(This piece appeared previously in Student magazine De Moeial in Dutch)

As a former Political Science student at the VUB, I had the opportunity to intern at the United Nations headquarters in New York between January-July 2014. It would be the pinnacle of the internship experience and the wet dream of many political scientists with an interest in International Relations.

It’s just not for everyone. After earning an additional master’s degree in International Security in Amsterdam and doing some research here and there, I already had a better chance of breaking that first famous selection barrier of elite UN recruiters. However, the UN puts several obstacles in the way of the ambitious mortal who wants to play with the big boys. The cost of living and working unpaid in New York for several months without having to sell a few organs on the black market is immense. Therefore, for most people, this is impossible without getting hard-earned pennies from mom and dad.

Consequently, the group of elite Europeans is heavily overrepresented and there is only a scant representation of people from the so-called underdeveloped countries. Those who do come from the latter group are usually children of ministers or wealthy businessmen. Without a Flemish subsidy for internships, providing me with a living wage, I too would not have had the opportunity.

It became clear to me that I am only one of a few people here who was lucky to get a grant, in order to help run the modern slavery mill.

The pessimist factory

Much can be said about the atmosphere that prevails among the work force at UN Secretariat. Pessimism, cynicism and pitch-black humor are commonplace here. Although everyone probably arrived here with a healthy dose of realism about the project that is the United Nations, there are no idealists to be found in the paid labor force at the UN Secretariat. Cautious hope for certain projects is there and it would lack nuance to say that the UN does not have merit, but nowhere is one more critical of the UN than within the UN itself. Yet I notice that in discussions with outsiders, people will always defend the UN’s potential. The eternal reflex: no one is allowed to offend our group except ourselves.

The truth is: if everything would work the way people envision it here at headquarters, we would have established world peace a long time ago and hunger would no longer exist. There is, unfortunately, a great discrepancy between the UN as a body with disillusioned suckers as employees and the United Nations of member states that each have their own interests and motives. The politics behind every decision or blocking of it transforms every do-gooder into a deadly pessimist. Especially in the department where I work, the Office of Disarmament Affairs, you notice how much member states really foster standstill.

Maintaining a status quo through hypocrisy

Where you would assume that every country would support some degree of disarmament in the world, it has become painfully clear to me from day one that significant disarmament is an illusion. Countries simply make too much profit on the production and sale of weapons. Hidden behind the motto “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” they shift the responsibility away from themselves, even though they have every interest in keeping conflicts fed in order to keep selling their weapons. At the same time, they pump huge sums of money into peacekeeping operations to keep up the appearance of peace.

One of the UN Millennium Goals for 2015 is strongly focused on development, but the recurring argument is that there is simply not enough money to realize all these projects.
In our office was once the most depressing counter that counted daily how much money is spent worldwide on the military-industrial complex. And that’s just the amounts that countries officially declare in mandatory reports to the UN. Every day that counter came to some $5 billion or so. That’s double the annual United Nations budget for all things development and security. It was taken away right after I arrived as it was “just for a campaign”.

Although treaties are regularly signed to regulate arms exports and dismantle nuclear weapons, the reality is an abundance of seemingly good intentions that have no practical implications. In these circumstances, our department’s task is to motivate countries to ratify treaties, achieve implementations, and organize conferences. Like motivating a bunch of selfish cats, the secretariat feels like the least likely actor to ever make member states comply with their promises. For example, through the Nonproliferation Treaty, we have been trying to agree for 46 years how we would eliminate nuclear weapons. This is effectively equivalent to spamming countries by asking them over and over again what measures they have already taken in the meantime. A tedious and seemingly fruitless task. The longer the bureaucratic mill turns, the longer there are needless deaths and escalating conflicts, and the more money some countries make from maintaining such a perverse status quo.

It’s fun interning at the UN. Fortunately, the parties are worth it.