A day of contrasts

Friday 23 August

We started off with the dubious honour of being addressed by two of the officials from North West Province – one on the benefits of tourism to the area, and one on business and investment within the region. Some of the ideas were slightly bizarre ones to air at a summit on sustainable development – such as the building of new airports, and the increase in open cast mining in the area.

Rachel addresses the Youth Summit

We then moved on to the real business of the day – debating the first draft of our Declaration to the main summit. The range of points raised was as diverse as it was interesting – from local attitudes towards renewable energy sources through to a discussion on the benefits of small-scale co-operative farming. Rachel was making the Woodcraft voice heard as she took the mike to present nine important points to alter within the Declaration.

Elle and Rachel at the microphone

One interesting debate was on the definition of ‘youth’. It was proposed that youth be defined as 18-25 and, unsurprisingly, Rachel and Elle were quick to respond with a terrific speech, categorically opposing the idea of a lower age limit, and along with another delegate convinced the session that age limits are impossible to define in the culturally diverse gathering in which we are working.

The hard working drafting committee then went away to try and work all the comments into the draft declaration. In the meantime the Mayor of the local authority – a woman decked out in a fantastic tribal dress, addressed us.

It is difficult to describe how long a process such as this takes here – the mayor first needed to be introduced, at length, by the chairperson of the summit, who tried a number of times to get people who were outside the hall to come in and listen. He explained that it was a great honour for the Mayor to be speaking to us, and the need to respect this.

Eventually the Mayor rose to speak but, just when we were expecting to hear about how great we/she/the area were/was, she burst into song and was instantly joined by the 50 or so local delegates in the hall. After a while, this abated, and the speech began. She spoke about how she, as a parent and grandparent can relate to the needs of young people, and about how proud she is that the summit is being held in this area.

She informed us that North West Province was the first province in South Africa to implement local youth commissions. The chair loved it and praised her speech at length before ushering her off the stage, accompanied of course by more singing.

Lunch – and some interesting conversations with Sandra from the International Youth Parliament. This is an Oxfam led project, working for truly democratic and representative involvement of young people in world decision-making.

The next ‘sitting’ of the parliament is in 2004 – Woodcraft have been invited to take part and should certainly find out more. The organisation is also searching for partner organisations to become involved in their Globalisation campaign and are organising a ‘Make Trade Fair’ campaign, details of which can be found on their website.

EarthYouth.net are also launching their website at the summit – I think we’ve been meaning to get involved for some time, and it may be possible to take that further out here.

Lunch also saw a meeting of the international delegates who have been here at this summit, all of whom will be part of the Youth Caucus in Jo’burg, to discuss practical arrangements and strategy for the coming weeks. We will meet again tomorrow afternoon at Sandton (the venue of the main WSSD) – and, since governments begin discussions on the implementation document tomorrow, everyone is keen to get things moving. (The implementation document is one of the final outcomes of the political summit).

We are building up a network of organisations around the world to try and stage one or two global ‘reactions’ to summit events – Woodcraft back in the UK could easily become involved in this – watch this space.

Afternoon – back in the main hall, we attempted to adapt all the points that had been made in the morning into amendments to the Declaration which were acceptable to everyone. This was a hard task – but it was good to see people working together to achieve the aim – we certainly learnt a lot, especially about the Southern perspective on many ideas in our own declaration.

Recognise the wording?

Things were going well, and the entire amended declaration was ready for adoption by 16:30 – except for one point on solidarity. I’ll attempt to summarise the arguments. Originally, the declaration contained a clause on conflict along the lines of “Peace and sustainability are inextricably linked.”

This was fine, but a delegate suggested that specific examples of conflicts were included, both in a show of solidarity to the youth involved in those conflicts, and to put pressure on the governments concerned. The list included the Palestine / Israel conflict, the situation in Western Sahara, the US blockade of Cuba and many other issues that were close to many of our hearts.

However, we and many others felt that to single out certain conflicts was a bad idea – both because the representation at the summit meant that areas such as Korea or Chechnya had not been mentioned, and because a declaration with the suggested text would be very difficult for, say, American or Israeli youth to use to influence their governmental delegations.

Towards the end it became very heated and the hall divided into two groups, dominated by northeners on our side and Africans on the other.

As time wore on, things became more and more difficult – some people sharing, or at least accepting, our views whilst some didn’t understand that the fact we didn’t want the issues in the declaration didn’t mean we didn’t care about them.

The frustration became almost unbearable when the chair announced that the mayor was going to return to address us all again, half way through the debate. This time, she brought a further crew of dignitaries, and three different songs – my notebook reads “AAARRRRGGGHHHH!”

Eventually, we returned to the final point of the declaration. For a time, the International Camp declaration on conflict was a possible solution, but we got very bogged down with passionate soliloquies about these very real issues that affect so many people so seriously. Then Richard suggested the creation of two documents as summit outcomes – the main declaration with a general reference to solidarity with youth in conflict or oppression throughout the world, and a more specific ‘message of solidarity’ from the participants at the summit to those in Palestine, W Sahara, Cuba, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and more. By this time a number of people had left the hall, and only a core of about fifty delegates remained.

We almost got this to stick – but, without consensus, it was not to be. Out of time, the chair announced that the declaration had been adopted and, to cries of ‘which one?!’ walked off the stage. A scrum ensued around the drafters’ table leading to some very abusive comments – some of which Tamsin was on the receiving end of as she tried desperately to resolve the issues. Read about Tamsin's experience.

So, we leave Pilanesberg with a declaration which some are claiming has been adopted by the youth of the world. The most frustrating thing (apart from the fact that we at the summit have no mandate, and cannot be described as representative) is that 99% of it has been agreed, and makes a very strong document.

We are all a little downhearted this evening that such a productive, all-encompassing process has been derailed at the last minute without resolution. Still – the learning process has been fantastic: our ability to work within the framework of the country we are in, and adapt our ways of working and, sometimes, our opinions to relate to those of the people we have met have been the real successes of the summit from our point of view.

We’re on a bumpy old bus now, on the way back to Jo’burg. We’re due to stop for another half hour dance break some time soon, I should think. As someone said to us today “Remember, Revolution needs small steps” – let’s see which steps we can take tomorrow.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Richard borrowed a charger off a very nice American. If we’re lucky, he’ll get round to using it tonight.

Love from the Delegation

Visit this page again tomorrow to hear about the delegation's return to Johannesburg and the first day of the 'Global People's Forum'. Has Richard managed to shave yet?

• Thur 22 August
• Wed 21 August

CLICK HERE
to visit the official United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development website

Another site worth a visit is the New Scientist's special conference report.
Try their quiz too!