[CHEERING] [APPLAUSE] 

Hello, everyone. It's so nice to know how excited you are. My name is Edith. I'm a Junior. I am an international relations and French double major. And, this summer, I interned at the United Nations General Assembly in the Ghana Mission. 

And so just a little bit about the Permanent Mission, it is an arm of Ghanaian Foreign Service that's responsible to the United Nations in New York City. And we are responsible for representing Ghana's interests in the United Nations General Assembly. And they're also responsible for Ghanaian diplomats and delegations on assignment to the UN from Ghana while in New York City. So they handle things like logistics, protocol, et cetera. 

So what did I do? I shadowed the mission's officers in two major committees, in the first committee which was for disarmament and international security, and the second committee which was for finance and economics. 

So a day in the life. I would catch the train, check in with my supervisor, and go into the things I'd have to do. I'd either have to head to the UN, or stay in the mission, and perform mission tasks. 

So at the UN, I had to check the UN journal, which was like a list of all the new things ongoing at the United Nations that day and [INAUDIBLE] to go to with each of our officers was going, attend the meetings, take notes. Afterwards, network with some of the other interns. 

I was very excited about the internship because it let me and [? talk with the ?] diplomats after all. And there were times when the diplomats would take you out for lunch. And they always paid which was good because [INAUDIBLE]. 

[LAUGHTER] 

And then after all that, I would write reports. Yes, I wanted [INAUDIBLE] that's fine. At the mission office, I would do things like data entry. I worked with the treasurer for [INAUDIBLE]. I worked for a little bit with the peacekeeping arm for the mission. So I got to do those things. Sometimes, you do diplomatic pickups, when we had delegations in, had to go meet them at the airport with the drivers, that kind of thing. So that's how I spent my day. 

And there were two major conferences I attended I think are relevant to this panel. And the first one was the 2017 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. And in short, it's called HLPF. And that's the picture of me standing very awkwardly. 

HLPF is the main United Nations platform for sustainable development. And they are responsible for reviewing and following up on a 2013 agenda of sustainable development, and just evaluates progress with the sustainable development goals. 

And I witnessed what development policy review looks like on the global scale. And it's primarily through CARE review. And so what they were, voluntary national reviews where member states could volunteer to, like, inform the General Assembly to prove that they were making different SDGs. And they have Question and Answer sessions afterward, I guess like we are doing here, where member states would ask, OK, how did you get this to work in your context? And how can I make it work in mine? Things like that. 

The next thing I got to be a part of was an nuclear weapon ban. Which was actually quite big this summer. And for this, I got to see how international law is actually formed at the United Nations. So there are two major paths with every negotiation of the document. And then there's voting. And negotiation takes a very long time. It took about four weeks for this one, maybe longer. 

One thing I noticed was that the permanent members of the Security Council were absent. [? They did ?] have a [? all-states ?] [? meeting ?] of the global, so naturally us then too. It was mostly neutral states, and states that that they have in common with [INAUDIBLE] mission which was interesting. And also, with this, what I learned to track and translate regional agreements into global agreements. 

So there is the Treaty of Pelindaba, which was agreed on at the African Union, and that the African GLOBE working group on issues of transits-- meaning the global issue where-- should we allow nuclear weapons to be moved into zones where we knew they were going to be used? And so that kind of issue came up. And the African GLOBE was against that because the Treaty of Pelindaba guaranteed that the entire continent is nuclear weapon-free. So with that, we don't know. So seeing how it was, we know and agreements interacted with the larger global [? community ?] interesting. 

And I also got to see the role of academics and NGOs and other non-state actors in the commission of international law. And we invited lots of people to, like, be panelists, experts on the different issues to pinpoint some of the loopholes that we might have seen, to remind us to look at certain things that weren't considered. And, yes, so that was [? part of goals. ?] 

Actually, it may be a good thing. I had to go and do a diplomatic pickup, too. Again, [INAUDIBLE] happening, which is a little sad. 

But it was adopted and with one vote against, by the Netherlands, which wasn't much of a surprise because they had been against it from the very beginning. And there was one abstention by Singapore, which was also in another regional agreement. That's right. 

So other highlights, I got to take pictures with [INAUDIBLE] things like with Kofi Annan. 

[LAUGHTER] 

And I got to practice my French on the French media as well. Lots of people spoke French at the United Nations. There was no time to [INAUDIBLE] in like actual life. And I went to go out networking, and I got a lot of mentors and maybe possible future [INAUDIBLE]. Everybody was very welcoming, actually. Everybody was interested in knowing what you had in mind, where you wanted to go to. And all, they're willing to give advice on how to do this. 

What also, a lot of exposure. Like on the average day, you could have several internship offers, just from different people who we have talked to. And they weren't always in things I was interested in, but it was just nice to know that in that space, I had all these opportunities [INAUDIBLE]. And, of course, living and working in Manhattan. 

[LAUGHTER] 

So looking forward, why did I enjoy my internship? I don't think diplomatic life is for me. And I used to think it was because, like, I didn't want to do anything in international law. And that's just how I saw it [? for. ?] But after spending some time in the [INAUDIBLE], the type of development where you can-- if the state [INAUDIBLE] like that-- it has more to do with conversations. 

And conversations are important, but I don't envision myself having conversations for the rest of my life. So I think I'll try tackle more-- I want to be more handsy with development work. And so that's kind of what I'm thinking. 

I also noticed there are a lot of intersections between law and policy that could be leveraged for sustainable development. So I spent a lot of time trying to take classes that may often have some of these intersections and how we can possibly leverage them with sustainable development. 

So I'm not terribly sure what exactly I want to do with my job, I have an idea of what I don't want to do with my job, which I think is also important. Thank you. 

[CHEERING] 

[APPLAUSE] 

Questions? You have a question? OK, you. 

So first of all, where concerning the UN, do you think that their conversations, their meetings are very-- making a lot of change in Ghana and [INAUDIBLE]? 

In Ghana? 

Yes. 

I can answer that. I said-- I think conversation is important. I mean, it makes our world today. People have different points of view to bring to the table. So it's definitely important. As to whether I can see the conversations have like any direct impact on the ground? I couldn't particularly [INAUDIBLE] that. If you have a Ghana Mission who will make some statements of certain development goals, and I couldn't pinpoint that goal, doing things like that, [? like where it adapted ?] to the conversations we are having, and what's actually been on the ground. 

So I would say, I mean, there are other arms of the United Nations that were more [INAUDIBLE]. So maybe within those things, specialized agencies, we can have more then the [INAUDIBLE] plan. But the General Assembly conversations, I didn't see much of them [INAUDIBLE]. 

Question? 

Yeah. How did you hear about this internship? Did you hear about it from The Lynk or from the alumni network? 

That's interesting. Actually, you know, I was working with [INAUDIBLE]. We went to Yale for a conference, and she was talking to a friend who was working at the mission. And I overheard a conversation and expressed interest. And I ended up going for it. So it was through a conversation I [? had. ?] 

Can you talk about the gender representation of the mission-- and also [INAUDIBLE] you had? You were involved with it? 

Oh, actually, maybe it refers to the general representation at the mission. The ambassador to the UN for Ghana is a woman. And her second in command is also a woman. In regards to a woman holding [INAUDIBLE] leadership roles in the mission, so that was good. Also, the Deputy Secretary General, Ms. Amina from Nigeria, is also a woman. 

So, like, you could see that-- I mean, it's never going to be perfect, but like, I mean, that's pessimistic. But they had-- you could see some in the representation of women, women in higher positions. So that was encouraging. So it was good. 

OK, one more question. 

For me, in my experience, I felt like it was very-- you had to do things a lot on your own. Do you think that, maybe, changed your view on how diplomatic relations work? Or does it mean, like, actually like because it helped you to develop more on your own? 

I generally like working on my own, so there's that. I mean, so that was good. But I don't think if I had even more supervision, it would made me like diplomatic work more or not. Like I still had a chance to see a lot of things that happened behind the scenes. I think those very people-- you will know people if you're seeing what they did, when they came in the morning and do like-- till the evening. I didn't think it was the kind of thing I wanted to do. So who knows? 

[LAUGHTER] 

Any other questions? No? Thank you for that time. OK, let's move. That-- 

[APPLAUSE] 

[CHEERING]