Scheduled and surprising meetings of the Week 2

This is my second week at the UN and here come my impressions.

Monday 11.10. at UNESCO



During this meeting, topics such as higher education, intercultural dialoge were discussed. "What can UNESCO do so that higher education is free" was question of the Belgian YD. "Culture is not part of MDGs but without culture no goal can be achieved" is what we heard, stressing the importance of taking cultural background always into consideration.

Tuesday 12.10. morning working breakfast at Swiss mission “Successful Environmental Policy; Youth participation in decision making processes”

Meeting of the day Not planned, yet a great luck on being on the right place in the right moment: I ran into Kofi Annan!
lunch time a photo exhibition at the Bulgarian consulate

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Kofi Annan____________________________________________Velislava Ivanova, Bulgarian YD

evening Something that particularly stuck in my mind; an evening screening of a documentary by UNICEF, dealing with the plight of Children of war giving an insight into to Uganda’s Lord Resistance Army.

Wednesday 13.10.
morning Reporting from the plenary of the 3rd Committee. On the agenda we had Advancement of women and Children's rights. Earlier I had chance to hear Michele Bachelet, the newly appointed Under Secretary General for UN Women. The discussion has been great today, with a special regard to the question time, there was a lively discussion between representatives of Korea and Japan.

lunch time a side event at the Dominican Rep. mission
Mostly discussing organizational things like how to hand information we collected to the next delegates, our coordination after we are back from NY, website etc.

afternoon At 5pm, we met Mr. Joseph Deiss, the President of the 65th General Assembly. After a short introduction (and photoshooting), we asked questions. Our very enthusiastic Belgian delegate Matthieu asked about future of the UN, if UN Parliamentary Assembly would not be a solution for solving the global problems and would not better represent real people. A question from Dominican Rep. followed, asking about the role of NGOs. Germany asked whether he could support us and call upon the member states to implement the youth delegate program.



Mr. Joseph Deiss and Youth Delegates 2010



Thursday 14.10. morning working breakfast at Thai mission “Sufficiency Economy: the Role and Participation of Youth in Sustainable Development”
10am I am meeting our ambassador
lunch time WFUNA (World Federation of United Nations Associations) event "Handbook for Establishing a National Youth Delegate Programme to the UN"

Weekend. Saturday 16.10., Boston. Dambisa Moyo, the author of the Dead Aid (Why the aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa) was speaking at the Boston Book Festival. Not only that her book was impressive, she is impressive! The way she spoke - you could really know she means it. Indian Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and famous Harvard Professor Michael Sandel were also present.
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Dambisa Moyo signing my issue of her Dead Aid. D. Moyo, Amartya Sen, M. Sandel

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She wrote: Dana, make the cycle stop.