Erik Proos

On 15th November the United Nation Association of United States of America Leadership summit was held for the first time outside of Washington DC, which I visited for  the first time as an exchange student from Estonia. It was an unique experience, I got more information about the UN, got a chance to interview people and had fun with my friends.

The event brought together leaders, educators, peacekeepers and youth advocates to highlight the importance of international cooperations.

This article is about what I liked during the event and interviews I took.

The beauty of Saint Louis

Carlos Suarez- president, UNA-greater St. Louis chapter and director, director of economic development at the international institute of St. Louis said at the beginning of the event that Saint Louis is a gate away to the west and a gate away to the future.

Jody Sowell-Director and CEO of the  Missouri Historical Society, during his speech said he likes St. Louis, although he wasn’t born there, but he wanted to go there fast. He also added different facts about the town. In St. Louis was the movement which wanted to move the capital to St. Louis,  town had a first woman who voted 50 years before the right for the woman to vote, St. Louis has the oldest bridge in the Mississippi river and had the first black high school.

Interview with Will Davis-director of the UN information center Washington representation office
Davis’s work in the UN is to explain the work of the UN and what it is to the US administration and to the citizens of the USA, trying to explain peacekeeping, vaccinations in different countries and generally what the UN does in the world.  He also talked about his concerns about the Trump administration which cut finance for the UN, although Davis added that the USA is now showing more interest in the organisation and wanting to support it in the future. He added that every UN branch is important. Davis said that the UN in the past did a bad job explaining that they are and that they are doing, and many people use that void for misinformation and to spread lies. In the past Davis worked in the US government in the state department, but went to the UN because he liked what they were doing and he wanted to help people. And during his first speech at the start of the event he said ,We all are globalist even if you are not’.

Interview with Riz Khan-founder of Little Angels Foundation

Khan’s foundation helps the homeless, children and refugees. His family and volunteers give clothes and make food for people in need. He founded it 30 years ago, to help people knowing how hard it is. His Foundation also helps people to find jobs, gives monthly food to the family to take off one of the problems from their shoulders and all of this without any sponsors. 

Interview with Jarret Lash-UNA USA youth observer

Jarret said that his post is only for one year, he started it 3 months ago. His job is explaining about the UN to the students in America and listening to their opinions and improvements that UN could do. Questioning what you need to have to work in the UN he said that you need to be interested in different cultures and adapt culturally if you want to work globally in the UN, of course not forgetting about the speech.

Will Davis speech about the UN-USA relations

During his speech Davis said that the USA is decreasing the fundings of many UN branches and wanting to leave UN organisations for example WHO, world health organisation. In his opinion all this will hurt the USA more, because they will miss different conferences about vaccines which could heal people from lethal  viruses and stop them spreading to different countries. He added that many of the empty spaces left from decreasing by the US are now filled with Chinese money. Although even decreasing fundings USA is still interested in UN programmes, peacekeeping  and other organisations. Davis said at the end of the speech that right now the US is starting from a new empty list letting the UN to prove that they are worthy of funding.

Peacekeeping-Roel Harryvan, Lebanon conflict and Bill Wallace, Bosnia

Bill, was a peacekeeper in Bosnia during the Bosnian war, said that they were there to influence and force a peace, but the rules of engagement fastly changed, and so they could defend themselves, they switched to NATO peacekeepers. Their work was security, defence and rescue missions, and also mapping the mines. The war had extreme environments and during the war one of the sides massacred innocent people for ethnic cleaning. A lot of peacekeepers had war criminals carry cards so they could catch the war criminals and bring them to court.

Roel, was a peacekeeper in Lebanon, during Israel-Lebanese conflict. Peacekeepers provided assistance to civilians and patrolling. They have stopped both sides damaging civilian populations. Roel described the environment where they were working as mountainous terrain with southern California/Arizona climate. Peacekeeper services as medical help and security were given to local populations, they also trained local people and confiscated weapons.

The event was a unique experience where I could meet different people who wanted to change our world for the better or are already doing it. It was interesting to learn something new about a global organisation, which does such hard work every day to maintain peace and help people in need.

I’m very glad I had an opportunity at that event and heard discussions of different problems in our world and solutions to them. I'm thankful that I could visit it. 

Author’s Bio:

Erik Proos