The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/united-nations/)
Earlier this month, a group of Cornellians travelled nearly 4,000 miles to Madrid to attend the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change — a two-week climate summit that allowed students to brush shoulders with some of the international stage’s biggest names.
Cornellians have once again been chosen for the Millennium Fellowship, a partnership between the Millennium Campus Network and the United Nations Academic Impact initiative. The 15 students will each work on independent projects targeted towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, including improving equality, education and health and reducing waste.
Muna Ndulo, Cornell Law professor, was recently named as an advisor to the United Nations. He will be handling issues of sexual misconduct of deployed soldiers on UN peacekeeping missions.
This summer, Cornell faculty and alumni volunteered in Lebanese refugee camps to provide aid to victims of the Syrian Civil War, one of the largest humanitarian crises of the 21st century.
Over the past year and a half, Prof. Natalie Mahowald worked with experts across the world on the impacts of climate change and potential solutions.
At a forum on Wednesday, Karl Hill of the Cayuga Nation and Darwin Hill of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation described the history of unwavering efforts to bring the Declaration to fruition.
“Your generation is at the forefront of [the] greatest technological revolution in history … there will be massive disruptions to economies around the world,” said former UN Under-Secretary-General Chris Burnham.
“I am not ashamed to speak about what I went through as a child,” he said. “It is very painful, but I talk about it now so we do not turn a blind eye to slavery.”
“I think that the secret is never to think that you are a woman. You should never think that you are doing a job as a woman, but instead should be doing a job because you want to. The equality is in your own mindset,” Nga said.
A number of local politicians joined students and faculty members at an interdisciplinary panel Friday, banding together to advocate the need for grassroots advocacy and open dialog in addressing climate change. The climate crisis “represents the greatest social crisis of our time,” argued Lara Skinner, the associate director of the Worker Institute at Cornell’s School of Industrial Relations, as she began the discussion. “Women, people of color, children, the elderly, workers, immigrants and low-income communities of color will all be affected [by climate change] disproportionately,” Skinner said. She added that these low-income communities will be hurt “first and worst” by the repercussions of a change in climate. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, there were 100,000 newly homeless people in New York City.