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Fletcher Women at the United Nations

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Fletcher Women at the United Nations Issue 6, May 2009 Comp iled by: Corey Barr (F’09 ) Edited by: Claire Carroll (F’90) Fletcher Women at the United Nations Serving Local, National and International Communities : Current Fletcher student Corey Barr (F’09) conducted most of the interviews featured in this sixth issue of the FWN’s newsletter. Corey gained firsthand experience with the power of Fletcher women’s networking, an invaluable asset as she thinks about her own career. Indeed, this issue contains much advice for alumnae interested in joining, or already part of, the UN system. For example, Silke Rusch (F’03) advises those who want to join the UN, “If you don’t immediately get the job you want, try out a smaller, less famous part of the institution, from which you can then move on. Once you are in the system, it’s much easier to find your dream job. Use the Fletcher Women’s Network as well as the broader Fletcher community. These tools can make all the difference, as access to information is one of the keys to success on the global professional market. This is true for any multinational employer and especially for the UN.” In the articles that follow, we meet alumnae who “always imagined working for the UN,” such as Mari Yamashita (F’90) and Sarah Khan (F’04), as well as others who landed at the UN as their careers progressed. Reiki Niimo (F’82) and several others have spent all or most of their post-Fletcher careers at the UN, often in several different agencies. They speak of the challenges of being a woman and/or raising families while pursuing a UN career, particularly in the field-based agencies (such as UNHCR), but also of the unparalleled opportunities to carry out Fletcher’s mission to serve local, national and international communities in their search to develop relationships of mutual benefit, security and justice. And as UN agencies continue working to achieve better gender balance – particularly in senior positions – these profiles illustrate how Fletcher women have the expertise and experience to lead. The newsletter is part of a multi-faceted approach to networking. In addition, there is our online community, or NING. As it approaches its first anniversary, we are assessing the NING’s utility in providing FWN members with the opportunity to discover friends and colleagues with similar or complementary interests. If you are not yet in the system, please email Marcia Greenberg (F’91) ([email protected]) to join. And then there are our in-person gatherings. In a FWN survey conducted in the New England and DC areas two summers ago, respondents indicated interest in network-wide retreats. And thus from March 13-15th we held our first Babinec (a Czech word referring to a “gathering of women”) back at Fletcher. A richly diverse group from New England attended, along with alumnae from California, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Sara Mason Adler (F’97) shares her reflections on the event on page 8. Fletcher Women’s Network Newsletter Page 1 June 2009 Profile: Maria Vardis (F’96) “See You in Bosnia…” by Stacy Bernard Davis (F’90) Maria’s career is an expression of Fletcher’s mission to serve local, national and international communities. Maria has been working on mine action issues since 2005, when she joined the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations. Most recently, in October 2008, Maria became an Advisor on the United Nations Development Programme’s Mine Action and Small Arms Team. But Maria’s involvement in things international virtually started at birth. Born to Greek immigrants in Ohio, Maria spoke Greek before she learned English. Her family maintained strong ties to Greece, and after graduating from college in 1991, she followed one of her dreams – to live in Greece. Maria moved to Crete to be an in-house tutor for a college-level study abroad program. She taught Greek language classes and developed curricula for small seminars on the politics of identity. As Maria puts it, “It was a time of the ‘clash of civilizations’ and rise of ethnic intolerance.” The breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the war in the Balkans were very close. “At that time I struggled to understand why identity and diversity – a source of such strength in my own life – were used to justify war and hatred.” Fletcher’s multidisciplinary approach drew Maria as she tried to make sense of the chaos plaguing southeastern Europe. There, she concentrated in Islamic Cultures and Civilization of Southwest Asia and Conflict Resolution and Mediation. She used the peace negotiations in Bosnia-Herzegovina as her case study. Inspired by Professor Andrew Hess, and intrigued by the examination of the ‘crossroads of civilization’ in his classes, Maria spent the summer after her first year at Fletcher taking an intensive Turkish language class in Istanbul. By the time Maria finished Fletcher in 1996, she still had not committed to any particular career path. Then, at graduation, one of her classmates who was headed to Bosnia-Herzegovina casually said, “See you in Bosnia.” That comment helped Maria realize that going there “made absolute sense no matter how daunting it seemed.” By September, Maria was in Bosnia as an election supervisor for the first national elections since the Dayton Accords. In January 1997, she had a full-time assignment as a Democratization Officer with the OSCE. Maria noted, “When I first started working in Bosnia, one of the things that I found most inspiring was working with women’s networks and nascent women’s NGOs.” Maria spent the next six years in Bosnia with two other international organizations, first working on political negotiations with the Office of the High Representative, the lead civilian implementation agency, and then focusing on police reform and restructuring as part of the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2003 she returned to New York to work at UN Headquarters in the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict as a donor liaison officer . Recently married, Maria met her husband at UNMAS. To gether, they are facing the challenges of balancing active Fletcher Women’s Network Newsletter Page 2 June 2009 UN Policy Work: The Conceptual vs. the Practical: “Human rights begin in small places, close to home…” Phyllis Cox interviewed UN veteran Mara Bustelo (F’89) for our previous newsletter on human rights, but we saved coverage of Mara’s work for this issue on the UN because she highlights the thinking behind UN policy and programs – and how it might, in turn, shape the legislation and policy of member states. At Fletcher, Mara was former Professor Philip Alston’s research assistant. She remembers that Alston told her to forget about a career in human rights because it was largely for lawyers. Having chosen not to follow his advice, she has been with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva since 1998! Mara has held a number of posts, including coordinating gender issues for the Committee on the Rights of the Child, supervising others’ work on economic, social and cultural rights, and handling the Office’s work on private sector business and human rights, environment and human rights, and the rights of persons with disabilities. In 2007, she became responsible for supporting Special Rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council, including those focused on the rights to education, food, adequate housing, and health, and on toxic wastes, water and sanitation, extreme poverty and the impact of foreign debt on human rights. Mara is inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt, who said, “Where do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home,” but yet considered the Universal Declaration of Human Rights her greatest achievement. Mara points out that for rights to have meaning for individuals in their daily lives, concerted citizen action is needed to uphold them close to home. But at the same time, work on the ground relies on the normative value of universally recognized human rights – which then requires patient and gradual work to build political consensus and turn those norms into legally binding rights. Mara’s pre-Fletcher training in history helps her observe the ebb and flow of attitudes toward human rights, particularly in the tensions between national security and individual human rights, and in Western emphasis on civil and political rights at the expense of economic, cultural, and social rights. These conceptual issues influence the tenor and development of the UN’s “on the ground” programs. Mehrnaz Mostafavi (F’90) changed her major three times during her undergraduate career at Boston University – from languages to political science to international relations – and then focused at Fletcher on international business management. She worked at Canon for nearly five years, from which she became intrigued by the “Asian Tigers.” This in turn led her to pursue her PhD in international development at the University of Denver. With that interest and further grounding, Mehrnaz became a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme. Though that consultancy afforded her many benefits comparable to being a staff member, Mehrnaz kept her eye out for permanent positions in the UN system. In 2004, she obtained a position with the Human Security Unit. The Unit’s goal is to promote understanding of the concept of human security, and Fletcher Women’s Network Newsletter Page 3 June 2009 particularly to make it operational. A human security framework, she says, should be multi-sectoral, so rather than addressing issues in silos, UN agencies approach human security challenges comprehensively .
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