News on Partnerships and External Relations

World Scouting was represented at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (20-22 June 2012) in Rio de Janeiro Brazil with 18 members, 12 of them being young representatives under the age of 26 years. The Delegation had representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Mexico and the United States of America. World Scouting’s presence at Rio+20 was prepared with reference to the 39th World Scout Conference’s Resolution 10/2011 on Advocacy for World Scouting, which builds on Recommendation M from the 11th World Scout Youth Forum on Representing World Scouting.

On 12 June, people around the world join hands to mark the World Day Against Child Labour – to raise awareness and contribute to ending child labour. World Scouting has been supporting the World Day Against Child Labour for several years now and many National Scout Organizations engage with their Scouts through activities and programmes on 12th June each year to raise awareness on this key issue. The theme of this year’s World Day is “Human Rights and Social Justice – let’s end child labour”.

WOSM’s long standing partner in educating children on their rights - the International Labour Organization’s (an United Nations Agency) International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour - has prepared educational activities for children and young people in collaboration with Education International (global organisation of teachers and education employees across the globe).

Volunteering is a key aspect in Scouting, not just the adult volunteers contributing to achieving the Scout Mission by supporting the education of children and youth in our Movement, but also all the young volunteers doing the countless good deeds as part of their daily Scouting activities. With over 7 million adult volunteers and millions of other young volunteers, Scouting is definitely one of the leading volunteer organisations in the world. For this reason and more, United Nations Volunteers (UNV), is one of the key partners of WOSM. The UNV programme is the UN organization that promotes volunteerism to support peace and development worldwide. World Scouting is hence happy to support this excellent initiative by UNV – Volunteer Action Counts, to help make all volunteer actions (small and big) in the area of sustainable development count at Rio+20.

97 year old Mr. Raymond Aubrac (France) and 25 year old Ms. Siranouche Germain (Haiti) have been Scouting’s jewels, and heroes in their own right. Aubrac, a national hero of the French Resistance was a Scout and a key Scout Leader with Les Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs de France, died on 10th April 2012 in Paris. Siranouche was WOSM’s external representative from Association Nationale des Scouts d'Haïti. She suffered a sudden and severe attack of asthma and passed away on 11 April 2012 in Port-au-Prince.

World Scouting is very sad to lose Siranouche and Aubrac, two of our valued assets, and we pass our sincere condolences to the respective families and National Scout Organizations.

Saturday 31st March 2012 from 20.30 to 21.30 will be the Earth Hour 2012. For one hour, millions of people across the world will turn off their lights at those hours and World Scouting joins in our continued support to this initiative. WOSM invites all Scouts around the world to join this global initiative by turning off your lights and taking part in activities that demonstrate your concern for the environment.

At its recent Executive Board’s meeting held on 8th of March in Paris, UNESCO has decided to elevate the status of their partnership with the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) to that of an ‘Associate Status’ for a renewable term of eight years starting March 2012. From over 360 Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that are engaged in official relationships with the UNESCO, they have selected 64 NGOs to be granted the Associate Status. Formerly, WOSM was holding a consultative status with UNESCO.

The NGO Liaison Committee of UNESCO organized the ‘International NGO Day’ on Monday 5th December 2011 at the UNESCO House in Paris. The programme of NGO Day focused on the ‘New Directives concerning the relationship between NGOs and UNESCO’ adopted by the 36th UNESCO General Conference (October-November 2011). Representatives of NGOs were invited to discuss the perspectives for strengthened NGO-UNESCO cooperation in the context of the new directives.

Dear brother and sister Scouts,

Warm greetings on the occasion of International Volunteer Day 2011!

Volunteering has always been at the core of the Scout Movement since its inception over a century ago. This has been reflected in our constantly improving system to train, support and reward volunteers over the years, from local to global levels of the Movement. Even today, WOSM is one of the very few organizations working with children and youth, which is almost entirely driven by volunteer contributions and efforts.

In 2005, the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol ( CMP) at its first meeting in Montreal, by its Decision 1/CMP.1, established the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). The aim of the AWG-KP is to discuss future commitments for industrialized countries under the Kyoto Protocol. The AWG-KP reports directly to the CMP.

In addressing the delegates to the conference, as part of the Youth Constituent statement, Quintin Combrink from South Africa Scout Association (SASA) said, “Climate change is the moral issue facing both my and your generation….young people here doubt the political will of parties.” He called for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which will last for 5 years or less and for it to start by January 2013. He closed firmly by saying that, “the youth are watching, we are listening and we will be acting.”

The environment is our playground and we are sharing with the tens of thousands of international non-governmental and governmental delegates at the event how scouting has always cared for the planet, not because we had to, but rather, simply that we are in the business of creating a better world.