The United Nations Department of Public Information (UNDPI) has requested that the PEOPLE Programme join them in preparing presentations for an “Unlearning Seminar” to help celebrate the 60th anniversary of the adoption, on December 10, 1948 by the UN General Assembly, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In a June letter to PP Co-founder Buzz Palmer, Russell Taylor of the UN’s Office of Public Information shared that planning is underway to hold a wide ranging forum in the fall of 2008 on examining different manifestations of intolerance. “As its name suggests, the series also offers opportunities to discuss how intolerance, wherever it exists and for whatever reason, can be “unlearned”, through education, with inclusion and by example,” Taylor said.
The UN has specifically requested that The PEOPLE Programme help design the seminar on racism. “This seminar on racism, we hope, will be a forum for the unlearning of racism by examining best practices and the law, and by educating future leaders and people everywhere in ways to help strengthen and support not only legal protection on this anniversary...but also to welcome and exploit the richness of diversity and the strength of inclusion,” Taylor wrote.
The PEOPLE Programme has worked tirelessly over the past two decades to help foster policy and programs aimed at improving the level of equity and justice in people’s lives. “Our mission has always been to advance the practical tenets of a civil society and battling racism is one of the most critical and lingering issues we all must continue to confront,” said Palmer. “To be asked to help the UN craft the framework for a dialogue on these issues at such an historic event is a tremendous honor,” he added.
