If These Walls Could Talk: Architecture, Nation Building(s), and Soft Power | ITU: Win 20,000€ Euros for Your Robotics Solution | WTO Welcomes Interns From Developing Countries
If These Walls Could Talk: Architecture, Nation Building(s), and Soft Power | ITU: Win 20,000€ Euros for Your Robotics Solution | WTO Welcomes Interns From Developing Countries
WFP: Launch of Report on School Feeding Programmes, Sustainable Fashion in Low and Middle Income Countries Creates Opportunities for Women-led Businesses
If These Walls Could Talk
Architecture, Nation Building, and Soft Power
Call for Proposals
Alert to Historians of Architecture and Diplomacy
Call for Proposals
Source: Leiden University
Forum: Nation Buildings – Embassy Architecture and Diplomatic Practice
This HJD Forum will look at how the architecture of diplomatic missions reflects both how countries see themselves and their role in the world and how they want other countries and their citizens to see them.
The Forum will debate the material and communicative functions of embassy buildings and how they can affect relations between countries and populations. It will also examine and theorise the impacts of wider issues relating to foreign policy, security, and digitalisation and how embassy buildings (including consulates and other ‘national’ structures such as buildings with a public/cultural diplomacy function) serve multiple interests and agendas.
Forum Guest Editors: Stuart MacDonald (ICR Research), Shaun Riordan
Length of Proposals: 200 words
Deadline Proposal: 30 April 2023
Length of Essays: 3,000 words
Submission of Selected Papers: Q4 2023
Publication in The Hague Journal of Diplomacy: Q3 2024
Background
The architecture of embassies and other diplomatic missions reflects both how countries see themselves and their role in the world and how they want other countries and their citizens to see them.
In design terms, embassies can function as carriers and showcases for cultural expressions of national identity, political values, or programmes such as moves towards EU integration. They may (or may not) be designed as an integral part of a country’s strategic external self-representation. The building can, by its location, design, scale, and relation to other embassies, proclaim either national status or a commitment to security - the contradictory demands of security and representation encapsulate the dilemma of contemporary embassy builders.
But it is not one way communication. Other countries and their citizens will interpret a country´s embassy building, and especially changes in an embassy building, according to their own perceptions and expectations. This can impact on the relations between countries and how seriously the host country thinks those relations are being taken. Changing trends in embassy design and construction can show how the way a country thinks about its foreign policy and diplomacy changes over time.
The design and lay-out of an embassy also reflect the working practices within, and the importance given to, each activity. The principles of embassy design are further challenged by the emergence of virtual embassies seeking a presence in countries otherwise ruled out by security, political or cost concerns. Does the design of such virtual embassies reflect that of physical embassies or seek instead to take advantage of the greater freedom afforded online?
The Forum aims to give an impetus to new thinking and research on the intersection between embassies as material expressions of identity and the formal, functional, and public aspects of diplomatic practice in an increasingly security, cost-conscious, and digital age. The Forum is a call to scholars to take a holistic view of contemporary diplomatic presences and activities on the one hand, and on the other, of how these activities are framed by structures which may reflect these contemporary concerns but are also likely to carry meanings from the past.
Style and content
Apart from being short, Forum Essays are typically more argumentative than original research articles. They are meant to inspire future academic research and debate. HJD Forums have also proven to be a stimulus for class discussion in graduate seminars. Contributions are usually informed by academic research.
ITU Robotics for Good Competition
For Start-ups Developing Solutions in Robotics
How to win 20,000€ for your robot dearest?
Apply for Robotics for Good Innovation Factory if your robotic solution makes an impact on sustainable development. Organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), selected start-ups will compete for the top prize of 20,000€ from KUKA in a live pitching event hosted online. Apply by 30 March, 2023.
Presented by Microsoft
Public-Private Partnerships in Least Developed Countries (LDCs)
As part of an ongoing commitment to the mission and ambition of the United Nations, Microsoft served as the co-chair of LDC5 / Private Sector Forum, where they explored ways that digital development can become a reality. Learn more here.
INTERVIEW
Creative Economy at the UN
We interviewed retired UN official Edna Santos-Duisenberg, responsible for initiating the Creative Economy Programme at UNCTAD in 2004. LDC’s (Least Developed Countries) can greatly benefit from investment in the creative and sustainable fashion industry. We made a 360 degrees interview on her work raising awareness about the economic impact of the creative sector in least developed countries, sustainable fashion and trade, and how they are crucial to achieving the SDGs.
World Food Programme
Source: WFP
Launch of the State of School Feeding Worldwide 2022 Report
The State of School Feeding Worldwide provides an overview on how countries across the world are supporting children through school feeding programmes.
The report examines the coverage, implementation, best practices, impact and costs of school-based health and nutrition programmes worldwide.
During the pandemic 190 countries closed their schools and 370 million children were suddenly deprived of what, for many, was the main meal of the day.
In 2021 governments established the School Meals Coalition, to ensure that school feeding programmes were priority investments to support national growth and promote economic development. Hungry children do not learn well nor become citizens that can later contribute to society.
The 2022 edition is the first report of the School Meals Coalition since it was created, to provide information on progress made. Check the full report here.
Presenting the report at the WFP headquarters in Rome were Valerie Guarnieri, Deputy Executive Director, Programme and Policy Development Department, WFP; Carmen Burbano, Director, School-based Programmes, WFP; Ambassador Tanja Grén, Permanent Representative of Finland; Amb. Haladou Salha, AU-NEPAD Senior Technical Advisor to the Group of Rome-based African Ambassadors; Amb. Dr. Neena Malhotra, PR of India; Amb. Carla Barroso Carneiro, PR of Brazil next to FAO, and Amb. Céline Jurgensen, PR of France.
WTO welcomes interns from LDCs
Deputy Director-General Xiangchen Zhang welcomed 39 interns from developing and least-developed countries (LDCs) at a ceremony on 14 March, at the WTO headquarters in Geneva, launching two ten-month WTO internship programmes.
The Netherlands Trainee Programme and the French-Irish Mission Internship Programme will give participants an opportunity to develop their expertise on various aspects of trade and the work of the WTO.
This is the first time that East Timor (Timor-Leste) is represented in the programme.
DG Meets with Small Businesses Owners
Working group on small business highlights use of tech platforms
The Informal Working Group on Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) approved the Group’s new work program. The Group also agreed to issue a call for papers on MSMEs provisions in RTAs, which will inform the Group’s work in this area.
The Group welcomed two additional participants, Barbados and the United States, bringing the total number of members taking part in the initiative to 97.
The approved work program will focus on promoting MSMEs' access to information; building capacity to promote greater inclusion of MSMEs in international trade; providing policy guidance; implementing the agreed December 2020 MSMEs package; and increase engagement with the private sector.
Tech at the service of SMEs
Check Trade4MSMES platform, the Global Trade Helpdesk and ePing
Regional Trade Agreements and their impact on economic development
Check the WTO’s improvements made to the Regional Trade Agreements database to make the it more user-friendly.
Information on the call for papers issued by the Group on MSMEs provisions in RTAs can be found here.
DG Meets with founders of small businesses
The WTO Director General Ngozi-Okonjo Iweala met with small business representatives and associations that support small businesses to discuss international trade and how the WTO can support their ambitions. They highlighted the challenges and opportunities in digital trade and the digital economy.