmentally and not hurt the others. They should just stop thinking about the millions they're going to make and maybe they can invest those millions in making something better.

Nineteen- year- old Mateusz Drapczynski from Poland agrees with his fellow delegate that monetary wealth has become a driving force working against the success of the MDG's. But he believes an end to poverty must be a priority for all nations.

DRAPCZYNSKI: When we look through the history the rich countries became even richer ones, while the poor countries are still under the bottom of a good life and standard of living and that's why those richer ones should help the poorest ones. And I think that we should change our world a little bit, you know, because poverty is something that is awful, and we do not need at all, and we have to just deal with it.

Petri Cozma, a 21-year-old student from Finland, and General Assembly President of the Model UN, finds that implementation of the goals and learning to work together is the real challenge.

COZMA: The intentions of the MDG's are laudable and I don't think there is any question in that regard. However the mechanics of how these goals will be achieved, that's definitely something that we will have to critically examine and there is a lot of that discussion going on right now, primarily a disparity between the good intentions of the helping counterparts and the actual real needs of the recipients. I think those have to be harmonized to a greater extent then it is currently. That's also something that hopefully we will contribute to during the conference. It's a chance for the young generation to give their take on the process of how we are getting to these goals.

NARRATOR: But regardless of how difficult it may be to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the delegates agree that young people need to step up and be apart of the action.

COZMA: I would recommend that everyone get involved in these grass roots level organizations. There is a disconnect between raising awareness and talking about these issues, for instance. Then the next step- taking the step beyond, that does pose some difficulties. That is getting involved in organizations, UN NGO's - small and large, other NGO's, for example starting with amnesty down to the smallest grass roots level organization. Getting involved, going to the meetings, and helping out. That is where it all will starts from.

NARRATOR: For United Nations Radio, this is Lindsay Lazarski.

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