President’s Letter
By Pal Palmore
This
will be our last newsletter for
this academic year and our last
Lunch & Learn before the summer
break. Perhaps it’s a good time
to review some of our
accomplishments this past year.
We started the year last Fall
with several mayors issuing
proclamations recognizing
October 24th as UN Day and Human
Rights Day in December. The
Education Outreach Committee led
by the Greens has been active as
usual distributing UN materials
to schools and teachers in the
West Triangle and supporting the
several Model UN Conferences
that have been held here, as
well as supporting the student
UN clubs at UNC and Duke. We had
excellent entries in our UN High
School contest and reviewed the
winning entries at the April L &
L. We helped to organize a
Peacekeeping Conference at UNC
(which we managed to carry out
by resorting to electronic
transmissions with its main
speaker to overcome the snow
storms that prevented her from
getting to Chapel Hill!) And
each month we have had excellent
speakers and delicious food at
the L&L. The Children’s Health
Committee headed by Greg Flood
has sent shipments of medical
supplies to Haiti. The Advocacy
Committee sponsored several
postcard writing sessions during
the L&L, including the March
meeting at which we wrote
postcards to Sen. Kay Hagan
urging her to ratify the pending
UN treaties. And, as can be seen
from this edition of The West
Triangle World, we continued
to produce the chapter
newsletter with the assistance
of two fine student interns,
from UNC and Duke respectively.
We
plan to have another postcard
writing session at our May
meeting: this time we plan to
send postcards to our other
Senator, Richard Burr, asking
him to support full funding for
the UN so the UN can continue to
do its vital work of
peacekeeping, commerce, and
humanitarian aid. Postcards will
be sold for $.30 each and
instructions will be provided.
So bring your pens, quarters,
and nickels!
All in all, a
productive year, which we hope
to continue in our efforts to
inform the West Triangle public
about, and increase their
interest and support for, the
United Nations. Finally, I’d
like to thank all members of the
chapter - more than 270 of you -
for your interest and support
for what we’re trying to do -
indeed, we couldn’t do it
without you - and ask that you
continue to support our advocacy
efforts with Congress and the
Administration, and inform your
friends, neighbors and local
relatives about us and ask them
to join. If you know any who’d
like to join us, tell our
Membership committee Chair,
Barbara Berke, about them at
berkonu@mindspring.com
and she’ll contact them
directly.
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Lunch and Learn
to Focus on Middle East Unrest
They
call it “Arab Spring.”
Revolutionary unrest is sweeping
the Middle East, Tunisia, Egypt,
Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria
have been roiled in quick
succession by popular uprisings
aimed at overthrowing their
political orders. Who’s next?
What’s happening in the Middle
East? Dr. Akram Khater,
Professor of History and
Director of NCSU’s Middle East
Studies Program, will provide
his expert insights on the
implications for the region and
the United States.
We’ll meet on Wednesday, May
25, from Noon to 2PM at
Carolina Meadows in Chapel Hill.
Please send your reservations by
$18 check to UNAUSA West
Triangle Chapter, to Warren
Glick, 83203 Jarvis, Chapel
Hill, NC 27517, by May 20.
Details
www.una-westtriangle.org.
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Education Outreach
By Jean and Tuck Green
We continued our
efforts to educate the students
of the three counties - Chatham,
Orange and Durham - for which
our UNA-USA West Triangle
Chapter is responsible,
about the United Nations. Our
focus this month was on the
Second Chapel Hill-Carrboro
Middle School Model United
Nations Conference, which we
organized on Friday, April 8,
2011, in conjunction the
Carolina Center for Educational
Excellence (CCEE), of UNC’s
School of Education and the
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School
District, an effort in which we
were assisted
by officers of the Model UN
clubs at
Carrboro,
Chapel Hill,
East Chapel
Hill High
Schools (which our chapter has
nurtured over the years). Ninety
students from three Chapel
Hill-Carrboro middle schools -
Culbreth, Mcdougle and Smith
- came together to participate
in a daylong conference that
mimicked the United Nations
Security Council on the topic of
the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict. Students were
assigned one of the countries
that are currently members of
the UN
Security
Council:
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Brazil, China, Colombia, France,
Gabon, Germany, India, Lebanon,
Nigeria, Portugal, Russia, South
Africa, United Kingdom, USA.
Before the day of the
conference, the students had
spent a school day at the CCEE,
researching their assigned
country’s geography, history,
culture, economy, and politics,
especially its position towards
the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict, learning, and debating
together with their peers.
During the conference the
students took on the role of
diplomats representing “their”
country in the UN Security
Council and tried to get as much
as possible of their country’s
view on the conflict into a
resolution to be adopted by the
Council.
At another level, we provided a
variety of resource materials
for teaching about the United
Nations at two World View
seminars: “Latin America and
North Carolina” and
“Understanding Russia and Its
Neighbors.”(World View,
based on the UNC-CH campus,
provides symposia, seminars, and
study abroad opportunities to
the state’s teachers). About 500
teachers and administrators
attended the conferences.
Besides our table top display
about our UNA Chapter, we made
available to attendees:
-
Our brochure on “What Every
American Should Know about the
U.N.”
-
A list of web-based resources
for teaching about the U.N.
-
An organization chart of the
U.N. System together with a
rationale for and description of
the Millennium Development
Goals.
-
A list of videos about the U.N.
-
A flyer about Model U.N.
-
A recent speech, “Inside the UN:
What Works, What Doesn’t, and
How to Fix It,” by Louise
Frechette, former UN Deputy
Secretary-General.
If you would like to support
this Committee’s work, please
check off “Education Outreach”
on the Lunch and Learn
Registration form and send your
donation in together with your
Lunch fee. Suggestions? Please
contact us at
cgreen17@nc.rr.com.
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The UN Comes to UNC
By Amanda Conklin, UNAWTC
Outreach Intern
The West Triangle Chapter has
been a long time supporter of
UNC’s United Nations
Organization (UNO), a
student-run organization that
promotes and participates in
UN-related activities, such as
Model UN conferences. The
Chapter has continued to engage
with the Organization through a
variety of activities, including
a joint hosting of a mini-Model
UN high school conference each
fall and the Chapter’s new
social media campaign. This past
year, the UNO hosted annual
college and high school Model UN
conferences and traveled to four
collegiate Model UN conferences
at Duke, University of Virginia,
Columbia University, and the
University of Chicago. Its first
annual college conference was
held in February and chronicled
in last month’s Chapter
newsletter. This year’s high
school conference was held the
first weekend of April and was
attended by 19 schools from as
far away as Maine (more
information can be found at
munch-unc.com). UNO has been
successful in all the
conferences it traveled to this
year, winning two Best Delegate
awards at Duke and Honorable
Mention at UVA (at the time of
writing the team had not yet
traveled to Chicago). The
Organization has also supported
the Chapter’s social media
campaign by encouraging its
members to “friend” us on
Facebook and “follow” us on
Twitter to stay aware of Chapter
events and news.
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KNOW YOUR UN
World Intellectual Property
Organization
By
Gregory Flood, Vice
President, West Triangle Chapter
This is part four of a series
that addresses the work of the
Specialized Agencies within the
United Nations system and the
relationships among them.
Earlier articles in this series
dealt with the general
background of the UN specialized
agencies and the particulars of
two of the larger ones, the Food
and Agriculture Organization of
the UN (FAO) and the United
Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO). This article will deal
with one of the smaller and
lesser-known agencies, the World
Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO).
Intellectual property refers to
those creations of the mind for
which a set of exclusive rights
are recognized. Under
intellectual property law,
owners are granted certain
rights to intangible assets,
such as musical, literary, and
artistic works or discoveries,
inventions and designs. Common
types of intellectual property
include copyrights, trademarks,
patents and industrial designs.
It has long been recognized that
the protection of intellectual
property is necessary to provide
economic incentives for
innovation and creativity in the
marketplace. Although the legal
principles governing
intellectual property have
evolved over centuries, it was
only in the 19th century that
international cooperation in
this field began with the
creation of the “Paris Union”
(International Union for the
Protection of Industrial
Property, 1883) and the “Berne
Union” (International Union for
the Protection of Literary and
Artistic Works, 1886). The
origins of WIPO can be traced to
its predecessor, the United
International Bureau for the
Protection of Intellectual
Property (BIRPI), which grew out
of the merger of these Unions in
1893 to administer the Paris and
Berne Conventions.
WIPO was established by a
convention signed in Stockholm
in 1967 that came into force in
1970. It became a specialized
agency of the United Nations in
December 1974. The Agreement
between the United Nations and
the World Intellectual Property
Organization states that WIPO is
responsible: “for promoting
creative intellectual activity
and for facilitating the
transfer of technology related
to industrial property to the
developing countries in order to
accelerate economic, social and
cultural development…”
WIPO currently has 184 member
states and administers 24
international treaties. It is
headquartered in Geneva,
Switzerland. Unlike other UN
agencies, WIPO has significant
financial resources independent
of the contributions from its
member states. Over 90% of
WIPO’s income from the
collection of fees under the
intellectual property
application and registration
systems that it administers.
Much of the important work at
WIPO is done through committees
that deal with patents,
copyrights, enforcement, access
to genetic resources,
traditional knowledge and
folklore and patent
cooperation.. WIPO usually
attempts to reach decisions by
consensus, but in any vote, each
member state is entitled to one
vote, regardless of population
or contribution to the funding.
Differing views among its member
states on the international
aspects of intellectual property
have led to significant disputes
within WIPO. During the 1960s
and 1970s, developing nations
were able to block expansions to
intellectual property treaties,
such as universal pharmaceutical
patents, which might have
occurred through WIPO.
In the 1980s, this led the
United States and other
developed countries to
“forum-shift” intellectual
property standard-setting out of
WIPO and into the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(which later became the World
Trade Organization (WTO)) where
the developed countries had
greater control of the agenda.
More recently, in October 2004,
WIPO adopted a “Proposal for the
Establishment of a Development
Agenda for WIPO” offered by
Brazil and Argentina. This
signaled a concerted effort by a
group of developing countries to
resist the worldwide push for
patent protection that, they
argued, was burdensome to them.
They were against the
harmonization of intellectual
property laws that lead to
higher protection standards in
all countries, irrespective of
their levels of development.
They called instead for the
integration of a “development
dimension” into policymaking on
intellectual property
protection, saying assessments
should be done on a case-by-case
basis.
The question of the role of
international intellectual
property rights protection in
ensuring creativity and
innovation, while promoting
economic development in all
countries continues to be
debated in WIPO, WTO and
elsewhere.
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Children’s Health
Initiative Ships Medical
Supplies
By
Gregory Flood, Chair,
Children’s Health Initiative
(CHI) Committee
The West Triangle Chapter’s CHI
began in response to the
UNA-USA’s “The UNtold Story”
Campaign of 2001-2002. This
campaign focused on the global
health situation, UN successes
and progress in its children's
health agenda, and opportunities
for action, as a vehicle to
publicize the work of the UN.
Local chapters were encouraged
to undertake activities that
would promote both children’s
health and awareness of the UN’s
role in the context of the
Millennium Development Goals.
The Chapter has implemented this
activity through cooperation
with MEDWorld, a nonprofit,
volunteer-run organization at
the UNC hospitals dedicated to
recycling surplus medical
supplies for use in clinics and
hospitals in developing
countries where there is an
urgent need for life saving
supplies. All supplies are still
valuable, but no longer used in
the United States due to
technological change, regulatory
requirements or procedural
excess. Through 2010, the CHI
Committee organized a total of
fourteen shipments of medical
supplies to four developing
countries.
The Committee is now pleased to
report that in April 2011, it
was able to arrange for two more
shipments of medical supplies,
one to the Visitation Hospital
Clinic in Haiti and the other to
the Ganta Hospital in Liberia.
The Committee wishes to thank
the MEDWorld staff, as well as
our
collaborators here in the USA,
the Visitation Hospital
Foundation in Nashville,
Tennessee and Dr Robert Majors
of Raleigh, North Carolina.
If you would like to support
this Committee’s work, please
check off “Children’s Health
Initiative” on the Lunch & Learn
Registration form and send your
donation in together with your
Lunch fee.
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Chapter Enters the
Information Age
By Amanda Conklin, UNAWTC
Outreach Intern
Starting this past fall, with
the help of our Outreach Intern
from UNC, Amanda Conklin, the
West Triangle Chapter has been
regularly using three different
online social media outlets: a
blog, Facebook, and Twitter, to
increase awareness among the
local community - especially
among younger generations -
about the Chapter and its
activities, and the United
Nations. The blog features
national and local stories
related to the UNA, as well as
articles from the most current
newsletter. Links to these
articles as well as other UN
news stories can be followed on
our Twitter page, and details
about and photos from the
monthly Lunch and Learns and
other events can be found on our
Facebook page. These pages are
updated weekly to keep the
viewers engaged with what the
Chapter is doing.
In addition to the blog,
Facebook, and Twitter, the
Chapter continues to provide
information to chapter members
and interested community members
through its main website. The
main website contains, among
other features, the current
newsletter, a Calendar of
Events, and other information
about the Chapter and its
activities, and UNA-USA.
All of the websites can be
viewed by typing the following
addresses into the top of your
web browser (Internet Explorer,
Mozilla Firefox, etc.).
Main Website:
http://www.una-westtriangle.org/
Blog:
http://una-westtriangle.blogspot.com/
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/unawesttriangle
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/UNAwesttriangle
If you have any pictures from
past events that you would like
to be added to our Facebook
page, please email them to
UNA.west.triangle@gmail.com.
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Archived April Newsletter
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