Professor Johnson, for my second story in this class, I am thinking of focusing on the issue of young students who are dealing with school this fall during this ongoing Covid-19 crisis. I know several Mexican students of various education levels who are in school now. Some are fully online, and some are attending school half in-person and half online through hybrid class models. Additionally, I can reach out to someone who is an NYC Public School teacher, and she can comment on how difficult it is to be an educator at this point in American history. This story will be a written piece, like my first story, but there will be some visual components added to it as well.
Pitch – Story #1
Hi Emily,
I hope this email finds you well.
Given the current state of the world, I have been using a lot more of my time to learn about Cuba and the current climate. I did not think it was going to be tough because well, my entire family is Cuban! However, Cuban media is heavily censored, and the information people receive must first be approved by the government. The information is biased and fits the agenda of the current regime, leaving the people in the dark.
Covid-19 has left people without many resources, some of which were already difficult to find before the pandemic. I was surprised to find out that doctors have started distributing homeopathic medications like PrevenHo-Vir, to everyone on the island in hopes of helping strengthen the immune system and reduce the number of Covid cases. The medication was distributed for free at clinics, hospitals, and even door to door.
I am currently working on an article, highlighting Cuba’s approach in using homeopathic medications and how information on medications are made available to the people of Cuba. Cuban drug regulatory authority has approved the medication made by BioCubaFarma and clarified that it is not a cure, instead it is an alternative in preventing emerging viral infections and existing ones like the flu and dengue. After speaking with different people on the island via Facebook, I learned that other homeopathic medications have been used to treat other conditions and proven to be effective. I wanted to know how people on the island learn about medications and their effectiveness. As I continued to do research and conduct interviews, I learned about the InfoMED website. This site is made available to all those with internet access of the island, to learn about all thing’s health related. However, Internet limited access is limited, and people tend to get their information from family, friends, and the doctors who have distributed the medication.
I am almost certain that this article is perfect for your publication and would love to share it with you.
Best,
Diana Iser
Photoville – The Size of a Grapefruit
I attended Photoville with the intention of viewing a different exhibit, but as I walked by the images below, I decided to focus on the exhibit of Eva Woolridge. The images I took do it absolutely no justice, so I went ahead and added the images from the Photoville website aswell.
I was first drawn in by the woman’s eyes. It felt powerful and at the same time made me feel sadness. I thought that the imagery was bold and beautiful. This exhibit is a visual narrative of Woolridge’s personal experience having dealt with a traumatic medical event. The images serve as a timeline from the beginning, middle, and end of her surgery. They’re each titled by the emotions she felt during the process.
The titles are as follows: denial, blinding pain, a thorn of micro-aggression, shock, surrender, the weight of trauma, inspection, reflection, acceptance, and empowerment.
I was initially taken back by the images but as I started to read, I was so intrigued by her openness to share with the world what she experienced while addressing the lack of knowledge available to Black women regarding their reproductive health. As a woman who deals with reproductive complications, I appreciated her exhibit and how normal it is to talk about things that are real and relevant. Given the current climate of the world, I found it extremely important to bring awareness to women’s health but more so, bring awareness to the lack of medical information and attentiveness towards Black women.
Woolridge experienced the removal of her right ovary, although she thought it could have been saved if doctors would have taken quicker actions after being diagnosed with a dermoid cyst. I personally experienced a traumatic event when I was told I needed a biopsy of my uterus without any additional information as to why it was necessary. The nurse assisting the doctor dropped the sample and the doctor had to do the biopsy twice, causing immense bleeding and discomfort. Following this appointment, it was nearly impossible to get my results back, because the clinic shut down a week or two after I was seen. I later found out that the clinic had been dealing with legal troubles regarding unethical practices.
Woolridge’s work is shedding light on the issue of medical negligence and female reproductive health. I think a lot of women can relate and sharing the information with other women and the world would only be beneficial.
First Story, Final Draft: A Culture to Recognize
The expansion and triumphs of a strong community will now be refocused for better changes. “Divided by water, but together by culture” to live the American Dream, the West Indian/Caribbean Community.
Class Agenda: Thursday, October 22
Reminders and Upcoming Dates:
Final drafts of story #1 are due today.
Pitches for story #2 are due next class, October 29.
Presentations:
Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong
Brazilian Land Issues/Amazon Wildfires
Intro to the United Nations and the Humanitarian Aid World
It was established after WWII to prevent something like that from ever happening again. How successful has the UN been in that mission?
Members include nearly every nation in the world: 193 out of 196 (or 195 depending on whether you count Taiwan). When it was founded, they wrote the UN charter (sort of like its constitution) and a universal declaration of human rights.
The United Nations is made up of a number of main bodies:
General Assembly: This is the chief policymaking branch, and it plays a significant role in codification of international law. It’s the deliberative body of the UN, in which all member states have one vote. Issues on which the General Assembly deliberates and makes recommendations include matters of peace and security, budgetary matters, and nearly anything else within the scope of the UN Charter. Major questions require a two-thirds majority, and minor questions are resolved by a simple majority. It meets to go into session every year in the fall.
Security Council: This department is charged with maintaining international peace and security. Its main functions include hearing complaints, recommending peaceful solutions, and working to end conflict in areas where hostilities have already erupted through such means as cease-fire directives and UN peacekeeping forces. It is in charge of sending “peacekeepers,” also known as blue helmets, who are only supposed to use force in self-defense and who have been known to cause some problems of their own.
“UN peacekeeping operations are not an enforcement tool. However, they may use force at the tactical level, with the authorization of the Security Council, if acting in self-defense and defense of the mandate.
In certain volatile situations, the Security Council has given UN peacekeeping operations ‘robust’ mandates authorizing them to ‘use all necessary means’ to deter forceful attempts to disrupt the political process, protect civilians under imminent threat of physical attack, and/or assist the national authorities in maintaining law and order.”
Ongoing peacekeeping missions are a cocktail of acronyms like MONUSCO (DR Congo), UNSMIS (Syria), and UNMISS (South Sudan) and a complete list can be found here. (MONUSCO is the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 1999, the UN has been trying to stabilize the eastern region of the DR Congo. MONUSCO has nearly 20,000 soldiers and an annual budget of $1.4 billion.)
You will sometimes find yourself dealing with peacekeeping operations that aren’t directly run by the UN, like AMISOM, the African Union Mission to Somalia, a peacekeeping mission operated by the AU in Somalia with the UN’s approval (not to be confused with UNSOS, the United Nations Support Office in Somalia).
The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, also known as the Permanent Five, Big Five, or P5, include the following five governments: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The members represent the five great powers considered the victors of World War II. They’re the only ones with veto power, which ruffles some feathers.
The ten non-permanent members are elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly. At the moment, these include:
Belgium
Dominican Republic
Estonia
Germany
Indonesia
Niger
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
South Africa
Tunisia
Vietnam
Non-Council Member States are members of the United Nations but not of the Security Council and may participate, without a vote, in its discussions when the Council considers that country’s interests are affected.
Economic and Social Council: This body discusses international economic and social issues, identifies issues hindering the standard of living in various regions of the world, and makes policy recommendations to alleviate those issues.
The Hague: This city in the Netherlands is one of the major cities hosting the United Nations, along with New York City, Geneva, Vienna, Rome, and Nairobi. It is also home to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. The ICJ is the judicial body of the UN. It includes 15 elected judges and settles cases according to International Law. The ICC is an international tribunal that has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The Philippines recently left the ICC in protest over its opening of an investigation into Duterte’s drug war.
Secretariat: This body is the administrative branch of the UN and is charged with administering the policies and programs of the other bodies. The Secretary General is the top official in the Secretariat. The current secretary-general is António Guterres, a Portuguese diplomat who was previously the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015.
Aside from the main bodies, the UN has 15 specialized agencies. These are autonomous organizations working with the UN and each other and governments through the Economic and Social Council as well as at the inter-secretariat level.
These agencies include:
UNOCHA: The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is the part of the United Nations Secretariat responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies. OCHA also ensures there is a framework within which each actor can contribute to the overall response effort.
UNHCR: The United Nations High Commission on Refugees
UNICEF: The United Nations Children’s Fund
IMF: The International Monetary Fund
WHO: The World Health Organization
The World Bank: An international financial institution that provides loans to countries for capital programs.
UNESCO: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
The rest can be found here.
Covering the UN as a journalist
As an international journalist, it’s good to be familiar with how the UN works for a number of reasons. Its affiliated agencies are often extremely helpful for journalists, especially freelancers, but you have to be very careful about how accepting assistance from these agencies could affect your objectivity as a journalist.
Aside from that, the UN itself can be a bountiful source of stories, and it’s good to examine it with a critical eye to hold it to account. No matter how noble its mission, it is a massive bureaucratic entity run by fallible people. It’s prone to corruption and is known for fostering a culture of impunity as well as mismanaging funds. (The UN has a LOT of money—member states pay dues—and wherever large amounts of money can be found, you can always find people being tempted to do bad things. Good rule of thumb for any humanitarian crisis situation: follow the money.)
I Love the U.N., But It Is Failing
“Six years ago, I became an assistant secretary general, posted to the headquarters in New York. I was no stranger to red tape, but I was unprepared for the blur of Orwellian admonitions and Carrollian logic that govern the place. If you locked a team of evil geniuses in a laboratory, they could not design a bureaucracy so maddeningly complex, requiring so much effort but in the end incapable of delivering the intended result. The system is a black hole into which disappear countless tax dollars and human aspirations, never to be seen again.”
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals for the year 2015 that were established by the United Nations in 2000. All 189 United Nations member states at that time, and at least 22 international organizations, committed to help achieve the following Millennium Development Goals by 2015:
- To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- To achieve universal primary education
- To promote gender equality and empower women
- To reduce child mortality
- To improve maternal health
- To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
- To ensure environmental sustainability
- To develop a global partnership for development
The MDGs have since been replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals. This sort of thing can provide excellent news pegs.
The New Humanitarian
The UN used to have its own news agency, IRIN, but in 2015 IRIN split off to become its own nonprofit entity devoted to covering humanitarian news: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/content/about-us
NGOs
Not to be confused with UN agencies, there are also a number of high-profile nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) out there doing similar kinds of work with similar aims, but they’re not affiliated with the UN. These also merit scrutiny. Aid business is good business.
A few of the most well-known of these include:
MSF
World Vision
Partners in Health
Save the Children
(Final Draft) A Dream Buried Under The Ground – Stacy Kim
Final Draft –
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQb4SWDCCjdxekgfumiS59N4t1g-oVNkEYiaPCyesnkf-KGdMS6DvHAn3Y-lFH3asXi0U3Dy53t2IeT/pub