Next Generation Diplomacy

By: Damilola Adeosun The International Humanitarian Law is explicit when it says that every country’s responsibility is to ensure security and a good quality of life for all of its population. Each nation worldwide must guarantee a decent life to every citizen regardless of gender. Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5) has nine targets and 14 indicators, which include: ending all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere; ending the exploitation of women and girls; ending female genital mutilation, increasing the number of women in decision-making areas, and increasing access to reproductive and healthcare. Among the many other issues we are fighting in today’s world, the one that is particularly urgent since it affects 51% of the world’s population is The Gender Issue. Women and Girls still face significant violence, lack of formal schooling education, job uncertainty, discrimination, and prejudice. Though many policies have been discussed and passed to address t...

By: Robert Kelly What is the real issue with a lack of universal access to quality education? What steps need to be taken to solve this issue? Have you ever stopped to think about the implications of non-universal access to quality education? By definition, Education facilitates learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, morals, beliefs, habits, and personal understanding. Education or knowledge is the key to unlocking a bright future. However, factors such as socioeconomic status leave a few community members locked out, trapped in a cycle of disadvantage. Naturally, education is a basic human right, so what can we do to ensure that everyone has the ability to exercise this right? First, it is vital that we understand that in addition to larger inequities throughout society and in our school system, there are also covert disparities present. However, before we discuss what those inequalities look like, let's learn about the history of our current education systems...

  Next Generation Diplomacy Poverty and How Covid-19 Made an Impact By Will Concepcion Poverty during 2021 Poverty, as defined by Mark Robert Rank, a professor of social welfare at Washington University, is “not having the money to purchase the basic necessities to maintain a minimally adequate life, such as food, shelter and clothing.” The impact of Covid has been immense as over 150 million more individuals are now in extreme poverty or living on less than $1.90 a day compared to pre-pandemic.  How did Covid-19 Affect Poverty in the United States? Before Covid-19 hit, until 2020 there existed a slight but gradual decline in the poverty rate in America; it hit an all-time low of 10.5% since the first poverty rates were published in 1959. However, the pandemic’s arrival in the United States changed everything, as it had vast socioeconomic impacts. When the pandemic first hit, the poverty rate rose from 10.5 percent to 12 percent due to the ailing economy and spike in unemploym...

What is Fast Fashion? And Why is it a Problem?  By  Emily Zhu We hear about fast fashion all the time, how it's unsustainable and destructive. But what is fast fashion?  Fast fashion is cheap clothing being produced very quickly. It's made in bulk, and the idea is to obtain the latest trends at an affordable price. Sounds good, right? With that also comes horrible working conditions and negative impacts on the planet, and much more. But before I delve deeper into all that, let's talk about the history of fast fashion.  To start, in the 1800s, all "fashion" was produced by hand. If you could, you would make your clothes. This was a very inefficient way to make clothes. Still, due to a shortage of other options, this continued until the industrial revolution where things like sewing machines made it easier and faster to produce clothing. Eventually, clothes became a way of personal expression, and trends were popping up left and right. So, clothing brands such as Za...

Asian Hate: A Kindergarten Class by Senuki Elvitigala #StopAAPIHate #RacismInSchool #RacialSlurs It was a bright, colorful day at your local elementary school, and the class was in high anticipation for their recess while they enjoyed lunch. After all, they deserved a break from all the essential addition and subtraction, coloring within the lines, and naps during class time. A conversation between two students is depicted. For context Student 2’s guardian has packed them a healthy, traditional meal popular within their culture for lunch. Student 1: “What’s that?” Student 2: “Oh, it’s just my lunch.” Student 1: “Seriously? Why does it smell like that?” Student 2: “What do you mean?” Student 1: “It smells like something that came from a trash can. Haha-” Let’s face it; kids are blunt. But I wonder how kids’ bluntness has more generally transformed into borderline racist comments over the past few years, as depicted in this conversation. The answer: racism has slowly been integrated int...