A December 14 international youth conference initiated by the Schiller Institute, titled “Young People of the World Unite!” signaled that a new strategic flank has emerged for those who demand a new, just security and development architecture: an international youth movement dedicated to the common interests of the one humanity.
This event grew organically out of a series of conferences sponsored or co-sponsored by the Schiller Institute. This began with a Memorial Day Weekend conference in Newark, New Jersey, “A Beautiful Vision for Humanity in Times of Great Turbulence!” followed by one in Berlin, Germany, in June, “Man is Not a Wolf to Man,” and then Paris in November, “The Emancipation of Africa and the World Majority, A Challenge for Europe.” These gatherings included an increasing participation of young people from around the world, who have become more and more aware of, and committed, to their roles in shaping the future.
This youth movement is growing at an accelerating rate, guided by such world leaders as Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute; Dr. Naledi Pandor, chairwoman of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and former Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa; Jacques Cheminade, president of the French party Solidarité & Progrès; Beryl Sisulu, ambassador of South Africa to Mexico; and Alain Charlemagne Pereira, former ambassador and former chief of staff of the Senegalese Air Force. On December 14, these mature voices of reason spoke in dialogue with an assembly of more than 200 youth from across 37 nations on five continents, including 20 different African nations.
That dialogue served as the first panel of two, while the second featured 17 recorded statements by young people from around the world. Statements came in from Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Yemen, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Sudan, Cameroon, Japan, the United States of America, Mali, Kenya, Uganda, and Brazil, as well as a dozen live statements contributed by young leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, and many other locations. These statements covered such matters as the use of AI to eradicate mycotoxin contamination of food in Africa; the organizing of the population of Mexico in support of cooperation with the BRICS; the historic memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the 255th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven as seen by a Yemeni youth; the urgent need for young people to help stop the horrific crises in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Gaza; the legal fight for the economic and political sovereignty of Mali; the common need for a just world agricultural system, as seen from the standpoint of a Kansas cattleman; and the need for fossil fuel development and great projects to eradicate poverty in Africa and the world.
Following those statements came further dialogue among the assembled youth with Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Jacques Cheminade, during which the demands of the future and the present were discussed from the standpoint of the strategic danger of a new kind of universal fascism, along with the intersection of the malign use of artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and the military-industrial complex, particularly regarding their use to prevent the consolidation of a new, just paradigm between nations and peoples. Against this backdrop, punctuated by the particularly insane outlook of NATO, as expressed in a recent propaganda video, “From Foresight to Warfight,” the question became: What intervention must this global youth collaboration make?
Zepp-LaRouche challenged the youth leaders, emphasizing that, in fact, “we are not barbarians. We are not like this NATO image of man. We are the creative species, and we can come up with solutions for every man-made problem. And war is a man-made problem. That’s why I think the need to have a powerful international youth movement is the key to solving the present conjuncture in human history. Only if we have young people on all continents—in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and hopefully then, inspiring the youth of the United States and Europe—who will fight for a new economic system, a new world economic order, and an end to war, will this tragedy which is potentially facing humanity possibly be avoided.”
The enthusiastic responses of the young participants of this conference indicates that many are ready and willing to build this movement, and to answer Zepp-LaRouche’s long-standing call to learn and implement the method of the Coincidence of Opposites, invented by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa in the 15th Century as a means of solving multiple intractable problems by ascending to examine them from the level of the higher One.
Nations represented during the conference included Ghana, Ethiopia, Canada, Uganda, Yemen, France, Australia, Palestine, South Africa, Kenya, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Bangladesh, Brazil, Nigeria, United States of America, Mexico, Madagascar, Gambia, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Saint Lucia, Argentina, Algeria, India, Sudan, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and Iran.
