|
Photo Exhibit, Symposium Honor U That |
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, 17 November 2009 |
27 October 2009, Westport, Connecticut, USA
The greatest legacy of the former United Nations head U Thant is his belief in the dignity of the individual, said Mr. Kiyo Akasaka, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, as he helped open a photographic exhibition dedicated to the Organization’s third Secretary-General.
At the exhibit’s opening last week at the Stamford campus of the University of Connecticut, Mr. Akasaka stated that U Thant was a visionary who had realized that the UN “needed to meet the needs and hopes of peoples everywhere.
In his last report as Secretary-General, U Thant wrote that “the worth of the individual human being is the most unique and precious of all our assets and must be the beginning and end of all our efforts. Governments, systems, ideologies and institutions come and go, but humanity remains.” Mr. Akasaka observed that “these words embody the spirit of the United Nations and continue to serve as our guiding light today.”
Daw (Ms.) Aye Aye Thant, Westport resident and daughter of the late Secretary-General said "In his memoir, View From the UN my father wrote, ‘From 1961 to 1971, I witnessed – and often actively mediated-. . . the series of crises in the Congo, the Arab-Israel war of 1967 and the Cuban missile crisis, to name only a few. . . .’ “ She added that the exhibition reflected her father’s UN tenure in pictures. “It not only tells the story of events that started a little more than half a century ago, when in 1957 my father first came here as an ambassador at the age of 48, representing his newly independent country, then known as Burma and now Myanmar, but you could also get a glimpse of a man himself".
The exhibit opening preceded a symposium on “Cooperative Trickle Up Initiatives in South East Asia” organized by the U Thant Institute in cooperation with the University of Connecticut School of Business. Main speakers included Ambassador of Thailand to the United Nations, Mr. Norachit Sinhaseni; Mr. William Abrams, President, Trickle Up Program; and Ms. Kanni Wignaraja, Director, Capacity Development Group, UN Development Program. This year also marks the centenary of the birth of U Thant, who died in 1974.
Daw Aye Aye.Thant, the founder and president of the U Thant Institute, said she established the organization in 2003 to promote the spirit of “One World”, to increase international understanding and to foster peace through education. She said that “As my father had said on many occasions, peace is not only an absence of war, but peace for every human being is the satisfaction of basic needs such as adequate food, clothing, shelter and health care, providing the dignity that each individual deserves.”
U Thant Institute is a 501 (c ) (3) Non-Profit organization.
E-mail:
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Web: www.uthantinstitute.org |
