Generation next

Preparing to be the leading generation

If you’ve ever felt mad at society, the world, people, then you’re probably mad because you don’t understand. Not understanding something is how fears and anxiety start and then comes anger. This is why we should strive to know more about the world around us. We will soon become the generation that runs the world so we need to be prepared to understand so we can do it properly. We should take special care to understand certain issues such as racial discrimination and injustice and ensuring human rights because it is a serious problem in the world today.  

“No one will be free until the old ways are gone forever” - Kuiil

Recently I participated in a JMUN (Junior Model United Nations). At JMUN each student who partakes in JMUN is assigned a country and acts as that country during a number of debates. This is relevant because this year the debate topic was ensuring racial equality and the preservation of human rights. The teachers in charge took an article about the laws and policies surrounding the topic from the UN and the students debated about it and added amendments. I think it speaks volumes that the topic this year was ensuring racial equality and the preservation of human rights. The older generation is now setting a proper example for us to follow, making sure we know right from wrong and that this issue is an extremely important one that our generation has to fix. 

I had never participated in a JMUN before nor have I participated in any political debates that involves understanding and being deeply knowledgeable about a country’s laws and government. I felt incredibly stressed and pressured because I thought it would be way to complicated for me to understand, let alone do myself. But I wanted to take part and so as my assigned country, Australia. I did some digging through UN files on their website and found many news reports and investigations, turns out UN files aren’t that complicated and it’s like reading a newspaper article. 

Now, Australia has different immigration laws and protocol, like many countries, and seems more selective and closed off. And I did find a few unsettling articles but I also came across multiple websites about what Australia is doing to combat racism, xenophobia and discrimination. Australia provides humanitarian protection to a high majority of refugees and migrants and even works with programs such as the GVI (Global Vision International, an award-winning organisation that focuses on high impact and high quality rehabilitation, community and development with migrants). Not to mention they have signed section 18c of a UN act that refers to addressing offensive behaviour against someone due to race, colour and national or ethnic origin. I think the racial discrimination issue would have been improved on if more countries had at least done what Australia has. 

The UN isn’t spotless there are many countries, including Australia and the UK, that have issues combating racial discrimination and injustice. The problem is that the UN has not provided sufficient laws to prevent these problems yet, although I can understand the difficulty of creating such laws, though that is not the sole problem as countries have to sign these agreements and uphold them which obviously not every country has. 

The United Nations meet annually for nine interrupted days to debate so that every speaker and representative is heard. That’s once a year for 9 days and these problems still haven’t been improved on enough. The UN has improved and created laws for countries to sign as to defeat the problem of racial discrimination and injustice but it still hasn’t been worked on enough. Just because we’re starting to improve doesn’t mean we’re finished. Much like the point of an article I found on the UN website about the issue of racial discrimination and injustice, it won’t go until everyone changes and everyone supports the movement.

This is where my JMUN experience comes in. During the debate students made many amendments to the original article form the UN that all help countries overcome racial discrimination and injustice to better ensure the preservation of equality and human rights. JMUN lasted for one day for 5 hours and we managed to enact multiple laws and policies that would make a real change. 

For example, I myself created an amendment that entails that all countries that sign provide humanitarian protection to migrants and refugees no matter their race, colour, national or ethic origin and what place they came from, like Australia does for most. The amendment was a unanimous success along with many others similar to ensuring racial equality and the preservation of human rights. These amendments were added to the original UN article.

The JMUN included 52 students in total which means many countries took part yet we all could agree on improving the critical issue of ensuring racial equality and the preservation of human rights. The age range was 13-16. With all of those differences we could all still agree on laws and policies to combat an issue the UN struggles with and we did so in less time in the same conditions the UN has. Not to say we did not struggle as well since we are only teenagers and have had less experience, training and education.

If a bunch of teenagers can agree on laws and policies to combat ensuring racial equality and the preservation of human rights whose to say in the future we can’t end this issue entirely, since we will grow up to be the new UN, including other issues as well such as sexism, poverty and war.

Those issues may seem like a cliché but they’re not impossible to end. As many people have said our generation will have to solve the problems the older generations have created and left behind. We need to start tackling those problems now. We need to be smarter and different from the generations that have come before. We will soon become the generation that runs the world. We need to be prepared and we need to clean up the mess for the next generation as well. We’ve got to break the cycle of constantly resolving the older generation’s problems and never getting anywhere. Humanity and society could be stuck with these issues for as long as humans survive if we don’t solve this real problem. 

So you can now see how much more simpler issues and governments are then they seem and how easy it can be to make a difference and that if we don’t it will all go to waste and will never change. For a generation that is wanting to change it would be a shame if we don’t.