U.N. discusses new development goals

The United Nations Association of the National Capital Area (UNA-NCA) hosted the Maryland Inter-Generational Consultation on Tuesday in the Glass Pavilion.

One hundred fifty representatives from universities, faith groups, businesses and local and international non-profit organizations attended the event to engage in round-table discussions on topics based on the post-2015 Millenium Development Goals put forth by the United Nations (U.N.).

The Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) was an official partner of the event, and the Hopkins Office of Government and Community Affairs (GCA) was a co-sponsor.

The post-2015 goals are designed to succeed the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), which the U.N. established in 2000, and to set the U.N.’s agenda until 2030.  A. Edward Elmendorf, former president of the UNA-NCA, believes that post-2015 goals will foster an environment that is more conducive to solving global issues.

“[The MDGs were developed] in a backroom process of international development experts brought together by the U.N. [The MDGs were] much more formulated in a framework of the North telling the South a little bit what the South should do and how the North would support that,” Elmendorf said. “This time around, it is very different. It is no longer being formulated in a North-South context. It is consciously universal, and the goals are designed to be applicable throughout the world. Individual countries and local communities will design their own specific targets within this larger framework.”

Tuesday’s consultation began with a series of opening remarks from Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland; Thomas Lewis, vice president of GCA; Kurt Schmoke, former mayor of Baltimore and now president of the University of Baltimore; and Jenna Slotin, the deputy director of the post-2015 initiative of the United Nations Foundation.

Schmoke, in particular, spoke about the overall purpose of the consultation.

“We... global citizens share challenges. We share values. We can share solutions. We all benefit from this exchange,” Schmoke said. “We have to make sure we underscore why the United Nations is important and why these particular goals are important. We to need illustrate the connection between the local and the global, answer ‘What’s in it for me?’ and explain how a global agenda benefits each and every community.”

The round-table discussions focused on poverty and inequality, government, industrialization and economic growth, public health, violence prevention and security, education, the environment, and gender equality and empowerment. The topics of discussion stemmed from the list of 17 goals that the U.N. put forth for 2015-2030.

Each table had a scribe, who took notes on the discussions, and a facilitator, who was chosen by the UNA-NCA to lead the individual discussions.

“Some of them we already knew from the first consultation we held last October at George Washington University. We [also] have an advisory council membership that is comprised of people with expertise in international development, so some of the different facilitators come from that group,” Paula Boland, the executive director of UNA-NCA, said.

“And some were recommended by our local steering committee... [composed of] a variety of local organizations representing different sectors.”

After about an hour and fifteen minutes of discussion, each facilitator gave a two-minute presentation on ideas that their group discussed. These ideas will be organized into a report, which the UNA-NCA will send to the United States government and the U.N.

“[The report] will be taken into account in the final formulation of the post-2015 international goals of the U.N.,” Elmendorf said.

Tuesday’s consultation was one of 33 consultations being held in major cities across the U.S. Each consultation was organized by a different chapter of the UNA.

“[The consultations were organized] to bring local perspectives to global issues. We’re trying to help people to think about what’s really going on globally and how it affects them and then [to] try to bring those global issues into their own communities and say, ‘How do we relate to them?’ What we [were] doing at 13 roundtables here today [was] giving citizens in Baltimore, non-profit groups, students [and] universities a forum to talk about how these global issues might affect them and how they would like to interact with the global issues,” Elmendorf said.

Elmendorf also remarked on the importance of the multi-generational aspect of Tuesday’s consultation. Fifty college students from Hopkins and other Baltimore universities attended the event.

“The fact that this is an inter-generational consultation is one of the differences from what’s been done before. We in the planning group said to ourselves very consciously that these are to be goals for the period 2015 to 2030. People who are in the younger generation, by [2030], will have played a major role in achievements or lack of achievements against these goals,” Elmendorf said.

“If people are to be expected to play important roles in the implementations of the goals and achievement of the goals, we thought it important, and many others agreed with [us] that these people also have something to say about the definition of the goals. We’re aiming for a much wider ownership of the goals than we had in the previous goals.”

Sophomore Mona Jia, a member of the FAS marketing committee, spoke at the conclusion of the event about the importance of student input.

“We were really excited about the idea of gathering people from many different sectors and organizations. But we were also wondering, ‘What would our role as students be?’ and ‘What could we bring to the discussion that wouldn’t already be covered by the depth of knowledge [and] experience already represented?’” Jia said.

Jia continued, emphasizing the ideological common ground between the U.N. and FAS.

“But we found really quickly... that we were dealing with an organization that really cared about our input as students and that their values aligned a lot with [the values of] of our own organization, the Foreign Affairs Symposium.”