I felt lucky to be able to visit here, just as Vienna itself must have felt a little lucky and glad to be neutral in the Cold War so that it could get the UNO City established within itself.Roughly the first part of our tour was spent up in the press box of one of the large conference rooms, which was very cool to look down upon. We learned that in order to be an interpreter, you have to know at least three languages (which may or may not include the six official languages of the UN: English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese). Apparently the interpreters don't always know what the conferences are about, nor are they always able to translate something well. One funny instance that was related to us involved a delegate from Russia trying to tell the assembly a a humorous vignette which couldn't be translated easily, so the interpreter just said "Could you please laugh politely? The Russian delegate is trying to tell a joke."
The second part of our tour was spent with a representative of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is headquartered in Vienna. Most of what's heard in the news these days concerning the IAEA involves them investigating dubious nations with dubious nuclear ambitions. Hence, it was nice to hear of all the positive things that the IAEA gets to do too. Like helping developing countries use nuclear technology for medicine, agriculture, and mineral exploration. Of course, the agency does have some pretty serious jobs to do, such as making sure that spent fuel rods are not used for malicious purposes.
I learned from this representative that the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China are the only countries legally allowed to have nuclear weapons since they exploded devices before 1967 and have pledged under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue good faith negotiations towards disarmament. The rest of the 182 member countries have pledged not to proliferate at all. Supposedly one of the ultimate goals of the IAEA is to completely disarm all nuclear weapons from the entire world. I wanted to ask how that would possible, but I didn't get to ask it.
Oh, and I must comment on how ironic it is, having the IAEA in a nuclear-free country.
After a very excellent and international lunch we had the third part of our day, listening to a representative from the Office on Drugs and Crime discuss the problem of human trafficking in the world today. This turned out to be a very eye-opening presentation, as we were told of the multiple reasons that people are trafficked, from labor to organ removal to sex work. Really horrifying things. And the really unfortunate thing is that so many victims get led into a life of being trafficked after having been told that they're going to do something good for their families. Then once they're under another's control, they're subjected to countless methods of entrapment. Their passports could be taken away, their "wages" could be held indefinitely, religion can be invoked, the list goes on... Anyway, I was really impressed with this speaker, her lecture, and with this general department of the UN; I got really motivated to learn more about human trafficking. There was a book being passed around describing the trafficking situations unique to every country in the world. I tried to read as much about Austria and the United States as I could before having to pass it down; if I remember right Austria tends to get a lot of people from eastern Europe brought within its borders for labor.
I really should investigate internships for working here. I'm really impressed with this whole UNO city and it seems like a lot of good work for the world gets done here. This would be a very prestigious place to be.
The German word of the day is "heute," meaning "today."
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