United Nations honors Jorge Sampaio and Portugal wants to continue former President’s project
On Monday, the United Nations pays homage to Jorge Sampaio, at a ceremony in which Portugal seeks to continue the idea launched by the former Portuguese President of creating a rapid response mechanism for emergency situations in higher education.
The ceremony, organized by the Alliance of Civilizations, of which Sampaio was the first high representative, and by the Portuguese mission at the UN, is “assumed by all the countries of the United Nations for the transformation of the functions” that Jorge Sampaio exercised in the organization and the results of the its work in the scope of the United Nations”, the minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, told Lusa, in a statement by telephone from New York.
Entitled “Solidarity is not optional, it is a duty” – a phrase that Jorge Sampaio wrote in his last article -, the ceremony will feature interventions by the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, the current high representative of the Alliance of Civilizations and of the Portuguese minister.
It also counts, among others, with interventions by the Turkish President, Recep Tayiip Erdogan, and the former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero, the two leaders who, in 2005, and following the September 11 attacks, proposed the creation of the Alliance of Civilizations to promote international, intercultural and interreligious dialogue and cooperation.
At the ceremony, the Portuguese minister said, “the role that Sampaio played in the search for “solutions to support higher education students who see their studies interrupted by conflicts in their country of origin due to persecution, violence, or others reasons”.
Santos Silva recalled that Jorge Sampaio founded in 2013 the Global Platform for Syrian Students, to allow students to continue their studies in Portugal, interrupted by the civil war in their country.
Together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sampaio then developed “in order to evolve, from a successful Portuguese example, to a rapid response mechanism in emergency situations in Higher Education”.
“The best tribute we can pay to statesmen is to continue to work in the direction they have opened”, underlined the minister, adding that Portugal’s objective is that, among the mechanisms of cooperation and humanitarian support available in the United Nations system, there is one specifically addressed the case of conflict-affected higher education students.
The idea is that this international mechanism will acquire support, with scholarships and reception at universities in different countries, those students that conflict, persecution and violence prevent them from continuing to study in their countries, explained.
According to Santos Silva, a mechanism like this not only allows students to continue their studies, but also that “countries devastated by war or conflict prepare their post-conflict recovery, as the preparation of their technical elites , professional or social “continues abroad.
The head of Portuguese diplomacy added that, also on Monday, “by chance”, Norway and Niger are organizing a discussion at the UN Security Council dedicated to education in emergency situations, in which Santos Silva will participate in representation of the Government of Portugal.
“Tomorrow we will have two great goals: to pay homage to Dr. Jorge Sampaio and thank him for everything he has done for multilateralism and international cooperation, but also to pay this other tribute, which is to continue working towards an international response to situations of emergency in higher education,” he concluded.
Jorge Sampaio, who died on September 10, aged 81, was President of the Republic for two terms, between 1996 and 2006.
After the end of his second term, and still in 2006, Jorge Sampaio was the UN Special Envoy in the Fight against Tuberculosis and, a year later, he was invited to hold the position of UN High Representative for the Dialogue of Civilizations, until 2013 . That year the Global Platform for Syrian Students was created.
One of its last public acts was, in August, when the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, to announce in an article published in Público newspaper, a reinforcement of the support platform for Syrian students to give scholarships to young Afghan girls.
In that article, published the day before he was hospitalized, Sampaio wrote that “it would never be too much to remember that solidarity is not optional, but a duty that results from article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Endowed with reason and conscience, they must act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood'”.