Swiss Chocolate is the best chocolate!

First off I would like to congratulate JSBP for successfully traveling to a different country and staying there without getting deported. You don’t realize how hard it is to travel in a big group until your actually doing it, but we beat the odds and arrived in Geneva Monday night safe and sound. That night after checking in to our hotel (a real live hotel and not a hostel!) we went to a Mexican restaurant, which was AMAZING to say the least. I had actually forgotten how good nachos were, but oh boy did these nachos do a good job of reminding me. They weren’t as good as Libby’s of course, but let’s be honest in saying that Libby’s sets a pretty high standard. After wandering around, we all came to the realization that when people said that the city was expensive, they weren’t kidding. I mean when you usually pay $5 for a meal, seeing meals for $50 makes you appreciate Budapest even more. Despite the expensive prices, after dinner we all wanted ice cream so that is what we found, and trust me it was worth every penny. Switzerland is of course known for its chocolate, and the chocolate ice cream I had just proved this point even more. After that my stomach felt like it was going to explode and we got back to the hotel and I melted into the bed. If I wanted to I could write a whole blog post about the bed, which were so unbelievably comfortable and had the fluffiest duvet I have ever seen. I slept pretty amazing that night to say the least.

We were on the schedule for the day!

We woke up pretty early the next morning and enjoyed a wonderful complementary breakfast provided by the hotel (the fact that it was free made it extra good). After breakfast we headed over to the UNEP headquarters (United Nations Environment Program) where we were going to have a “conference” where we would get to ask questions to some members of the program. These members were Barabara Ruis (legal officer), Angela Cropper (special advisor to the Executive Director), Mijke Hertoghs and Eva Duer (legal officer). All of these people were giving up time in their probably busy work day to answer our questions and give us some more information about what they do, which was very generous of them. Barbara and Angela started off the discussion by asking us if we had any specific questions about the UNEP program and/or what topics we were interested in discussing. Once they asked us this, I knew it was going to be an engaging discussion because it was going to revolve around our interests. I am very happy the two women gave us the opportunity to lead the direction of the discussion.

UN Environmental Program

We talked about cooperating with other countries, enforcing environmental laws, the future of UNEP, how you get countries to use sustainable energy and many more things. One of the questions that caught my attention was how to make countries adopt certain rules and regulations. Angela answered this by explaining that the UN was created after WWII so that countries could talk about issues and another world war would never happen again. She said that within the UN there are different entities such as the World Health Organization, UNEP and others that are there to give ideas and advice to other countries about certain issues. These entities do not have any power to make a country adopt certain rules; this is left up to the actual state itself. Angela said this is where problems arise because sometimes states do not put the global interest ahead of their own state’s national interest. In other words sometimes certain rules or regulations are not adopted by the state because they may be good for the global interest but do not benefit the state in any way. An example I could think of is if the UN decided to cut back on the digging of oil and asked Iraq to implement these new restrictions. This rule may be good for the environment and is of global interest but when it comes to Iraq’s national interest it doesn’t serve it because of how much oil means to the Iraq economy. Iraq would probably be less inclined to implement this hypothetical regulation because it doesn’t support their national interest. This is the type of problem that the UN encounters when trying to implement rules and regulations and is especially prevalent with UNEP and what they try and do.

Another question that peaked my interest, concerned how the UN and all the entities of the UN go about enforcing laws. Angela said that the World Trade Agreement was the only treaty that had law enforcement aspects to it. Besides this treaty, most other treaties have “soft law” which means if countries are caught breaking a law here are some repercussions but a hard legal stand is not taken. This was interesting because it would be extremely difficult to oversea all the countries in the UN and make sure they are abiding every single treaty’s laws that have been passed. I think the “soft law” approach is a good one because it shows that the UN is still making sure rules aren’t being broken but at the same time isn’t standing over every country making sure everything is done to point exactly. Overall, we had a basic question and answer session for about an hour with Barbara and Angela. After that Mijke Hertoghs talked to us briefly about chemicals and how they are bad for the environment but at the same time are everywhere. She mentioned that some countries use the parts from old electronics and burn what they don’t need thus putting chemicals into the air. She mentioned that it is hard to regulate chemicals because every one is different in the sense that each chemical has a different “badness” factor to it. Some are very dangerous and it only takes a little exposure to cause harm but some it takes a lot of exposure to cause even the slightest damage. Because of this chemical regulation is a lot of work and implementing regulations is equally as hard. The talk ended with Eva Duer who showed us a website where we could look at specific countries and see what treaties they had signed and also look for specific treaties that concerned specific topics. It was a very interesting website and I have actually been on it since we’ve gotten back and learned some pretty fascinating about certain countries and what treaties they are a part of.      

I think what I took from this UNEP experience was that it is extremely difficult to get countries to agree on certain things and to implement rules and regulations because every country is different and has their own national interests to worry about. Also the process of implementing anything from rules to regulations to just giving advice seems to be very long and tiresome process because of how many countries may have to be dealt with at once. When it comes to the environment, Angela did say that right now it’s clear that our economic model is not sustainable. The answer to how to fix this is still not known but UNEP works hard every day to try and change the outlook on environmental sustainability and make sure countries know it is an important thing. Barbara had a good quote and said that to make a change you need to work with all aspects of society. This makes sense in that you need to include social aspects, economical ones and state interest aspects when trying to implement change. This was a great opportunity for JSBP and I would like to thank all the people at UNEP for letting us come and talk with some of your employees!

This agency helps refugees all over the world survive in other countries and move on with their lives after being forced to flee their country

After we left UNEP we headed over to the UNHCR, which is the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Here, we were greeted by Mr. Simeh Bulbul who specializes in relief and refugee work for Iraq. Before arriving I had very high hopes because this topic is one that I am very interested in and I was excited for our lecture by Mr. Bulbul. The mandate of UNHCR is to provide international protection for refugees as well as persons of concern and come up with long-lasting solutions for these people. Mr. Bulbul’s talk was very long and he went into detail about how a refugee was defined, why these people need to flee, what a person of concern was and what UNHCR does to help them. The talk was interesting but it was a lot of information that I had previously known and could have been told in ½ the time. At the beginning Dr. Bulbul said that he would discuss with us the specific case of Iraq because of how closely he worked with the refugees from there. I was excited because I wanted to hear stories and see statistics and get information from someone who was actually in Iraq while the refugee crisis was going on. Unfortunately, because of the length of the first part of the talk there wasn’t much time to go into the Iraq situation. We did see some statistics, which were mind blowing, but if the talk had been more centered on this topic I would have felt more engaged. It was still a good talk and I am happy we were able to talk with Mr. Bulbul.

Voltaire Statue in the middle of town

After leaving UNHCR we were all pretty tired but we decided hey, while in Geneva we might as well go to France. Yes you read correctly, we went to France. JSBP hoped on a bus and 25 minutes later we were in a cute French town named after the philosopher Voltaire. We walked around, saw cute little shops, and experienced the feel of a tiny French town surrounded by the Swiss Alps. I’m very happy we got to go to France because it was a complete 180 from the bustling city of Geneva and I know for me at least I was able to step into a whole other world. We spent about 2 hours in France, went back to Geneva, went out to dinner and walked around the Old Town. It was fun and relaxing and I ad a lot of fun that night.

The next morning I went to a flea market, got some chocolate and then it was bye bye Geneva. I had a great three days and I’m glad all 11 of us got to take a trip together. Coming back to Budapest is always amazing though and it hits you when you come back that this is home and it makes me appreciate the city I live in even more.