News story: United Nations Association

27 March 2010
UNYSA annual conference: fighting poverty - helping the UN to meet the MDGs

UNA-UK's youth wing, UNYSA, debated poverty, hunger and international development at its 2010 Annual Conference, which took place in Oxford on 27 March.

Entitled 'Fighting Poverty: helping the UN to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)', the event aimed to stimulate ideas on how to make the MDGs a reality and to inspire UNYSA members to take action on these issues.

Students from all over the UK were joined by members of UNA-UK and its Young Professionals Network - making this year's UNYSA annual conference (only the third to be held independently of UNA-UK's own conference) the best-attended one to date.

The keynote speech was delivered by Paul Collier, award-winning author of 'The Bottom Billion' and Director of Oxford University's Centre for the Study of African Economies. Collier outlined the potential of natural resources such as oil and mineral wealth to transform the poorest countries for the better - if there is proper stewardship of these resources which avoids both unchecked 'plundering of the planet' on the one hand and environmental romanticism on the other. He persuasively argued the case for a 'natural resources charter' to confront the global mismanagement of nature.

His speech was followed by a presentation from Caroline Hurford of the World Food Programme on food security, and the challenges facing the WFP - the largest humanitarian agency in the world - on the ground. Participants then heard from Sophie Tholstrup and Ying Staton from the UK Department of International Development. Sophie and Ying spoke about what the UK is doing to support the UN's efforts to achieve the MDGs.

Elections for the UNYSA Youth Council also took place at the event. Isabella Hayward, a third-year student from the LSE, was elected as President, becoming the first woman to lead UNYSA. She is joined on the Council by seven talented individuals, whose range of backgrounds is representative of the diversity of UNA-UK's youth and student members. Together, they promised to widen the scope and provide the momentum to push forward UNYSA's agenda for 2010 -2011.