Деятельность Центра по изучению ООН в Республике Беларусь

Abstract

The article "The Centre for UN Studies Activities in the Republic of Belarus" is devoted to informational aspects of UN system activities in the Republic of Belarus. The article begins by giving a brief description of public information activities of the UN Office in the Republic of Belarus and the National Library of Belarus (it has been a UN depository library since December 1954) — they are considered the two sources of information about the UN. Afterwards the logic of the idea of the creation of the "Centre for UN Studies" is elaborated and the activities of the Centre in 1998—beginning of 1999 are introduced to the reader. The "Centre for the UN Studies" is a joint project of the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Belarusian State University. The main objectives of the Centre's activities aim at increasing public awareness about the United Nations, promotion of human rights, refugee law, humanitarian law. The article presents the information about the major events that were organized by the Centre: conferences, workshops, round tables; it illustrates big work with the students: the contest of students' works ("The UN and the Modern World", "Human Rights", "Refugee Issues"), implementation of special academic courses, distribution of the literature (more than 1000 students got the necessary editions), and other interesting forms of activities. A number of wide-scale actions ("The Universal Declaration of Human Rights to every house", distribution of the literature to the libraries etc.) and lectures drew the attention of the general public of the Republic to the activities of the Centre. With the support of the Centre, the library of the Belarusian State University was granted a status of a UN depository library in December 1998. Summarizing the major achievements of the Centre during 1998—beginning of 1999, it should be mentioned that the Centre has played an important role in fitting the information gap about the UN.