UNited Nations Speaker Series part III

Part of the experience and responsibility of writing and being in charge of a blog for the school is showing how amazing it is to study a career with international focus. Meeting people from all over the world and realizing that their career paths head interesting directions makes me think the “Global” word on my MBA degree has much more sense now than before. I would like to share with you the biography of Mr. Magdi Farahat.
Mr. Magdi Farahat, has worked at the ITC for 2 years as a Chief of the Office for Africa, has an exciting career behind him. He joined the Egyptian Commercial Service in 1975 where he worked for 30 years on posts in different countries and different positions. His position was like the minister of foreign affairs for economic investment. He worked for Customer service and IT and was in charge of Western Europe and Africa representing Egypt in case of economic investment.He has worked for trading development from five different countries: as a Commercial Counsellor to the Embassy in London, Madrid, Jakarta, Tel Aviv and as a minister counsellor and chief negotiator to the WTO of Egypt in Geneva.
Also, he worked as in the Minister of International Investment and International Cooperation as a special assistant to mobilizing International Investment (there were 8 programmes between the US and Egypt). Other time, he worked to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Planning also as a special assistant to Egypt’s relations with the World Bank and IMF.Following his family decease, as he called it”, he followed the Diplomatic career. He has travelled his life long and has gotten his degrees in different countries; High school in Tanzania, a BA in Economics in Cairo, a MA and PhD. on the High school of Planning and Statistics in Warsaw(Poland), and a Post graduate certificate of the Institute International de l’administracion public in Paris.
Wooow, what an impressive professional career!!!

United Nations Speaker Series Part II

The United Nations was created to facilitate cooperation, to solve conflicts among the nations members, to serve as a mediator and to develop policies that help nations to reach social, political and economic equilibrium. In order to achieve its main goals, the United Nations very often opens discussion boards in many of its governance bodies. The main objective of these discussion boards and forums is to allow the audience to know what is going on in the UN system to achieve its main mission. Also, it opens the floor to suggestions and inputs that other important bodies can add or refute to a same subject. At the end, it helps the organizations within the UN system to receive feedback from its counterparts in other agencies, to integrate the policies and to create procedures that make sense for all members.
One of the most interesting debates I assisted to was “Trade rules for sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean”. This session was organized by CEPAL (ECLAC in English), which is the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. During this session, three speakers from CEPAL Santiago de Chile, came to Geneva to explain how the international trade rules and provisions regarding investment and intellectual property rights impact the Latin American and Caribbean export pattern.
The WTO as well as CEPAL are concern about sustainable development and both organizations recognize the importance of addressing these issues in public forums in order to create debate on the topic and generate in the future policies that goes along with global trends. Both bodies recognize global environmental concerns, innovation, competitive pattern of growth and institutional governance are relevant for a progressive movement toward sustainable development objectives in the Latin American and the Caribbean countries.