Taking on Geneva, One Speaker at a Time!

This past monday, the entire JSBP crew, kids and strollers included, took off on an adventure to Geneva, Switzerland! With plans to locate chocolate and learn how to yodel, we boarded EasyJet and away we went. The point of this trip was to be our "fancy" field studies excursion where we would visit UNEP and UNHCR to actually be able to see what was happening and where it was happening after reading so much about it in class. On Tuesday morning we headed off to UNEP where we had the chance to speak with lots of different representatives from the UNEP, from all different ranks within the organization. From what I understand, the most high ranking lady we spoke to, Angela Cropper has held the position as the #2 person in the program, and currently works as a special advisor to the executive of the program. She was a great speaker and her presentation was excellent because she opened the floor up to us and let us direct the discussion with our questions instead of just lecturing. She answered questions from us regarding many different topics. She gave us a quick idea of the basic purpose of the UNEP and what it works to do. Cropper explained that the UNEP works as a starting point and that it was created to bring all the countries together and create a universal dialogue in hopes of preventing another war. She talked a lot about the importance of developing countries economies more so they can integrate economical variables, social objectives and ecological objectives. She believes once this is done we will see more success and cooperation in and between countries. The most interesting thing I thought Cropper said was  something along the lines of that governments would rather keep people out than in. I thought this was interesting because this may be a universal idea in many places, as I have heard other people in not only Hungary say it but all the way in America. The government does not want to have protests, or hear complaints or have suggestions on how they make their decisions; they just want to keep people out of their ears and keep them happy enough. Once people get in and get involved, it becomes a lot more work for the government to incorporate everyone's thoughts and ideas and see if there is a way to find a successful route where everyone feels they have achieved what they want. Cropper also touched on the entire 'Greening of the Economy' idea which is one topic being worked on for the conference in 2012.

We heard from another speaker named Barbara Ruis, who is a lawyer (legal officer) and also an environmental specialist, and talked about the idea of a carbon footprint and what not only the UNEP can do to work on greening the economy but what she herself can do. She shared some personal experiences which I thought made a lot of sense and were easy to understand because she put them into real life terms.

A speaker named Mika (?) who has worked for UNEP for 11 years and 3 years as the regional coordinator for chemical conventions talked about what I found to be the most interesting and new information I had heard. She explained how everyone needs to become more aware of the fact of how dangerous hazardous waste is to humans health and that if we don't take action, the consequences down the road could be awful. She used a personal example about how all the toxins we are exposed to take an impact on our body without us even knowing, and when she gave birth 5 months ago to a boy, she passed on these same chemicals to him. Kind of makes you stop and think for a second about how it continues to be passed on without even knowing its there to begin with. Mika also used the old cell phone example and how people just toss them away without realize all the chemicals inside of them that are dangerous and need to be disposed of properly. She explained how Africa and Asia actually re-use old television parts instead of just wasting them, but the problem is they burn them and all the chemicals get released into the environment. The bottom line is that although it is important to be disposing of these chemicals and hazardous materials to keep them from being dangerous, they must be done in a way so that the people and environment are not harmed.

The last speaker had a few minutes with us and she was able to share a website that I think will be very helpful for our class and papers, and even give us a greater understanding of many topics. It lets you search treaties and many other things about countries and their involvement and even offers contact information so you can find out more. www.infomea.org 

Now if we're being honest, I felt a little frustrated at the second part of the day. I was so excited to go to UNHCR and learn about refugees and everything about the program because I do not know much about it at all. I thought it'd be extremely interesting to get to explore that part of the UN and the work they do. Unfortunately, the man, Mr. Semih Bulbul was not the "best" speaker we could have had so it was hard to follow along with what he was saying. Mr. Semih holds the position of the Senior Desk Officer of the Iraq Support Unit. He is working on helping all these refugees that have suffered because of the war. We learned what a refugee is, and how they become one and all the solutions that are offered by the UNHCR. The beginning of the presentation moved sort of slow, but once we got to the focus of the Iraq unit it was much more interesting. Some of the statistics that he showed just blew my mind. I guess I never was really aware of how many people become refugees and seeing the actual figures of that really took me off guard. One thing I loved seeing was that America was on the top of the list for taking these people into our country. I know that is something up for great debate because of its direct effects on America and its citizens, I was happy to see America receiving credit and a good name. It made me proud. The one other idea that I really liked from Mr. Semih was when he said that protection is not just physical. Again, taking this into a psychological perspective, sometimes protection that is not physical is more important. If one lacks a healthy peace of mind and a calm, safe well-bring they will have a hard time no matter what physical situation they are in. Not that you need to be happy all the time, but at least being content allows one to be better off. Protecting that peace of mind is very important and I think that the UNHCR seems to bring a lot of that back to people after what they have lost. Sometimes just seeing people trying to help, gives you the comfort and a push to keep going. I really respect the UNHCR a lot for what they are doing. I was very impressed and felt great to know that people are working every day to help those in need.

All in all, I thought it was a great trip. Although I may mention in a separate post some of the other details of the trip, I was so glad to have my eyes opened to what was actually going on inside these organizations we read about. Having it brought to life and seeing it in action was really cool.

Thanks for organizing!

Have a great hiatus fools, come back to me alive!

Here we are on the UNEP agenda!! SO FAMOUS!

This is inside the UNHCR Visitor's center. This a display of some tools  that the UNHCR would bring to help rescue the refugees. There were stoves, bags of water, blankets and tents, etc. There were also piles of sticks weighing different amounts, showing how much each refugee much collect depending on what sort of supplies they have. They were really heavy and showed how hard it could be to do this everyday, but it is a necessity that it must be done.

Beginning of the presentation at UNHCR- a quote that I loved "1 refugee without hope is too many." Exactly what I was mentioning in my blog- protecting the peace of mind and someone's well-being can be more important than their physical protection. If they don't have hope of continuing on, they will not. 

Barbara Ruis at a conference! (google.com)

Angela Cropper (google.com)

UNHCR building!

"when the going gets tough, the tough get going" Attila Nyikos

On Wednesday, the JSBPers enjoyed a nice presentation from Attila Nyikos. Nyikos works for a branch off of the Minister of Interior called the National Disaster Management. He has previously served a Presidency position. Disaster management is a law enforcement and has a special fire and civil protection system including firefighters. 

The thing I was most interested about in this presentation was kind of finding out what he had to say about prevention efforts because I wrote a paper on what makes for effective prevention measures and what should be changed in them if they are not proving to be effective. I was quickly excited to be able to ask the question because Nyikos said something that sort of grabbed my attention. He explained how at the end of each disaster the team realizes that there is something new to be learned by using their mistakes. This sort of grabbed my interest because I wondered if that mean there is always a new change they can make, especially in the area of preventative methods. So I asked him if they do use that information to change their methods and specifically, if things were changed from the Red Sludge disaster. Nyikos said that several things have been modified in preventative efforts and they are using new technology. He explained how they are now using space images of other dikes and watching whether they move or they don't move. He says if it is moving too much, an alarm will sound. That is one way they can keep a better on things. One thing that I found interesting was that he said the dam broke at noon on October 4th, yet that morning it had been checked. So my question is, how more preventative can you be? The dam as checked that morning.... Are you going to sit by it all day? I found this very interesting. Leads me to wonder even with the best preventative measures, can they even be that effective? Of course not, not all the time, but it just poses an interesting situation for me. 

Here is a diagram that was on his powerpoint- it explained the steps of handling their work with environmental disasters. Prevention is where they make plans on how to avoid/minimize risks. Then they send them to budget in hopes of getting it approved. As for response, this is very basic- when the team responds with necessary measures, whether that be supplies or sending their firemen, they do whatever they can to stop the disaster and help the victims. The recovery stage is when they rebuild the homes and re-establish public services. 

As a psychology major, I am always on the look out for discovering things about psychology and its relationship with other topics. So when I learned that psychological reasons had a lot to do with people's decisions as to their new living arrangements, I became quickly intrigued. Nyikos said that the victims who lost their homes were given 3 options. 1) they could have a new house built for them 2) they could buy a new house in the same county or 3) they could buy a flat in another area of Hungary. He said that most people picked option number 3, PER PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS. This to me is very interesting because its clear what an impact the disaster had on people past just physical loses. Clearly, their state of mind was effected a lot and the psychological damage was just as great, if not greater, than the physical. I am sure these people thought getting out of that county and being far away was the best thing they could do for themselves. 

 

the psychological damage could outweigh the physical.
(taken from the Christian Science Monitor)

The last piece of wisdom I will share with you from Nyikos was his quote about the US and the EU working together. "They are like two big elephants marching side by side." Such an interesting thing to see, that he believes the US acts as too big a powerhouse to work with the EU. However, the EU is acting the same so it is very interesting. He gave the example of Haiti and said that nothing could be done with cooperation because the US just came in and "did their own thing". He also said that the US acts more military and the EU acts more civil. Nyikos believes that the impression of the US is that she is always resolving matters on her own and rarely asks the EU to assist because it has very big "qualities" on its own. Its like two big families working side by side. (Hope one of them isn't Greek... 1 let alone 2 big Greek families is never a quiet, clean situation.) I thought this whole section of discussion was interesting because I really enjoy seeing outside impressions of the US.

this is an article where Nyikos gives his input on the red sludge disaster 4 days after it has happened and is sharing the ideas for clean-up. 

http://www.eutimes.net/2010/10/one-year-to-clean-toxic-spill-in-hungary/

Good luck to Nyikos controlling the lives of 465 million people through that iPhone. Like Kurk says,  I hope it stays charged!

See ya fools in Geneva! 

"Not like Hooligans or something?" A Day in the Life of Dr. Lajos Korona

It is always interesting to be let in to see a day in the life of someone else who leads a completely different life than you. This past wednesday, the JSBP Crew got a chance to see what it is like to be a prosecutor in the Public Prosecutor's Office in Budapest. Dr. Korona serves as a public prosecutor in the Supervision of Investigations department. Here he works on police investigations. If the police want to conduct an investigation, they must initiate it. There is a timeline set by the prosecutor and the police must have a file sent in to the office within 2 months, in most cases, laying out what they have done, what they have collected and what they plan to do. They map out evidence and where they plan to find it. The point of this is for the investigating prosecutor to read information about the case and check in on how investigations are going. He then decides if the investigation seems alright and if he agrees with the police he sends back the file approving the investigation. If there seems to be something wrong with their investigation, the prosecutor can point out these faults and assign further tasks that must be completed within the investigation to make sure it is up to standards.

One thing that particularly threw me off in the beginning was what the exact role of these public prosecutors is. In America, you have the right to a lawyer, whether it is a public defender or a private one, when you go to trial. That is who you are working with and who is overseeing the case. In the Hungarian court system, you also have the right to a lawyer to be with you in your trial, but there is this additional public prosecutor working on the case behind the scenes as well. This is not something happening in every case in America. The job of the public prosecutor in Hungary is to make sure that everything being done is in compliance with legal standards of the justice system and that police officers are acting accordingly to to the law. This is done behind the scenes. A different prosecutor will be involved with the same case, but he will be accompanying the person to trial.

We'll make sure this doesn't happen to you.

Another thing I found to be very interesting is that depending on the part of Hungary you are in the ruling on the sentence will be different. For example, in the northeast region of Hungary the sentencing in much more severe than in the capital area here in Budapest. This fascinated me because I would think it would be the opposite way- I would expect the most crime and the worst crime to be here in the busiest part of the country with the most action. I wonder if the reason this is the case is because of the other populations in Hungary in that part of the country? And they pose to be more dangerous or enforcement wants to keep them locked up longer? I am interested to possibly know more about why this is the case. I was also interested to know that in comparing the Hungarian system to neighboring countries systems, you will find that the prosecutor is much more involved making privacy very difficult. Whereas in Hungary, the system does not keep everything as close offering more privacy to those involved in the case.

My last thought addresses the one thing that I found to be the most interesting thought to take away from the entire lecture. Dr. Korona said something along the lines of explaining that you can never compare two sentences because they are always different from one to the next. There are different judges, different systems, different cases that you may not be able to see and many other small things that must be taken into considering resulting in different rulings. I thought this to be something that is common among most court systems practicing everywhere. You can never compare one case to another and assume the same ruling will be made. Every case is different and deserves its own attention. That brings up the concern I had earlier from Dr. Hack's talk, when he explained how the judges' learn the case ahead of time. That concerns me because I feel that could introduce a sort of generic trend when the judge is just repetitively reading cases and possibly relating them to one another and a certain bias gets formed for every case that is similar. I know from experience that when something horrific happens, all the people involved want to see justice brought to table and that means the case gets all the attention necessary to come to a ruling that seems to fit appropriately. It is important to give every case a chance in teaching something new and finding the ruling that fits personally to that case.

I enjoyed this talk a lot and I found Dr. Korona to be extremely passionate about his job and I felt it was easy to see that he is very proud of what he does and he really enjoys it. Finding that happiness in your job is the best thing anyone could ask for in their work.