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The United Nations' Own Maradona

By Néfer Muñoz

Remigio Martín Maradona, cousin of Argentine football superstar Diego Armando Maradona, overcame poverty and physical disability and today is a United Nations official promoting a global culture of peace and raising funds for programmes in developing countries.

This Maradona, is at this week's LDC conference to promote a special fund that will allow young people from poor countries to participate in internships at UN offices.

"We poor countries have to stick together because, as Latin American liberator Simón Bolívar said, unity carries you to success, division to failure.

" Remigio Martín, like the rest of the Maradona family, is from a poor Buenos Aires neighbourhood.

He was born healthy, but at age two he became disabled after contracting polio in his hands.

"Ironically, I developed polio because a doctor injected me with a polio vaccine that had expired......unfortunately, this is a very frequent occurrence in our poor countries," he told TERRAVIVA.

During his childhood, cousin Diego Armando was not yet famous, but Remegio's academic abilities caught the attention of some wealthy individuals who paid for his studies and for corrective surgery in the United States.

Today, after studying political science and completing a master's degree in business administration, Remigio Martín is an official at the World Association of Former United Nations Interns and Fellows.

"I want to serve as an example for other people, to show that I did not use my disability as an excuse to feel helpless.

On the contrary, it has been an incentive to surmount my problems, to study and to help others," he added.

Maradona says he had a "very sad" childhood because, in addition to his family's economic troubles, he endured taunting about his disability from the children he grew up with.

Though he still does not have full mobility in his arms, Remigio says he has a very active personal and professional life, and points out that he even plays football on the United Nations team.

He is also a writer and has published two collections of poetry.

The activist speaks Spanish, English and a bit of Italian - "like all Argentines", he joked - and says that his goal right now is to obtain more resources for the projects he is working on.

The programme Maradona is promoting in Brussels is the Rammel Fund, which seeks to provide youth from LDCs and other poor nations with the opportunity to spend one to six months at the United Nations, where they would learn specific skills that could be applied when they return to their home countries.

He points out that there is currently an imbalance at the UN because for every intern from a developing country there are nine interns from industrialised countries.

Remigio Martín, who lives and works in New York, is also on the UN team that will be disseminating a Culture of Peace Programme worldwide over the next decade.

"It is likely that next Nov. 19 the Italian singer Andrea Boccelli will give a concert for this programme in New York," Maradona said in regard to the initiative's upcoming activities.

He has recruited famous personalities like Boccelli and Spanish singer Julio Iglesias to serve as UN Goodwill Ambassadors.

When asked his opinion on the LDC Conference, he was emphatic in his response, saying that the event has proven the "disunity" of the world's poor countries because there should have been a stronger presence of other developing nations here this week.

"We must realise that we can only overcome our poverty if we are united, we have to work together," he stressed.

Maradona is physically very similar to his cousin Diego Armando.

He said that in the hallways of the UN offices it is not unusual for people to ask him if he is the brother of the one many consider to be the best football player in history.