RESOLUTION INITIATED BY MONGOLIA ADOPTED AT UNGA

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ At its plenary meeting on Wednesday, the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) discussed and then adopted a draft resolution on education for democracy (document A/67/L.25) by consensus. This draft has been initiated by Mongolia in frames of its main goals within a chairmanship of the Community of Democracies (CoD). To the draft resolution, 50 countries have joined from all continents as co-authors. The resolution on the education for the democracy has been approved by UNGA for the first ever time. The draft resolution, which, among other things, recognizes that education is key to strengthening democratic institutions, the realization of human rights and the achievement of all international development goals, including the Millennium Goals, and that while democracies share common features, there is no single model of democracy and that it does not belong to any country or region. The Ambassador-at-Large of Mongolia S.Badral introduced the draft resolution, saying that as former Chair of the International Conference on New and Restored Democracies and current Chair of the CoD, Mongolia had made education for democracy a top priority. “It had presented a draft text on the matter to Member States for their input to create a consensus resolution,” he said. Noting that the resulting text was not all the co-sponsors and other participating delegations had hoped for, he said that, nonetheless, a flexible reading of the current draft showed that all concepts and interpretations Member countries had wanted were included, if not always with the explicit language sought. “We have substantially cut down our initial ambitions in order to accommodate the interests of all,” he added. Citing the Secretary-General, he said,“Developing a culture of democracy and fostering global citizenship are becoming two of the pressing priorities for the international community. Education for democracy worked toward those ends. The main outcome of the draft resolution would be the launch of a focused discussion on how to help educate peoples in the culture of peace and democracy; of tolerance of and respect for different civilizations and religions; and in upholding the values of freedom and human rights. Once adopted, the resolution would contribute to fostering global citizenship with all members equally playing a pro-active role and globally sharing their own national best practices in education for democracy through a common platform,” he said. Since Mongolia became a member of the UN, some 50 resolutions initiated by Mongolia have been adopted by the GA on about 20 matters. This time, the draft resolution is initiated by Mongolia alone. B.Khuder