Opening Remarks by Ambassador Ramu Damodaran |
Compulsory Peace & ICT Education Campaign in Support of the International Day of Democracy,
organized and presented virtually by Light Millennium Global along with the Coalition on September 13, 2025. #CompulsoryPeaceICTEducation | #DemocracyDay

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

Executive Summary

[LMGlobal.Org] Ambassador Ramu Damodaran, Permanent Observer of the University for Peace to the United Nations, reflects on the profound shift from traditional learning to the digital age, using the ancient Sanskrit language as a metaphor for the rapid advancement of technology. He connects the power of ICT and AI to the core principles of democracy, defining it as the collective sharing of knowledge and the individual’s responsibility to the global community. Damodaran also highlights examples from Costa Rica and the Bahamas to illustrate how democratic leadership and humanitarian action embody these values. He concludes with a powerful call to embrace the new era of technology, urging against fear and inaction and stressing that a failure to harness its potential would be a generational loss.

Opening Remarks by Ambassador Ramu Damodaran
Permanent Observer of the University For Peace to the United Nations

Embracing the Digital Age: A Call to Action for a Human-Centered World

I take full advantage of the fact that it’s a Saturday today to be a little casual. But more than the casualness of the t-shirt, if you will, I was also happy to use the occasion of what is on this t-shirt, which many of you may not understand. I myself had difficulty, but I think it really bears relevance to our conversation today. The words that you see on this t-shirt are in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, of which many of you may have heard. And it’s a language that fewer and fewer people in India know today. I’m possibly the last generation that grew up with Sanskrit as a subject taught in school.

And the reason I highlight this is how effortlessly and effectively, if you will, we have transformed ourselves within the space of a single generation from children who learned and memorized the written word in a new language to children who have only a tablet or a laptop before them, and with that, they can reach the world. And more than reach the world, also communicate to themselves the power of other people’s knowledge. And I use that phrase advisedly—other people’s knowledge—because in a sense, is that not what democracy is all about? Are we not taking advantage of democracy to bring into the lives of individuals the learning, the accomplishments, the discoveries of other people’s generations, to be able to enhance their own lives?

If I may borrow the very lyrical remarks of Ambassador Carazo of the whole purpose of education is empathy, is human rights, is the dignity of the individual. If you accept that, your mind can in a sense, go to one of the oldest texts in the Sanskrit language, which was written much before the idea of democracy was formalized or came into being in ancient Greece in the West or even in my own country, India, or China to our east.

And I’d like to share that one verse with you, and I hasten to reassure I will not do so in Sanskrit but in the English translation, which is: let every person be born to serve the family. Let each family serve the city. Let the city serve the state. Let the state serve the world, and let the world serve the individual.

So that full circle, which Ambassador Carazo brought forward so eloquently, is what that teaches us. Democracy is our responsibility as human beings to the greater being to which we belong, be it a global community, the global citizenry, in the phrase of the 2015 declaration. And it’s also as much our awareness of the responsibility that the world has to us. And that is why this link, which Bircan, with your immaculate and imaginative mind, has forged, is so important. The idea of a world where information communication technology becomes as accessible to a child of three or four as the Lego models of our youth or the drawing boards that we used were to our generation.

I’m particularly privileged to share this meeting today with Ambassador Carazo, whose country, Costa Rica, was responsible for so much of global humanitarian work, including its offer to host the University for Peace, which the General Assembly accepted with such alacrity 45 years ago.

When we talk of democracy also as a right of both women and men to aspire and to achieve offices of which were hitherto a male province, it’s also important that we hear from Costa Rica, a country—and I hope I’m not being undiplomatic in mentioning names—but a country that has Christiana Figueres, a country that has produced Rebeca Grynspan, a country that has produced Marita Chan, all women of distinction who may or can one day lead the organization we’re all proud to serve.

And beyond that, I’m very honored that I share today’s meeting with Ambassador Smith of the Bahamas. I recall being at the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations last year, I think it was on the 27th of September, just as the general debate of the United Nations had begun. And I heard Prime Minister Philip Davis of the Bahamas speak, and he said, and I remember those words so poignantly. He said, “Why is it that we are doing so little as a planet, as a world, on climate change? Is it simply because no one cares anymore?” And then he paused and said, “That I cannot accept because I will not accept that denial of what I consider my common view of humanity, that humanity can be so callous, so unfeeling, so disregarding as not to care.”

And what Prime Minister Davis told the General Assembly is being brought to life in his own country by the First Lady, Ms. Ann Marie Davis, who just last month was great to receive a gift from one of our NGOs of the United Nations, the American Medical Women’s Association, and its representative, Dr. Padmini Murthy, of 6,000 menstrual hygiene kits to be distributed to the needy wherever they are.

And that sense of democracy is echoed in not only the right of the people to choose their leaders, but also the right of the leaders to decide what they will be able to offer their people, which go beyond campaign speeches, which go beyond the promises of office, which go really to the beauty and the power which hitherto was completely within the limitations, if you will, of human capacity and today has been magnified extraordinarily into the realm of artificial intelligence, of creation of large language models which Bircan spoke about so eloquently.

All of that is the world we have. It is a world we need not fear. It is a world of which we need not be self-conscious. It is not a world we should deny ourselves, far less deny our children. It is a world we have created. It is a world in which we must take advantage.  And if we fail, if we choose to waste our time on questions of ethics and morality and propriety and choose to ignore the vastness of knowledge and possibility at our command, we will truly have been not only the lost generation, but the generation who lost the world to its successors. 

Thank you.