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During the United Nation's Day in Bogotá, Colombia, the Latin American Post interviewed Andrés Gutiérrez Serna, regional coordinator and representative of the children and youth in the region 

Leer en Español: Naciones Unidas: comprometidos con el futuro  

The ultimate goal of the United Nations is to prevent future generations from war, and all of its intricacies, through the promotion of human rights, social progress, and better living standards for all. The mission of the organization was ratified on October 24^th, 1945 by China, France, United Kingdom, United States and Russia as the UN Charter became active. We celebrate the event 72 years later.

The public event was held at the Colombian National Center for Historic Memory, where the UN’s coordinator for Children and Youth in Latin America and the Caribbean kindly agreed to answer a few short questions to put IGNORE INTO perspective how the United Nations impacts the lives of the Colombian people.

Andrés Gutiérrez Serna leads initiatives such as Urban Thinkers' Campus 2.0, Urban Managers, and the LocalPathways Fellowship, projects that independently support the empowerment of regional youths.

What does the UN Day mean to you?

“The UN’s Day is a symbolic day for humanity as it allows [us] to establish the necessary guidelines needed to build peace, to contribute advances [when it comes to] quality of life and to contribute to different judicial, economic, and political statements.

[The UN day] permits and favors people to become empowered and obtain an active role among the changes in contemporary society. [The celebration of this occasion] allows us to understand the complexity of today’s international system”.

How does your work contribute to Colombia’s improvement?

“UN Mayor Children and Youth has propitiated a series of strategies in order to contribute to the strengthening of peace and its establishment through the interaction in various ways with children and the youth that has been in so many ways affected for issues such as poverty, lack of education, and healthcare.

From UN Mayor Children and Youth, we have favored the contribution to these essential items and we expect to continue making an important contribution for the institutions in order to minimize the negative effects associated to local phenomena with systematic implications”.

What was the best part of today’s event?

“The best part of the UN’s Day was to unite most of the United Nations agencies that work in Colombia and provide a space for the construction of multiple agendas that will work for the Sustainable Development in years to come as every agenda is part of a long-term plan.

The UN’s Day allowed us to commit to the future by signaling and correcting past errors and to plan, in a coordinated manner, some parameters for the implementation of peace”.

The United Nations works along with the Colombian Department for Central Planning, DNP in Spanish, and it is widely known for its objective of establishing pathways to create and execute the 2030 agenda.

Learn more about the impact of the United Nations in Colombia: www.nacionesunidas.org.co

Latin American Post | David Eduardo Rodríguez Acevedo

Copy edited by Susana Cicchetto