This January Term, I worked at the Human Development Report Office (HDR), which is a part of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The office issues the Human Development Report annually, a report of its findings on the state of the world's countries with respect to a certain aspect of human development. This year, the theme of the report is human rights. The project started ten years ago, when a group of distinguished scholars (among them Amartya Sen, nobel laureate in economics) perceived the need to find a more qualitative and comprehensive measure of human development.
The HDR Office is relatively
small and can be described as studious, since there is a lot of
research involved in producing the report. The people are relaxed and
friendly. My supervisor was the manager of Programme Development and
Outreach, so my duties largely involved research to improve marketing
relating to the HDR. I spent my time locating important world
conferences related to issues of human development, and I also
researched nongovernmental organizations of relevance to the project.
I also had a chance to assist my supervisor with writing editorials,
and I performed background research and other tasks as needed.
One of the most interesting
experiences of my internship was the promotion of the newly released
CD-ROM, which contains all the past Human Development Reports. The
event included an interesting panel, and I had a chance to meet some
of the highest UNDP Officials, as well as prominent leaders from the
IBM corporation (and I ran into one of the daughters of Betty Shabazz
and Malcolm X at a reception!). It has been fun to work at
the UN and to have a chance to experience a dynamic and diverse
working environment.
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