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[SIPA IO/UN Studies] Looking back at Fall 2021

Daniel Naujoks - Monday, December 27, 2021
 Events   IO/UNS Newsletter 
December 27, 2021

Dear IO/UNS Community, 

What a year 2021 has been! In the fall of 2021, modalities of instruction at SIPA shifted to in-person instruction and the campus filled again with life and discussions. Whatever the future holds, we know that we find ways to connect and engage with each other. 

Multilateral processes did not come to a standstill either. And the International Organization and UN Studies specialization facilitated many discussions on the role of IOs in global, regional, and local governance regimes. Our 15 panels, guest lectures, career talks and student-centered events attracted a total of 1,600 participants. As SIPA's public health policies understandably limited inviting guest speakers to campus we offered our events in a hybrid format. SIPA faculty and students had the option of joining events in person at the International Affairs Building, while we zoomed in external speakers and also gave the audience the option of logging in remotely. We feel this worked well.

This enabled us to have excellent substantive discussions with former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan, Director of the UN Research Institute for Social Development, Paul Ladd, Henrik Hammargren, Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and events on peace mediation, UN peacekeeping, climate change adaptation, development and disaster risk reduction and several more. 

In September, we held our first in-person retreat since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. At Columbia's beautiful Lamont Campus we spent a full day engaging in meaningful conversations with a group of UN experts and practitioners, became creative and got to know fellow specializers. 

On the occasion of the UN’s 76th birthday, we officially launched our new blog, Multilateralism in Action (MiA), which provides a platform for cutting-edge content on international organizations and global governance. In the past two months, we've published nine forward-looking think-pieces by SIPA faculty, alumni, and leading UN experts - and many more are in the pipeline!

I would like to thank our extraordinary program assistants, Nate Edwards and Yun Liang. Nate and Yun did an outstanding job researching internship opportunities, curating our weekly newsletter, editing MiA blog posts and managing the MiA website, as well as organizing our many events with last-minute changes and adjustments. I am deeply indebted to their professional support, creativity, and commitment to the work of the specialization!

As each year, attentive readers of this (admittedly not very short) end-of-year review will get a little thank you: Will you be among the first three students who spot the ­ƒòè´©Å­ƒòè´©Å and send us an email with the 5 proceeding words to iouns@columbia.edu?

Daniel 
___________________
Daniel Naujoks
Director a.i.
International Organization & UN Studies Specialization 
School of International and Public Affairs | Columbia University 
 
 
 

Talks & Panels

The fall semester saw a broad range of events that engaged across topics, organizations, and formats. 

Former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon presented highlights from his new book, Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World, in which he shares a personal account of his decade at the helm of the UN.

In conversation with Professor Daniel Naujoks, Director a.i. of SIPA's UN Studies specialization, Ban Ki-moon shared his insights to the inner workings of the UN and engaged with students in an interactive and dynamic Q&A session with over 70 students and faculty who had joined in-person on the 15th floor or the International Affairs building, and over 130 participants who had joined virtually. SIPA Professors José Antonio Ocampo and Jean-Marie Guéhenno, who served under Ban as Under-Secretary-General's for Economic and Social Affairs, and Peacekeeping Operations, respectively, joined the event, providing key links on their involvement in key reforms and initiatives that continue to affect multilateral cooperation until today. In his talk, Ban recounted his endeavors to reform the UN, promote climate change, create UN Women and provide meaningful engagement of youths. Ban concluded with a call to action and challenged the audience to become active to address the most important challenges of our times.

In her lecture on "UNCTAD at the Crossroads: New Directions for the United Nations Conference on Trade & Development," the newly appointed UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan shared her vision for UNCTAD to address new directions in promoting sustainable development integration in the world economy and COVID-19 impacts on trade, investment, and development. The event was moderated by Professors José Antonio Ocampo and Daniel Naujoks. Access the event recording here.

In the expert panel on "Rethinking Peace Mediation: Challenges of Contemporary Peacemaking Practice," academic experts and UN practitioners examined the complex developments in peace mediation and the multifaceted approach needed to build a critical understanding of international peace and conflict resolution. Moderated by SIPA director of the International Conflict Resolution Specialization, Professor Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the authors of the newly published volume discussed the new peace mediation framework set out by the UN with policy and real-world examples on peace processes. Access the event recording here.

In his lecture, “Realizing Multilateralism - Reflections on the Legacy of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld,” Henrik Hammargren, Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, highlighted the lasting legacy of the second UN Secretary-General who lived by the highest ideals of integrity and courage, led the UN through a period of immense change and reform, and promoted the role and responsibilities of the international civil servant in line with the pursuit of international cooperation, peace, and dialogue. Access the event recording here.

Paul Ladd, Director of the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), gave a guest lecture on the forthcoming UNRISD flagship report Overcoming Inequalities in Times of Crises: Towards a New Eco-Social Contract. The speaker discussed the four areas of UNRISD’s research programs and broke down inequality into three interlinked and reinforcing forms - economic, social and political - and analyzed their causes, dynamics and impacts. Access the event recording here.

Professor Anjali Kaushlesh Dayal (Fordham University) joined the IO/UNS Specialization to discuss her new book Incredible Commitments: How UN Peacekeeping Failures Shape Peace Processes (Cambridge University Press, 2021). In conversation with Professor Daniel Naujoks, Professor Dayal discussed the central framing question of her book: why do warring parties turn to United Nations peacekeeping and peacemaking even when they think it will fail, looking at what we can learn from cases where peace process participants cannot be sure peacekeeping success is guaranteed, or where they think peacekeeping failure is likely. 

In the final event of the semester, we hosted the US launch of the edited volume Creating Resilient Futures. Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction, Sustainable Development Goals and Climate Change Adaptation Agendas. In an engaging discussion with the editors and several chapter authors, the discussion  showed that while there are countless links between the SDGs, climate change discussions, and programming on disaster risks, many actions still occur in silos. The interactive event discussed how to address the global challenge of developing resilience as an integrated development continuum, and used global case studies on integrating different processes to share how to build political will towards resilience and sustainability. Access the event recording here and download the full ebook for free.

Careers, Opportunities, and Professional Development 

The interest among SIPA students in careers at international organizations remains extremely high. A key priority for the specialization is to facilitate learning and practical opportunities for students to engage their career interests. With anticipation of additional events in the Spring term as application deadlines loom, we got a jump start with weekly internship listings and career discussion this term. 

UN Career Talk
IO/UNS interim director Professor Daniel Naujoks met with 25 students in-person and 50 more who dialed in remotely to share insights about how to plan for a career at the UN. Beyond highlighting various pathways to UN jobs, Professor Naujoks gave strategic advice on how to position yourself, what components to highlight on your CV, how to capitalize on internship experiences, how to build a meaningful network and strong relationship with UN experts, how to present a value-add, and what skills to refine while at SIPA. For those unable to attend or hoping to revisit the discussion, you can access the recording here.

UN Young Professional Programme

As the UN launched a new application cycle of the UN Young Professional Programme (YPP) we aimed to support SIPA students prepare for the application process for this recruitment initiative that targets talented, highly-qualified professionals to start a career as an international civil servant with the UN Secretariat. To this end, we provided guidance, resources, and background information on the process, and facilitated the formation of YPP study groups.

Community building & Social Events

We are fortunate to have a great community of IO/UNS specializers and others interested in multilateral issues. In a range of community and social events we were able to connect, share and engage with each other, starting with our Summer Meet-ups and IO/UNS Fall Welcome Happy Hour. Our fall retreat at the UN Day festival provided two particular meaningful way to connect. 

IO/UNS Fall Retreat

In September, we held our first off-campus retreat since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. At Columbia's beautiful Lamont Campus, an hour away from our Morningside campus, we spent the day engaging in meaningful conversations with a group of UN experts and practitioners. 

The day began with small group discussions on the freshly released report by the UN Secretary-General “Our Common Agenda” and on upgrading the UN, gender issues, protecting our planet and sustainable finance. Renowned guests included

  • Mourad Wahba, Special Advisor to UNDP's Administrator and former Associate Administrator, UNDP;

  • Randi Davis, UNDP Resident Representative in Trinidad and Tobago; and former head of UNDP's Gender Team

  • Krishnan Sharma, Chief, Strategic Engagement Unit, Financing for Development Office, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs;

  • Angelica Shamerina, Climate Change Program Advisor, UNDP’s GEF Small Grants Programme.

Through breakout discussion groups, participants had the opportunity to talk directly with UN experts on important topics and careers at the. After lunch, Lamont Research Professor Brendan Buckley took us on a hike and explained a lot about trees and how the Earth Institute’s Tree Ring Lab measures long-term climate factors by monitoring trees and forests.

In the afternoon, we got creative and retexted Marc Anthony’s Vivir mi vida and AC/DC’s TNT with important calls for multilateral cooperation, human rights, youth employment, and sustainable development. The day ended over wine and juice as we got to know our great IO/UNS cohort ­ƒòè´©Å­ƒòè´©Å a bit better.

Celebrating the UN's 76th Birthday

On October 22nd, we hosted a United Nations Day Festival to celebrate the UN’s 76th anniversary. Students came to the International Affairs Building's Fishbowl for grab & go pastries and coffee as well as conversation with fellow classmates. We also had a raffle entry and distributed IO/UNs swag. Some students picked out their favorite Sustainable Development Goals and took photos in our IO/UNS photobooth and their favorite SDG. Others offered program feedback through an online survey or engaged with our new blog, Multilateralism in Action. We enjoyed seeing many of you there and appreciate your engagement with the specialization!
 

Media & Outreach

This Fall saw the launch of our long-awaited blog Multilateralism in Action (MiA). MiA provides a platform for cutting-edge discussions on international organizations and global governance. Leading experts in both practice and research provide insights into the determinants, modalities, and outcomes of multilateralism at the global, regional, national, and local levels. In the first two months of the blog's existence, we've been honored to feature critical think-pieces by SIPA faculty, alumni, and some of the foremost UN experts:

UN experts

SIPA faculty

SIPA alumni

More exiting posts are coming up in January, including on the UN’ role for development in war by Mourad Wahba, former Associate Administrator of UNDP; statebuilding in fragile states by Jonathan Papoulidis, Columbia World Project Fellow and Executive Advisor on Fragile States at World Vision; and on teleworking in UN diplomacy by Andrés Córdova, SIPA alum and diplomat at the Permanent Mission of Ecuador to the UN. If you haven't done so, please join the blog mailing list.

Since we started the specialization’s Twitter account @UNatColumbia in September 2019, we have not only witnessed an impressive growth of our followers, but importantly, meaningful engagements with students, faculty, UN staff members, and the general audience. Through the interactions with our nearly 2,500 followers, we hope to stimulate discussions on the role of multilateralism to address the critical challenges of our times and to highlight the work done at Columbia on these issues to international organizations and other interested audiences. If you don’t follow us, please do at: @UNatColumbia.

Many thanks to all of you who shared your ideas and suggestions in our IO/UNS survey on skills training, courses, course formats, professional networking and foreign-language education with us. Your preferences are very important to us and we're actively exploring ways to incorporate your ideas into our programming and teaching activities. 

We hope you enjoyed reading our weekly newsletters as much as we enjoyed writing them. Every Tuesday of the semester, we curated thought-provoking events at SIPA, the UN and beyond, shared internship opportunities at international organizations, and highlighted new publications, reports, podcasts, and UN discussions. We equally enjoyed the student spotlights, during which we had a chance to shine a light on some of our amazing students.
 

A Big Thank You to Our Partners

The success of our programs was in great part due to the collaborations and partnerships across SIPA and Columbia. The majority of our events were organized in cooperation with the Economic and Political Development concentration, MPA Program in Development Practice, the International Conflict Resolution Specialization, the Center for Career Advancement and the student-led UN Association. But were equally delighted to co-sponsor with the Gender and Public Policy specialization, the Human Rights and Humanitarian Policies concentration, Executive MPA, the Climate + Society MA, the Political Science department at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Committee on Global Thought and other programs across campus. We would like to thank all of our partners for their support and collaboration.

Outlook for Spring 2021

Regardless of how the omicron variant will affect our modalities of meeting and interacting, we are determined to bring you critical insights into international organizations. On February 3, we'll host Sima Sami Bahous, the Executive Director of UN Women for a lecture on The Future of the UN's Gender Agenda. And you can look forward to panels on Professor Dirk Solomon and colleagues' new book "International Organizations Revisited", a lecture by Professor Nina Reiners on "Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions for Human Rights" and by Professors Susan Allen and Amy Yuen on their new book "Bargaining in the UN Security Council. Setting the Global Agenda." 
We are also proud to host another event in our series on Racism & International Organizations on the new report of the UN Anti-racism Taskforce. In addition to other career-focused events watch out for our third UN roundtable discussion networking session, in which we aim to bring together 100 students with 25 UN staff members (read about last year's event here).

We hope all of you get a well-deserved break over the holidays and we look forward to engaging with you in the Spring term!
 

Follow the IO/UNS Specialization on
CampusGroups, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp.

Feel free to reach out to us:
Daniel Naujoks, Interim Director, daniel.naujoks@columbia.edu
Yun Liang, Program Assistant, yun.liang@columbia.edu
Nate Edwards, Program Assistant, nke2113@columbia.edu