United Nations : A day to experience it yourself

If you are looking for peace, you can find it here at the United Nations office. If you keen for justice, again you can find it here, and if you want a freedom in one’s life, you will be delivered here. Besides, you will find it interesting to work at the UN.

The United Nations building is located in Rajadamnern Nok Avenue. There was a security check process similar to what they do at the airport in front of the gate. I put down my belongings on the bin and walked through the scanner, feeling excited to enter the UN building.

After entering the building gate, a lady in a red costume came and greeted us. She presented herself as a guide, who will take us to explore the building.

Even if it was a lunch break time, it was not noisy at all. The lady took us the second floor, narrated and let us observe everything around the building.

The airy space and clean look building is decorated with the gifts from UN’s member countries, including Thailand’s, the one on the ceiling called the Structure of the Universe. The story of United Nations is hiding in every inch of the building as she told.

The Structure of the Universe : The triangle is a symbol of Asia Pacific region

“Our works are put on that wall either, telling what UN has been working on. Including peace, justice, as well as an encouragement,” the lady described and pointed to the wall.

As I arrived on the third floor, I saw the word ‘Peace’ was written on the white pole. I looked around and saw a man was sitting on the bench in the corner behind the partition board, leaning his back relaxing and closing his eyes tightly.

A peace just happened to him.

It does not only represent the goal of the United Nations, but it is telling us that staff here can find peace in their working place.

We were allowed to explore the building ourselves for a while. I spent much of the time in the UN ESCAP Hall. It is a huge meeting hall and looks similar to what I have seen in the pictures or videos. The lady told us that there are 6 official languages used in the meeting, which are English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and France.

During my way back to the meeting point on the second floor, I saw a UN’s staff on the escalator, holding a food in a plate and a glass of cold beverage on his hands.

“If you want to buy something to eat here, please go ahead. But I want to tell you that here is a plastic-free area, so we don’t have a plastic cup or bottle, we don’t use a straw. You may have to pay for the utensils’ deposit,” the lady smiled.

I then saw a word on the pole says ‘freedom’.

Freedom on social responsibility, the freedom that does not have any bad effect on others. The staffs here get the freedom to choose where to eat. If they do want to eat out, then they have to use the ceramic plate and the glass instead of the plastic box and the plastic water bottle in order to decrease plastic garbage.

Not so long, we were taken into a small meeting hall. After we settled down, the first speaker, Kauita Sukanandan, examined our knowledge about the United Nations by asking us questions.

According to the Worldometers, there are 195 countries in the world, and 193 of them are the United Nations member. This is quite a surprising number for me, almost every country joins the United Nations.

Then she introduced us the United Nations story and the 17 sustainable development goals.

“So seventeen goals, let’s take a quick call. How many goals do you think that Asia Pacific region can achieve by 2020?” she asked. Nobody said all of 17 goals or even 10, some said five of them.

Surprisingly, in the 2017 review, they found that the Asia Pacific is only reached one out of the 17 goals. She confessed that each goal is quite overlapping to each other, so if one goal could not be completed, then the other 16 goals would not be reached.

It is a sad fact, but it would be worse if people do not know their own rights rather than not knowing the fact that Asia Pacific could not event reached more than one goal of UN’s big project.

To receive the justice is to know your rights.

Jean Dinco, who works for UN’s social media platform and Human Rights shared with us how UN office communicates human rights, in terms of communicating to the public, reaching out to the journalist, or to meet the organization.

“The tip is to strengthen communication with the journalist. Despite the fact that we are living in a digital age, communication with the journalist is still and it remains a crucial part of the media of those all. Even though the final audience is the public, we cannot directly talk to them. Thus we aim to reach through specific media outlet that caters for specific audiences, and specific platforms,” Jean suggested one of the tips they use.

We had a break after Jean’s presentation. I decided to go to the coffee shop to experience how UN staffs enjoy their coffee break. A small cup of hot chocolate served in a glass cup, I hold my cup and settled down on the table near the one with the UN staffs. The shiny light beamed, and no electronic light was switched on. Each of the staff next table has their own glass water bottle.

Such an environmentally friendly place, I thought.

Last section we have listened to a group of speakers, who are more than welcome us to apply for an internship at the UN. They provided some information about applying and working experiences at United Nations; including, volunteering, internship, and the full-time job.

“As a fresh graduate I had no formal work experience, not really sure what I want to do what I am interested in and I have come across the UN Internship opportunity online. I just thought that maybe it might be impossible, it’s the UN,” the Vietnamese Human Resource worker at the United Nation said. “But I just decided to go ahead and apply.”

“It’s really something that you are not expected, but the most important thing is to just give it a shot and see where it goes,” she smiled.