Catherine ShiptonMA Student, 2020-2021 MA Representative - Anglophone One of the main reasons I chose the University of Ottawa’s International Development and
Globalization graduate program was to have the option to enrol in a co-op program. I had completed my undergraduate degree in 2016 with flying colours and lots of transferable skills, but I had struggled to enter the world of development work in the years that followed. Like many of my peers (and perhaps even you reading this right now!), I was determined not to let my worst nightmare come true – a Masters graduate with no relevant work experience! I’m very happy to let you know, that nightmare did not become a reality. I landed my first placement with the Bureau of International Crime and Terrorism at Global Affairs Canada (GAC) and will be returning shortly to continue with a second placement. While I have since replaced my previous nightmare scenario with new worries - like securing a full-time position post- graduation being one! - I believe it’s quite valuable not only to reflect on how far I’ve come but alsoto share my experiences and advice with others beginning their co-ops or entering into the world of work for the first time. So, let’s start at the beginning. What in the world are those job postings saying? I remember skimming through hundreds of postings and not understanding the role of the organization or the work that the co-op student would be expected to do. I mean “promoting international cooperation” and “assisting with policy analysis” could mean anything, right? The Government of Canada has an institutional vernacular and a particular high-level way of speaking. To an outsider it may seem vague, but to an insider it’s the most appropriate way to accurately speak about roles and responsibilities. Every team, department, and branch handles multiple files, whether thematically or geographically focused, which have many moving parts. Thus, the work that they do is incredibly broad and complex. High level language enables your potential co-op employer to tell you about all their work in a quick and concise manner. I promise you, they aren’t just being vague on purpose. Hint: Look up whole of government approach – it explains how issues are spread out across departmental divides so all relevant stakeholders from the RCMP to ECCC can work on these shared files in a streamlined and comprehensive manner. That’s great, but how can an outsider understand this high-level language? Each governmental department is guided by an overarching mandate handed down by the Prime Minister and Ministers. At GAC, our mandate comes from the Feminist Foreign Policy. This establishes priorities and objectives for all of GAC’s work: diplomacy, trade, security, development and consular services. The Feminist Foreign Policy is then broken down into more workable sections according to your branch and division (quite often different issues receive a National Strategy somewhere on the way down). Eventually, it becomes a small enough piece so that an individual employee can handle it. So, day-to-day Sally might send an email to someone she knows at the Government of X to see if they have any updates on Y, while Mark may participate in an experts panel at an international conference to share best practices on Z. But it’s not effective to write “send emails” and “be a panelist” on a job posting. Instead, by using high-level language your employer can link those day to day tasks to broader strategic objectives and GAC’s overall mandate. Thus, the description of Sally and Mark’s work becomes “strengthening bilateral partnerships and international cooperation” and that’s what you will come across on a job posting. Now that you understand a little bit about the work that a department and branch might do, what are you expected to do? Someone please explain, what is policy analysis!? Don’t tell anyone but I’m still sort of figuring this one out. In my first placement I received the title of Policy Analyst and was tasked with working on the trafficking in persons file. Specifically, I was tasked with .. well, analysing policy. Policy is the instruction manual or roadmap to achieving strategic priorities and objectives. It’s the how to the mandate’s what. So, let’s say your mandate is to enhance X priority, the policy’s function to determine how best to carry out said enhance-ing. And the policy analyst? Well they have to come up with rationale behind each of those decisions; the supporting evidence for why or why not Canada should do Y, as well as identifying areas which can be strengthened. So, what does that look like? In practice, this might be monitoring emerging international trends and research related to your files. Since new information is always being published, you have ever increasing data and sources to consider in your analysis and your subsequent recommendations. In fact, that was one of my tasks as a co-op student! Did anyone tweet “trafficking in persons” and “new research” or “report” today? Do any of the usual suspects have a new publication – UNODC, ILO, IOM? Scholarly sources count too – I’d check out a relevant journal or even *gasp* the uOttawa library! You’ll also be the recipient of many emails “flipped” your way by colleagues “FYI” if they think something could be of interest to you. The more informed you are, the better recommendations you can put forth. Strengthening international partnerships is another great way to help a policy analyst develop policy rationale – what are other countries doing and can I learn anything from it? Did they do something that worked really well (best practice) or did they do something that ended horribly (lesson learned)? One of the ways a policy analyst can do this is through participation in international fora like the UN. I was lucky enough to attend two United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crimes (UNTOC) Working Groups as well as the Conference of the Parties (COP) as part of the Canadian delegation. At these fora, States Parties deliver interventions outlining their government’s actions, share best practices and lessons learned. I was tasked with feverishly documenting down all of it and later writing it up into reports for my fellow policy analysts to read. The Working Groups also negotiate recommendations which are then sent to the COP and adopted, becoming politically (and sometimes legally) binding for all States Parties to the Convention. This is where the politicking takes place and where you as a policy analyst get insight into other countries’ strategic priorities and objectives – always useful information to have! You’ll learn who like-minded countries are with whom you can further collaborate, as well as who is nonaligned and thus be better prepared to resist their moves. While there are many more roles and tasks associated with policy analysis, working for the Government of Canada, and navigating your first co-op placement more broadly, my advice has to end here - I have to get back to writing my thesis proposal. Ultimately, the best way for you to learn is through doing, and you are more than capable of doing it! Be proactive, ask questions, do diligent research and foster relationships. You never know where a co-op opportunity can take you. Good luck!
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Adesola AnyaegbuMaster's Student Marriage should be a celebration of love, commitment and family, however, in many racialized communities around the world, marriage is often reserved for individuals who fit into societal heteronormative standards – this is a problem.
When we think of gender-based violence in forced marriages, our minds can wander to children who have been forced into arranged marriages. This may take place as an expression of monolithic cultural and religious traditions, or, as a strategy to mitigate the effects of poverty, by poor rural families in the Global South. However, intersectional feminist perspectives highlight the need for greater considerations of LGBTQ+ communities, in forced marriage situations. For example, in South Asian cultures, individuals who do not follow given societal norms or prescribed gender identities and sexual orientation, are often rejected from their communities. In Bangladesh and Pakistan, homosexuality is criminalized, with the maximum punishment of a life sentence and capital punishment, respectively. Forced marriages are commonly found practices among South Asian communities in the diaspora – this is a form of honour-based violence. Families, in many cases, arrange marriages for their children, especially those who identify as queer, in an attempt to preserve the family’s honour within the local community. Thomas Reuters Foundation reports the case of Noor, a lesbian British-Pakistani woman. She was told by her family to “find someone for yourself or we’ll find one for you.” Noor was forced to marry another gay man, and has been left impoverished, as a result of the end of her fake marriage. Avant le départ :
Orientation générale; entrevues / questionnaires:
Des questions? Vous pouvez contacter : Sophie Corneau- China : Scorn067@uottawa.ca Yoad Avitzur- Israel/Palestine: Yavit034@uottawa.ca Antoine Fournier- Lebanon Afour043@uottawa.ca Liana Fraser- Uganda Lfras041@uottawa.ca Opportunités de financement / Funding opportunities : BESO: https://www.uottawa.ca/graduate-studies/students/awards/ontario-graduate-scholarship FQRSC (for Qc residents): https://www.uottawa.ca/graduate-studies/students/awards/fonds-quebecois-recherche UOttawa: https://socialsciences.uottawa.ca/students/graduate/finance-your-studies#international MITACS : https://www.mitacs.ca/en Before departure:
Interview / Survey Guideline:
Got questions? Feel free to reach out Sophie Corneau- China : Scorn067@uottawa.ca Yoad Avitzur- Israel/Palestine: Yavit034@uottawa.ca Antoine Fournier- Lebanon Afour043@uottawa.ca Liana Fraser- Uganda Lfras041@uottawa.ca Funding opportunities : OGS : https://www.uottawa.ca/graduate-studies/students/awards/ontario-graduate-scholarship FQRSC (for Quebec residents): https://www.uottawa.ca/graduate-studies/students/awards/fonds-quebecois-recherche UOttawa: https://socialsciences.uottawa.ca/students/graduate/finance-your-studies#international MITACS : https://www.mitacs.ca/en A crises for who? Social reproduction and the social relations of the Cape Town water crisis12/21/2018  By Adrian Murray, PhD candidate At the height of the water crisis, Adrian Murray traveled to Cape Town in March 2018. In this blog, he offers his reflections and shares his photos, which explore the daily experience of water and sanitation in one of the Cape Town's many informal settlements. After several years of drought, water levels in the reservoirs and dams supplying Cape Town reached critically low levels in late 2017 and the city warned that it could run out of water, or reach “Day Zero”, in early 2018. The crisis had been declared a ‘national state of disaster’ by the South African National Disaster Management Centre. While initially set for mid-March of 2018, dramatic reductions in water usage and measures to increase supply have meant that “Day Zero” predictions have been pushed back such that, given adequate winter rainfall, the city now predicts it will avoid running out of water in 2018. The dramatic reductions in water consumption, down to 500 million litres per day (MLD) in February 2018 from 900 MLD during the same month in 2017, were achieved primarily through household conservation, pressure reduction, the installation of household flow regulators — aka water management devices (WMDs) — and punitive tariffs. All households have been instructed to reduce consumption to below 6000 litres per month or 50 litres per person per day based on a 4-person household. If usage exceeds 10 500 litres per month (87.5 litres per person per day) households face the installation of a WMD to manage and cut-off the flow of water. On top of this, escalating tariffs were introduced in January 2017 which ramp up after 6000 litres per month (indigent households still receive this for free provided they stay below the 10500 litre limit) to which yet another dramatic increase of 26.9% (with the same increase for sanitation) has been announced in the mayor’s March 2018 budget speech. Paradoxically—given that several state reports quite accurately predicted the current crisis as far back as the early 2000s, urging various levels of government to take action to address the problem far in advance of the one the city faces today—the city has insisted that it was caught off guard by the crisis shifting the blame firmly onto the shoulders of residents. In a press release in early January, the city admonished residents, which it characterized as careless and unwilling to save water, that it would proceed to force wasteful Capetonians to comply with water restrictions through the above measures. As one city councillor and former executive deputy mayor recently pointed out in a speech to city council, the city’s claim that the crisis came as surprise is “complete nonsense.” This has been particularly infuriating for working-class Capetonians, who use disproportionately less water than more wealthy residents. For example, informal settlements account for only 4% of Cape Town’s water consumption despite making up some 14% of the city’s population. The great leveller?
On the surface, at least when it comes to the sharing of blame and the general lack of water, some argue that Capetonians are all in the same boat. As a small hotel owner in Rondebosch recently put it “It’s a leveller, we’re all the same now. If there’s no water, nobody’s got water.” But as the late geographer Neil Smith argued in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina ‘There’s no such thing as a natural disaster’. Drawing attention to the uneven social relations of ‘natural disasters’, the impacts and effects of which are mediated by the contours of race and class—to which I will add and emphasize gender, among other social relations—Smith’s words beg for renewed consideration in light of the polarized impacts of the water crisis in Cape Town and the city’s thoroughly neoliberal response to it. In Cape Town the contours of race, class and gender are remarkably uneven. The second largest city in South Africa, Cape Town remains deeply divided along racial lines, bearing the imprint of South Africa’s apartheid past which has only been made worse by the economic trajectory adopted in the post-apartheid period. The country itself remains the most unequal in the world, the majority of its black citizens mired in poverty, with the material conditions of the majority having worsened in the past 20 odd years. When it comes to accessing services like water South African’s find that, despite access being extended, it is increasingly mediated by the market and their ability to pay for services. In a society characterized by spiralling inequality and ‘jobless growth’, more and more working-class South Africans are unable to pay for services, eking out an existence on what little the state provides free of charge. What’s more, the water crisis has a disproportionate impact on those who do the majority of household and community labour—key to social reproduction: the process of (re)producing and maintaining people today and into the future—Women! Working-class women continue to bear the brunt of the crisis, as they are forced to manage escalating restrictions to water use in a situation already characterized by inadequate access to water. Water that is cut off every day by a WMD after 360 litres has been dispensed; water that must be fetched from standpipe several hundred metres away; water that must be negotiated for with the landlord; water that must be recycled over and over and used for many tasks; water that must be conserved so children are told to not wash their hands and not flush the toilet. The social character of disaster and crisis What claims to the great levelling impact of the crisis and efforts to respond to it miss, as Smith reminded us in relation to Katrina, “is that far from flattening the social differences, disaster [response and] reconstruction invariably cuts deeper the ruts and grooves of social oppression and exploitation.” The city’s strategy to cut back water usage, detailed above, has enormous implications for overcrowded working-class households in both the short-term, as they disproportionately suffer restricted access and escalating water bills as the shortage worsens, and in the long-term as water commodification becomes normalized out of the “necessity” of managing the crisis through restrictions, rising rates and WMDs. The deepening of inequality in Cape Town through the response to the water crisis is clear in the disproportionate installation of WMDs in working-class communities, the disproportionate impact of increases in water tariffs on working-class household budgets and the disproportionate impact of the crisis on the quality of working class life. All the while, little has changed for wealthier residents. As one middle class resident of Vredehoek told me “I only shower at the end of the day now, rather than at the beginning too.” Meanwhile, as many working-class women have noted in the course of the crisis, despite the fact that in situations of inadequate housing in which the majority of the working-class lives more not less water is needed to meet daily needs, getting by on 50 litres a day is nothing new; the city’s response has just made it worse. This blog was republished with the permission of the author. International Development students and professors,
On Thursday November 1, the graduate student association invites you to International Development trivia night! It will be the perfect opportunity to test your knowledge with your colleagues and professors. It will take place at James Pub (390 Bank Street) and the evening will begin at 7:00 pm, with trivia starting at 7:30 pm. Snacks will be provided and there will be prizes for the winners. Teams will be determined in the half hour before trivia begins, so make sure to arrive by 7:00 pm. Looking forward to seeing everyone there! International Development Graduate Student Association executives La formation sur les objectifs de développement durable des Nations Unies s’est déroulé le 2 novembre 2017 pour les étudiants, les diplômes et les membres de la communauté d’Ottawa par des
membres du personnel de l'ONU, des diplomates, des ONG et des fonctionnaires gouvernementaux. Organisé par l’association étudiante diplômée de l’école de mondialisation et de développement international (GDVM), la formation soutient la jeunesse sur la sensibilisation et les pratiques de mise en oeuvre au niveau local des objectifs du développement durable (ODD). Ceci est une formation menée par la jeunesse et aux services de la jeunesse. Les étudiants et les membres de la communauté qui assistent à la formation ODD ont été sensibilisés et enrichis par des compétences de développement professionnelles pratiques qui leur permettront de favoriser le changement aux niveaux local et national. Dans la célébration du #Canada150, cette formation à uOttawa faisait partie d'un programme national appelé la formation sur les ODD des Nations Unies qui a pour but de mobiliser 10,000 jeunes canadiens pour sensibiliser et mettre en oeuvre les objectifs par 100 actions locales et 50 formations dans des collèges et universités à travers le Canada en 2017. GDVM est heureux de partager un bulletin suite à la formation ODD de l’ ONU. Ce bulletin fournit plus de détails sur certaines des organisations partenaires, y compris des possibilités de bénévolat ou d'emploi disponibles pour aider les étudiants à mieux s'engager. On 2 November 2017, the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals Training was delivered to about 180 students, alumni and Ottawa community members by UN staff members, embassy diplomats, NGOs and government officials.
Organized by the University of Ottawa International Development Graduate Student Association (GDVM), the practical training supports youth on advocacy and local implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. This is a youth-led, youth-serving program. Students and community members who attend the SDGs Training Seminars are propelled into passionate advocacy and equipped with the practical professional development skills that will allow them to foster change at local and national levels. In celebration of #Canada150, this uOttawa training was part of a nation-wide program called “SDGs Youth Training Canada” that aims to mobilize 10,000 Canadian youth to advocate and implement the SDGs through 100 local actions and 50 trainings in colleges and universities across Canada in 2017. The training was developed by the Foundation for Environmental Stewardship. GDVM is pleased to share a newsletter in follow-up to the UNSDG Training. This newsletter provides details on some of the partner organizations including volunteer or employment opportunities for student engagement. |
