The event seeks to expose the activities of the UN ahead of its anniversary on October 24.
The United Nations System in Cameroon yesterday, October 20, in Yaounde organised an open-door day at the United Nations Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Central Africa (UNCHRD) to exhibit, through documents and films, what the UN is all about, its different agencies and what they do each day for the interest of everybody. The Director of United Nations and Decentralised Cooperation at the Ministry of External Relations, Désiré Jean-Claude Owono Menguele cut the symbolic ribbon to open the event which saw hundreds of students rushing into UNCHRD to see and collect documents on various topics such as the promotion and protection of human rights, the 2011 Millennium Development Goals report, the 2011 state of the world’s children as well as the Annual Report of UNICEF on the situation of children.
During the open-door day, different agencies of the UN system in Cameroon such as United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as well as UNCHRD displayed a series of documents on topical issues happening in the world particularly those concerning women, children, health, education and the state of development. Through the open-door day, the public was able to discover a special education of the 2011 State of the World’s Children in which UNICEF focuses on the adolescence as an age of opportunity. While referring to adolescence as the emerging generation, the report revealed that it is pivotal to build on the development of adolescence in their first decade of life so as to help them navigate risks and vulnerabilities, and to set them on the path to fulfilling their potential.
Students at the open-door day were not only able to have detailed documents on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also watched a film documentary on UNESCO and the reason behind its creation. Officials from UNESCO said the film documentary treated issues of war. Noting that war begins in the mind of men, the film tackles the mind of men to handle issues that can lead to war.
