Posted on 12/07/2002 1:13:36 PM PST by victim soul
If all one had seen of the world's youth were the pelvis-thrusters on MTV and the pubescent darlings of Teen Beat, one might wonder whether they had just arrived from hell in a handbasket. Images of Britney Spears, Eminem and black-hooded protesters rampaging through the streets of the world's capitals may be cause for concern, but the publicity tends to be grabbed by young people in rebellion against authority.
Anna Halpine and her fellow members of the World Youth Alliance (WYA) are pursuing a very different path. Rather than parade before the television cameras with amorphous grievances that were clichés before Lenin discovered Marx, the WYA is harnessing youthful idealism to work worldwide to protect human life and the dignity of every person.
Here is a human-rights campaign that is as modern as today's science. Consider the issue of human cloning, only now beginning to become possible and a subject of grave concern. Halpine, WYA's president, tells Insight the group conferred on behalf of the more than 1 million young people it represents, studied the issue carefully and warned the United Nations on their behalf that "to affirm and respect the dignity of all human beings" there must be a total ban on cloning.
And WYA's views were cited in the Oct. 17 statement delivered by Sichan Siv, the U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council on the International Convention Against the Reproductive Cloning of Human Beings.
The WYA has grown exponentially since its inception in 1999, bringing together youth representatives from more than 100 countries, and now works directly at the United Nations and the European Union to further its human-rights goals. Halpine, a native of Canada, sat down with Insight in Washington to discuss the real-life concerns of international youth.
Insight: The WYA now is three years old. What was the inspiration for creating so ambitious an effort?
Anna Halpine: I was attending a U.N. conference on population and development in New York. The United Nations itself brought 32 young people into the conference to participate. But it quickly became apparent to the rest of us that the majority of U.N.-selected delegates were caught up in politically correct nostrums and not interested in engaging basic issues confronting most of the world's youth -- issues such as potable water, human dignity, basic health care, education and human rights. I was with a handful of young people who felt the issues being discussed did not represent our concerns. So we went in the next day with a letter laying out an agenda addressing our concerns and presented it to the delegates. For two hours the conference stalled, and in that time the world divided.
The representatives of the developed nations clustered around the population-control ideas of the Clinton administration, which was in office at the time, and the developing nations, struggling to free themselves of oppression, poverty and disease, came to us one by one and said, "Thank you. Thank you for being here. Please come into our countries and work with our young people." And that really was the beginning of the World Youth Alliance.
Q: There certainly is a divide between the living conditions and concerns of the developing and underdeveloped nations. Do you see the narcissistic social concerns of the developed nations overriding the practical needs and mores of poorer countries?
A: Within the World Youth Alliance we focus everything we do on promoting the dignity of the human person. That is our core principle, and it is very compelling to the developing nations. I am just returning from a month in Africa where we met with many young people, thousands of them from all over the continent, and what they were saying was not "Come finance our abortions and birth control," but, "Come work with us, help us build our nations, help us build democracies on sound moral principles."
A lot of the help these young people are receiving through development programs is narrowly focused on very small aspects of their social problems -- aspects such as putting abortion forward as a solution to the problems resulting from corruption and malnutrition. That is inadequate at best and clearly not addressing the roots of what they really need.
Q: How has your group grown, both in size and scope?
A: The Alliance really has been an exciting response to the international community. We started with a very small number of young people and have grown at an astronomical rate. We grew to a quarter of a million in our first year, and are over a million at the end of our third. We keep doubling as we go. I think it indicates the response that young people are willing to give in the fight for human dignity.
Young people are coming forward from more than 100 countries and saying to the representatives of their own nations and those of the rest of the world, "We want to work with you to build free and just societies." This is why we insist that the principle of affirming the dignity of each individual be at the center of everything we do. And we are seeing the result in the language of U.N. documents, for example, on human cloning.
The World Youth Alliance has been working a lot behind the scenes with individual representatives and a variety of nongovernmental organizations active in trying to inform U.N. policy by putting fresh ideas onto the table. In the official statement delivered by the U.S. representative, we were pointed out as a group making a difference. This really was a reaffirmation of the kinds of things we value, but it also sends a very clear signal to all of our members who have been working so hard that what they are doing is being welcomed at the international level.
Q: In the popular culture, young people continue to be presented as distant, slackers or sexual free-lancers like Britney Spears. Do you think that is fair?
A: Hardly. We have over half-a-million members in North America coming forward, committing their time, trying to make the world a better place.
Q: The organization certainly has matured quickly. Where do you see it going now? How do you envision your agenda of issues changing?
A: We are of course working to influence international policy. What we find especially upsetting is that because of the regional structure within the world body we must be networking constantly and bringing together our people from all of the different countries. In five years, this will be exciting, as young people will have shared experiences that touch the deepest longings of their heart with friends from countries around the world. But it is an endlessly difficult task to organize under the pressures we experience.
Q: Do most of your members find themselves trying to affect change within the political structures at home and abroad, or are they working for change beyond national and international politics?
A: Not all of the people we train go into politics, but they will all do something to advance the causes of human dignity. They will have families; they'll be teachers or in the media -- they'll be in lots of different fields. But whatever they do they will share with millions of others on every continent a way of seeing the world in which human life and dignity are at the center of human rights.
I think we will see an impact on the way the cultures of our world respond to the commitment and energy of this youthful idealism as it matures. Every year we are expanding the training, and the talented youth with whom we are working are making their presence felt in regional institutions and negotiations.
Q: Earlier you mentioned the issues of cloning and genetic engineering which so dramatically have emerged in recent years. Do you think those issues in particular have been responsible for expanding discussion of the sanctity of life beyond the strict confines of the abortion debate?
A: What they are debating at the U.N. right now is whether to have an international convention on cloning -- creating a treaty that would bind the signatory nations to respect the dignity of human life in this particular area. As we get into the debate, the question which emerges is: "Why do we care?" What a lot of nation-states are having to articulate is that we care about this issue because it lets us consider a precedent involving the very beginning of human life, and this is changing the debate. With cloning there is no debate about whether we have a very small person present, but how we can use that person. Whether it is ethical to create such a person, for instance, to use for body parts.
In the developing world they are really looking at us as if we have lost our minds. They are looking for solutions to the basic issues of survival confronting their societies, but when they look to the West for guidance they see societies enveloped in a debate about whether we can use human beings as objects or as property.
Q: Do you think the creature comforts of life in the West -- and our concern with them -- have led society away from the fundamentals of faith, family and freedom?
A: Certainly the material wealth we have in the West is in and of itself good, and something we should be looking to promote among developing countries. But there is no denying the fact that the West, for all its material prosperity, seems to be losing a grasp on what is most important.
New York City is in the heart of a material utopia, but when the horrors of Sept. 11 struck, a lot of young people in that city found in the spiritually uplifting response to the tragedy a powerful appeal to the previously unrecognized desires of their heart. We have to work to ensure that the quality of our spiritual life is not only sound but available also to be transmitted to our friends around the world.
Q: As an organization grows in membership, many confront additional challenges arising from the increase in competing interests and concerns. What kind of growing pains has WYA experienced?
A: If someone had told us what we were getting into when we began, I am not sure we would have done it. When you start a multicultural organization you might assume that there is a vast mutuality among our species sufficient to overcome every cultural difficulty and conflict, and that the solving of what problems do exist will be an adventure. It is, in fact, hard work. Just to understand how differently people of other cultures relate to something as universal as time requires that everyone give and take a bit.
We've been really blessed by the kinds of people who have helped the WYA find ways to structure the business issues, the management issues, that confront a multinational organization. Certainly the financial issues quickly became a concern. Because we began really as a manifestation of the humane goals of young people we just dreamed and worked and grew until now, three years later, we also are carrying the responsibility of fund raising and long-range planning and all the rest.
Q: Yours is an organization representing 1.5 million young people in more than 100 countries, but you are based in the United States. Do you receive any funding from the U.S. government?
A: All of our funding is from personal donors and private foundations, so we haven't received any government money. While we have been approached by governments outside of the United States, we believe that for us to do what we do effectively, which is to work equally with compatible youth in all the nations in the world, government money is not for us.
Q: Is this because government assistance always comes with strings attached?
A: We are actually working with organizations in Africa and Latin America through small educational programs to help them find the public or private funding they need to make sure they are a success. But to do the work for human life that we are doing in the U.N., and to take funding from any particular government, undermines or limits the perception that you are going to be objective and fair.
Q: Many of the dignity-of-life issues and policy debates in which you engage are associated in the public mind with religious beliefs. What role can religion play in an organization that is not merely multinational but multicultural?
A: We are not a religious organization in any way, but many of our members are people of faith and, as you noted, people of many different faiths. We have members from all Christian sects and denominations, Muslim members, Jewish members. I think one of the exciting things has been to see how young people from all of these groups come together on fundamental recognition of the value of every living person. It is a recognition of something transcendent as it becomes obvious to people of every religion or no religion that the human person has an invaluable dignity that must be protected and defended.
After Sept. 11, we were contacted by a number of universities in Africa and the Middle East and asked to help connect their students -- the future leaders of their countries -- with students in the West. With Islamic fundamentalism rising, we were intrigued by the proposal to connect young people from these cultures, who agree on the central value of human life and the need to respect the dignity of every person. It is a very good beginning to discuss human liberty, and a worthy framework on which young people of different cultures might come to build a future together.
Q: Has the Internet played a role in any of this?
A: Ours is an organization of its time. We could not do what we do without the Internet, which carries almost all of our communications. A lot of people worldwide have access to it in some form. I just returned from Nigeria, where they were very excited about participating in our effort. In one youth group they all wanted to sign up with WYA, so we were surprised when we opened up what looked to be 56 e-mails from a single person. But it turned out that the members of this group had taken the time out of their regular meeting so that each and all could join as a group and as individual members on the one account to which they have access.
Q: Pope John Paul II has worked hard in recent years directly to engage young people in dialogue and has engaged millions of young Catholics. Do you see other established religious organizations and institutions following this lead?
A: I think they will. What John Paul II has done with the World Youth Days, as manifested by his bringing together such large numbers of people who are committed to the intangible things and are willing to make great sacrifices for them, has attracted notice throughout the world. And, not once, but now every two years, millions of young people even in what are seen as some of the most secular countries on the globe are gathering and listening to an old man who has no physical sex appeal and manifests not an ounce of the kind of beauty, youth and health that our culture worships. Something very important has happened.
Q: Your organization uses the U.N. definition of youth of between 10 and 30. What happens to your members when they reach the ripe old age of 31? Do you declare them untrustworthy and boot them off to the old-folks home?
A: We are just starting to encounter this situation. I am glad to say that those who reach age 30 graduate and become friends of the WYA. And we've really benefited from these and other older friends.
Personal Bio
Anna Halpine Born: Sept. 2, 1977, in Orillia, Ontario, Canada.
Education: B.A. in music from Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, 1999, cum laude; Taubman Institute, New York City, 1999 to 2000; Juilliard School of Music, 1999 to 2000.
Family: Parents, Judy and Stuart.
Siblings: John, 23; David, 20; Mary, 18; Clare, 14; Peter, 10.
Favorite recent book: Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy.
Book currently reading: The Limits of a Limitless Science by Stanley L. Jaki
Person most admired: "Pope John Paul II is a man who is increasingly frail and increasingly suffering yet continues to show the human side of himself to the world. He has been unfailing in always recognizing the truth and dignity of every person."
People who most influenced her life: "My parents."
Jennifer G. Hickey is a writer for Insight. email the author
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