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[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.
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[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--
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