Statement by
H.E. Ambassador Stan Oduma Smith
Permanent Representative of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas to the United Nations

at the

International Day of Democracy — The Light Millennium
on Compulsory Peace, ICT and AI Education for a Human-Centered Democracy
15 September 2025   | Virtually, New York | PDF

Background / Concept / Expected Outcomes | Bio of the Speakers & Profiles of the Participating Orgs.

Executive Summary

[LMGlobal.Org] In his keynote address, Ambassador H.E. Stan Oduma Smith, Permanent Representative of The Bahamas to the United Nations, frames the urgent need for compulsory peace and ICT/AI education as essential components of a human-centered democracy. Drawing upon the UN’s Pact for the Future and the Global Digital Compact, he argues that these declarations must be translated into tangible action. Ambassador Smith defines peace as democracy’s “first obligation,” linking it directly to the ability to hold free elections and maintain civic life, and extends this concept to include “climate peace” for vulnerable island nations. He then makes the case for digital literacy as a core requirement for 21st-century citizenship, emphasizing that without it, citizens are at risk of manipulation and exclusion from a digital democracy. He concludes with a powerful call to action, urging all UN Member States to operationalize these commitments in their national policies and budgets to ensure a just and inclusive future for generations to come.

Statement by H.E. Ambassador Stan Oduma Smith, Permanent Representative of the Commonwealth  of The Bahamas to the United Nations

COMPULSORY PEACE, ICT, AND AI EDUCATION FOR A HUMAN-CENTERED DEMOCRACY

Excellencies, Distinguished Participants and Friends,

I regard this an honour – today – to address you on the International Day of Democracy. 

I thank The Light Millennium for convening us, and for asking me to reflect on the theme: Compulsory Peace, ICT and AI Education for a Human-Centered Democracy.

We meet at a moment – as it is with all transformations – a moment that we define and that will define the age we are in and will define us.  

In New York – one year ago – UN Member States adopted the Pact for the Future at the Summit of the Future. It was a landmark agreement — not perfect, but – by necessity – ambitious — setting out 56 commitments across peace and security; development; human rights; and the digital future. The Pact is not a single document but a family of commitments. Annexed to that Pact is the Global Digital Compact – the first collective framework where nations agreed on how digital technologies, data, and artificial intelligence should be governed for the benefit of humanity.

Alongside the Global Digital Compact, the Pact also includes the Declaration on Future Generations. This declaration pronounces in its considerations that our decisions today are not ours alone: our decisions are generational assets held in trust or as losses for those who will inherit this planet tomorrow. It calls on us to safeguard the climate; to uphold digital rights; and to leave behind systems of governance that protect, rather than endanger, the dignity of future generations. For small island developing states like The Bahamas, where rising seas and hurricanes threaten the existence of our communities, the Declaration is a commitment to sustain the sources and the potential for what will inform and grow and transform the world after us. 

A human-centered democracy must therefore be intergenerational by design: It must ensure that we accommodate in our choices today the potential and capacities of the generation tomorrow.  

On today’s International Day of Democracy, I want to argue that the commitments in those UN declarations can match their aspirations by elevating the lived realities in schools, in communities, in parliaments, and in international cooperation. And I want to argue that peace education and digital education are not optional extras — they inherent – and by that – compulsory elements of any democracy that hopes to endure.

I. Peace as Democracy’s First Obligation

To expand this – just as compulsory education is mandated because literacy is indispensable for the advancement of a people in an age of information –  compulsory peace must be mandated because non-violence is indispensable for democracy. It defines a culture in which dialogue replaces confrontation, where mediation is prioritized over militarization, and where institutions are held accountable for preventing conflict as much as for responding to it. Compulsory peace is not the absence of difference; it is the recognition that difference must be resolved without destruction.  Compulsory peace calls on us to transform peace a civic requirement, not a rhetorical aspiration.

Peace is not a choice that democracies may or may not make. Peace is democracy’s first obligation.

Where there is war, ballots cannot be freely cast. Where there is violence, freedom of assembly is crushed. Where there is fear, institutions falter.

Around the world, we see conflicts raging — in some cases frozen, in others inflamed. We see disinformation campaigns designed to turn citizens against one another. We see inequalities driving social unrest, and young people losing faith in institutions.

The Pact for the Future was clear: if democracy is to be sustainable, peace must be at its foundation. That means not only conflict prevention and disarmament, but also embedding peace in education, in culture, in law, and in daily civic life.

For The Bahamas, peace is not an abstraction. It is what allows our communities to thrive after hurricanes. It is what gives our citizens the space to build tourism, to fish, to innovate, to educate. It is what allows small island societies to stand confidently in a turbulent world.

But peace is fragile. Climate change is the great destabilizer of our age. Every Category 5 storm that tears through our islands is not just a meteorological event — it is a political event. It can destabilize households, bankrupt businesses, and shake faith in governance. To us, peace means also climate peace: protecting our people from the violence of rising seas, from the trauma of repeated storms, from the loss of livelihoods.

That is why I speak of compulsory peace. Peace education should be built into curricula from the earliest years: teaching children not only about civic rights, but about conflict resolution, empathy, environmental stewardship, and dialogue. Peace should not be something our citizens encounter only in diplomatic declarations — it should be something they live, something they practice, something they expect.

II. ICT and AI Education: Preparing Citizens for Digital Democracy

The second element of our theme is ICT and AI education.

Colleagues, in the 20th century, democracy required citizens to be literate — to read newspapers, to understand manifestos, to weigh arguments. In the 21st century, and especially in the 21st century’s third decade, democracy requires digital literacy.

Why? Because today, democracy lives as much online as it does in parliaments. Citizens receive information, debate policies, and even mobilize movements through digital platforms. But these platforms are not neutral — they are governed by algorithms, by artificial intelligence systems that most citizens do not understand and cannot question.

Without digital literacy, people become passive subjects of democracy, not active participants. They vote, yes, but their perceptions may be manipulated by unseen hands. Their debates may be distorted by bots. Their privacy may be violated by surveillance.

The Global Digital Compact, annexed to the Pact for the Future, recognized this. It set out principles for universal connectivity, for affordable internet, for safe digital environments, and for AI governance grounded in human rights. It also called for digital education — ensuring that every school, every community, is equipped to teach the skills needed for citizenship in a digital world.

Let me offer a few numbers:

• Globally, there are still 2.6 billion people unconnected or not making use of the internet because of its cost, digital illiteracy or language inaccessibility [the so-called usage gap identified by UNDP in its 2024 study]. That is 2.6 billion voices excluded from digital democracy.
• In The Bahamas, we are fortunate: about 95 percent of our population has internet access, among the highest in the world. Mobile data is relatively affordable — less than 1 percent of average income for a basic plan. These are advantages we must not squander.
• Yet access does not equal literacy. Our Ministry of Education acknowledges that many teachers have not received systematic training in digital pedagogy. In remote islands, reliable broadband is still a challenge.

We also have promising pilots: earlier this year, students at King’s College School in The Bahamas who used AI-powered learning tools showed a 9-point increase in performance across math, science, and English. That is the power of AI when deployed responsibly. But the same AI, if left unregulated, could reinforce biases, undermine integrity, or reduce education to standardized automation.

That is why I argue for compulsory ICT and AI education. Not just teaching young people to use devices, but teaching them to understand algorithms, to protect their data, to recognize disinformation, and to think ethically about technology.

III. Human-Centered Democracy

What does it mean to speak of a “human-centered democracy”?

It means placing people, not institutions, at the heart. It means measuring democracy not just by elections, but by dignity, by opportunity, by inclusion.

The Pact for the Future includes a Declaration on Future Generations. It reminds us that we hold democracy in trust, not only for ourselves but for those yet unborn. If we design AI today without ethics, we will leave them tools of oppression. If we fail to act on climate, we will leave them chaos instead of governance. If we do not strengthen peace, we will leave them conflict instead of cooperation.

For The Bahamas, human-centered democracy also means acknowledging our vulnerabilities:

• Our debt levels, worsened by repeated storms, constrain our ability to invest in public goods.
• Our dependence on tourism makes us highly sensitive to global shocks, as COVID-19 reminded us.
• Our dispersed geography makes equitable service delivery challenging.

But our strengths are also clear: high literacy rates, high internet penetration, a resilient youth population, and a strong tradition of civic engagement. With the right investment in peace education, digital literacy, and democratic innovation, we can become a model of small-state leadership in the digital age.

IV. Accountability and Action

Excellencies, words without accountability are empty.

How do we measure progress?

• By the percentage of schools with broadband connectivity.
• By the share of teachers trained in AI ethics and digital literacy.
• By the number of students who can not only use, but explain, the AI tools that shape their world.
• By reductions in the spread of disinformation online.
• By budget allocations that treat ICT and peace education not as luxury, but as core democratic infrastructure.

The Pact for the Future and the Global Digital Compact commit us to reporting progress, to aligning our voluntary national reviews with digital inclusion and human-centered governance. The Bahamas must do so — and so must every state represented here.

This is why The Bahamas is proud to be putting forward a proposal for a resolution at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly. This resolution will call on all Member States to move decisively toward the operationalization of the Pact for the Future. It is our conviction that the Pact represents the first truly comprehensive blueprint for multilateral cooperation since the adoption of the UN Charter in 1945. Just as the Charter created the institutional foundation for international peace and security, the Pact must now become the framework for how we deliver on democracy, development, and digital cooperation in the 21st century.

V. A Call to Action

So on this International Day of Democracy, let us commit:

• To making peace education compulsory, so that every child grows up learning dialogue over violence, cooperation over confrontation.
• To making ICT and AI education compulsory, so that every citizen has the tools to participate meaningfully in digital democracy.
• To anchoring our democracies in the Pact for the Future, ensuring its commitments do not sit on shelves but are embedded in budgets, in classrooms, in parliaments.
• To upholding the Global Digital Compact, ensuring that digital transformation is equitable, rights-based, and inclusive.
• And to remember that democracy, if it is not human-centered, is not democracy at all.

Closing

Excellencies, friends,

Democracy is not guaranteed. It is built and rebuilt every day — through peace, through education, through courage. The Bahamas is committed to this task, and we stand ready to work with partners to make peace compulsory, to make digital literacy universal, and to make democracy worthy of future generations.

That is our charge. That is our opportunity. That is our duty.

I thank you.

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