STATEMENT BY DR. HOPE P. WHITE-DAVIS ,

THE WORLD ASSOCIATION OF FORMER UNITED NATIONS INTERNE AND FELLOWS (WAFUNIF)

TO THE GENERAL STATEMENTS DEBATE OF THE THIRD UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON THE LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES, 14-20 MAY 2001

(check against delivery)

MR. CHAIRMAN,

On behalf of the World Association of Former United Nations Internes and Fellows, Inc: (WAFUNIF) and myself, allow me first to congratulate you Mr. Chairman on your election'. I would also like to thank the other member of the Bureau for their important work.

As we enter the third millennium, WAFUNIF wishes to thank the organizers of this Conference for having invited WAFUNIF to participate and to take the floor. Thus is indeed an historic event: WAFUNIF is naturally fully aware that education and training constitute the major means of enhancing the full development of the people of the Least Developed Countries. We therefore wish to make a modest but sincere contribution to this cause.

This is one of the key priorities of the Organisation in its strategic plan bearing in mind its historic mission being the child of the UN. Education and training to enhance the capacity to develop the full potentials of the LDCs needs concrete responses from all the different members of the international community.

One concrete response that WAFUNIF has decided to offer is the setting-up of the Helen C. and Otto Rammel Memorial Fund ("The Rammel Fund'), whose objective is to help subsidize the participation of yoUllg professionals and other young nationals from the Least Developed Countries, Land-Locked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States in the internships, fellowships, and other training programmes of the UN system.
This innovative instrument is meant to help in the bridging of the technological, development, resource, and undrstanding divides. The Rammel Fund and its design are being discussed today here in Brussels at the Workshop on the subject of Bridging the Divide through Capacity-Building: Strengthening the Role of LDCs' Young national in the Drive for Increased Development. It is organized by WAFUNIF with assistance from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and others.
If today and in the coming years, training and its adequate financing and subsequent active participation by young professionals and other young nationals in the private and public mainstream of society are not met; it will be quite difficult for the LDCs to achieve their sustained growth and to be integrated in a competitive way into the world economy. That is one of the greatest challenges facing this conference today.
As an additional step in creating favorable conditions for the development of the LDCs, WAFUNIF is also working towards the establishment of MultiCenters for tile Culture of Peace. This is in response to the mandate established by the United Nations Resolution 53/25 "The United Nations International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World, 2001-2010."
Each WAFUNIF/MultiCenter is a facility containing all the necessary items of a school environment including, personal computers, musical instruments, art supplies, science equipment, and language learning apparati. In addition, and most importantly, WAFUNIF/MultiCenters have teachers that do not only teach voting people directly, but do also train future trainers.

The vision of the WAFUNIF/MultiCenter collaboration is to provide ongoing leaning opportunities for communities around the world to increase mutual
understanding. The process will integrate individual, family, and community activities for all ages, as enhanced by use of the internet.
The employment of the internet in these facilities will have the fringe benefit of fostering global information exchange and cooperation. This effect will be continuously enlarged with every successively added WAFUNIF/MultiCenter.
We cordially invite all the participants to this Conference to the launching of the Rammel Fund later this evvening at 18:30hrs, at the Residence Palace, when four talented young professionals from Burkina Faso, Haiti, Lao, and Uganda, and two promising university students from Jamaica, and Mauritius will be honoured as the first recipients of WAFUNIF Rammel Fund awards.

Thank you for listening.