Printer Friendly
Danielle Bennett, Chair
The United Nations Development Programme was created in 1966 with the merging of the Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance and the United Nations Special Fund. It currently operates in 166 countries, working with local populations and other global bodies to find solutions for problems facing communities around the world.
The UNDP’s focus is in five general areas: Democratic Governance, Poverty Reduction, Crisis Prevention and Recovery, Energy and Environment, and HIV/AIDS. To these aims, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were established in 2000. The goals are, by the year 2015, to:
-
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
-
Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality and empower women
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop a global partnership for development.
Though ambitious, the Millennium Development Goals are possible, with the help and cooperation of all of the nations of the world. They are the clearly defined objectives necessary to foster growth and sustainability in the next century. The topics for the UNDP at this year’s UMLMUN are; making clean water and democratizing media around the world. .
top
I. Something Out of Nothing: Making Clean Water
The human body needs between one and seven liters of water a day to function properly. Besides water for drinking, humans require water for bathing, cleaning, cooking, and agriculture. Excepting oxygen, there is no substance more precious or more necessary to the survival of every living thing on earth. Unfortunately, many countries around the world are 'water-poor' and at least 1 billion people drink unsafe water every day. In the 2003 G8 Evian summit, most of the nations of the world pledged to halve that number by 2015, however this still does not fix the problems faced by millions who are forced to drink and bathe in polluted water. In addition, UNESCO's 2003 World Water Development Report believes that in the next 20 years, the quantity of water available to all will decrease by 30%. It is thought that in the very near future, because of its relative scarcity, water will become a much valued and traded commodity, much like oil is now, however, it has been observed in several countries in recent years that privatization of water can do much more harm than good, leading to cholera outbreaks in South Africa and insurmountable hikes in water prices. The difference between the sales of these two commodities of course being that it is possible for humans to live without oil, it is not possible to live without water. Therefore, access to clean water in adequate quantities is a basic human right. We in the UNDP must endeavor to guarantee that right.
With this in mind, this session of the UNDP is given over to the development and funding of alternative resources for creating clean water. Many people have been at work at this problem for the past decade. There exist many different methods of making water safe for human consumption, all have their positive and negative aspects and most, if not all, are costly to put in place and maintain. We urge you to consider the various processes, including desalinization, reverse osmosis, ultra-violet light, deionization, filtration and carbon treatment, and to come to the table with ideas that will help to guarantee this basic necessity past the year 2025. The UNDP also favors ideas that put the processes into the hands of the people using the commodity, so we encourage you to seek small-scale solutions with low overhead that can be instituted at local levels.
However, the UNDP also recognizes that discussing the scarcity of water is not the only, or even actual, problem. Simple research reveals that the water crisis is felt most acutely by those on the wrong side of the poverty line. The socio-economic disparity of this basic necessity is plain to see, as 2 million children will die this year from inadequate sanitation and water, while others will not be taught to turn off the faucet. The UNDP is looking for multiple approaches that will address this issue holistically.
Key Ideas
-
Small scale, locally administered initiatives
-
Low cost, high yield endeavors are favored
-
Comprehensive, sustainable plans are desired that will address purification, storage, dispensation
II. Freeing the Press: Democratizing Media around the World
According to Robert K. McChesney, “media perform essential political, social, economic, and cultural functions in modern democracies” (Making Media). Healthy, fearless, and active media are integral to healthy democracies with participatory and fearless citizenships. It has been observed that when leaders are accountable for their actions and when the public has the opportunity to question and reflect on its leadership, such a nation tends to thrive. Logically then, when the remit of a nation's media is curtailed by its leaders, corporations, or police, the people tend to suffer because they are denied the knowledge required to retain their rights. A country's media is entrusted with the task of providing the most in depth and truthful information available to the public. The media are often called the "watchdogs" of a nation; they are supposed the sound the first alarms when a nation is in danger. For a nation's media to break that trust is reprehensible; when the media loses its credibility, citizens lose the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood.
The media advocacy outlet, Reporters Without Borders, publishes an annual report on the health of the media in all the nations around the world. Such recent reports have been sobering indeed. With the exception of a handful of countries in
The route to free press is a long and wide one. What this body must endeavor to do is conceive of ways to provide nascent, injured, and suppressed media with opportunities to grow and inform audiences accurately and educationally. This task will be easier to perform in some countries than in others. Full consideration must be given to both state/public media and private enterprises. Whether solutions call for better regulations, funding for non-profit, volunteer and consumer based outlets, or education, whether radio, newspapers, or film is addressed, expanding knowledge across nations will build better communities. Once again, a holistic approach that involves the widest definition of media outlets, the widest cross-section of a citizenry, and creative concepts for fundraising and education are desired.
Key Ideas
- Government accountability
- Reducing the violation of reporters' human rights
- Encouraging citizens to participate in informing themselves
- Funding, education, content and disbursement