Alcorn to host UN Conference on Sustainable Development
Alcorn will host the United Nations (UN) Conference on Sustainable Development Thursday, March 20, 2014. The Conference will be held in conjunction with the Humpty Dumpty Institute’s (HDI) Higher Education Alliance (HEA) and is part of a series of events with the goal of creating the next generation of global leaders by connecting academic institutions with the UN.
UN experts and diplomats will gather to look at how the United Nations addresses sustainable development through the lenses of gender, human rights, post-2015 sustainable development goals and the experience of Jamaica in sustainable development.
“The conferences and lecture series offered by the UN increase knowledge on the role the United States and other countries have in multilateral, multi-country initiatives around the globe,” shared Dr. Dovi Alipoe, director of the Office of Global Programs at Alcorn.
In October 2013, Alcorn hosted a UN lecture on peacekeeping challenges discussing the United States role in supporting U.N. peacekeeping operations around the world, both militarily and politically.
The Conference on Sustainable Development will take place in the J.D. Boyd Library, Medgar Evers Auditorium with a morning session from 10:00 – 11:30AM, an afternoon session from 1:15 – 2:20PM and a plenary session from 3:00 to 3:45PM. Featured speakers will be Ambassador Courtney Rattray, Matthias Klettermayer, Shireen Said and Elsie-Bernadette Onubogu.
“Presenters at this conference are world class experts on issues related to global sustainable development,” says Alipoe. “We are honored to have such an elite group of speakers. The Conference will be highly beneficial to all majors as well as the entire university community.”
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Dr. Alipoe at 601.877.6543 or [email protected].
ABOUT SPEAKERS
Ambassador Courtney Rattray
Courtney Rattray is ambassador and the permanent representative of Jamaica to the United Nations. He was the ambassador of Jamaica to China from December 2008 – May 2013. Ambassador Rattray’s presentation will focus on the Jamaican experience of sustainable development in the UN context currently with an emphasis on the millennium development goals and post-2015 sustainable development goals.
Matthias Klettermayer
Matthias Klettermayer is the sustainable development officer responsible for communication and outreach in the United Nations’ Division of Sustainable Development. He is the lead author of the Division’s monthly newsletter “Sustainable Development in Action”. Prior to joining the UN, Klettermayer worked at the British Embassy and the UK Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Vienna. He will speak on the United Nations and post-2015 sustainable development goals. He will provide an introduction on sustainable development from the perspective of the United Nations, and give information on where we stand at the moment on the millennium development goals and how post-2015 sustainable development goals are being formulated.
Shireen Said
Shireen Said is the global policy adviser on human rights for the Bureau for Development Policy at United Nations Development Programs (UNDP). Prior to joining UNDP, Said worked various assignments, including chief director in the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, Republic of South Africa. Said will speak on human rights and sustainable development. Her presentation will introduce the idea of human rights as a pre-condition for sustainable development and explore UNDP’s human rights-based approach to sustainable development.
Elsie-Bernadette Onub
