So join us, on Wednesday, September 8th at 7:30pm in Photonics 206 for our first meeting of the year!

We are a group of students with a common passion for current affairs, international relations and everything UN. In addition to our dynamic weekly meetings, we host two model UN conferences, travel to conferences at other universities, and are involved with various other activities throughout the year. All students, no matter what your model UN experience or international affairs knowledge, are welcome to join!

If you are interested in getting involved, first fill out our prospective membership form. You will be added to our email list to be informed of upcoming events and opportunities. Be sure to find us at Splash (August 29th) and Fall Activities Expo (September 15th) to find out more about the club, meet IAA members, and answer international affairs trivia!

Want to get involved now?

- Our first meeting of the year will be held on September 8th at 7:30pm in Photonics 206.

- Register for IBUCS to get a taste of what we do. Everyone is welcome, and it is a lot of fun! Click here to register. Email the IBUCS Secretary General at ibucs@buiaa.org if you have any questions.

- Join us for regular weekly meetings on Wednesdays at 7:30 PM in CAS 222.

- Join our Facebook group or our YouDo page, and follow us on Twitter!

- BarMUN, our collegiate conference held in the fall, is still looking for more students to take part in what is sure to be an exciting weekend. For more information or to fill out an application, visit the BarMUN website.

- BosMUN, our high-school conference in the spring is also looking for bright and shiny staff members. For more information or to fill out an application, visit the BosMUN website.

Please feel free to email us at iaa@bu.edu with any questions you may have. We look forward to seeing you in September!

Meet our new E-Board!

Regular weekly meetings on Wednesdays at 7:30 PM in CAS 222!

In these pictures: Our hotel (FuanGong Hotel) in the Grand Epoch City just outside Beijing; the beautiful scenes around Grand Epoch City itself; Sumo in front of the giant WEMUN Expo sign; Daniel and Frank in front of a bronze deer head; Julies assistant directors from the BeanMUN UNICEF committee; Frank delivering his speech at the WEMUN Expo opening ceremony; Tyler with two girls wearing Victorian style dresses at the Global Village event at WEMUN; all of us messing around with chicken wings and chicken hearts at a barbecue at the Grand Epoch City; us with Vincent the Director General of WEMUN at the WEMUN Masquerade Party; Sumo, Julie and Arjun making the most of the free masks they found at the WEMUN masquerade party; and finally pictures of all our committees at WEMUN Expo 2010. These pictures are courtesy of Julie Drapala, our honorary photographer for the weekend, and can also be found on Facebook if you search for them hard enough.

In addition, we have the promised footage of Frank’s trick at the WEMUN Expo Global Village event. Enjoy!

And finally, the WEMUN Expo 2010 Opening Ceremony video can be found here, and the Closing Ceremony video can be found here. These videos are really well made (by the WEMUN media team), and they’re definitely worth a watch.

Aura spent her summer in both Washington DC and New York City as she worked on the Operations team of the Global Young Leaders Conference. The conference hosts groups of up to 400 high-school-aged students from around the world. All this has kept Aura very busy, and it almost feels like she’s half way around the world again.

“I thoroughly enjoy my job as it allows me to interact with students from all over the world, visit the World Bank, the State Department and the United Nations Headquarters every other week and most of all I enjoy being challenged each day,” she says. “Being on the floor of the UN General Assembly was the highlight of my summer, where my Model UN nerdy self showed through like never before. I can’t wait to come get my debate on in weekly meeting simulations this fall!”

Angela spent a portion of her summer in Grenoble, France, living with a host family while taking classes at one of the city’s universities. She has learned about the culture of the Rhone-Alpes, the region in which Grenoble is located, and of France in general. Weekends permitted her to visit places like Geneva, Nice, Monaco, and Paris. She looks forward to returning to Boston with a better knowledge of French culture, affairs, and language.

Arjun attended the WEMUN Expo in Beijing this August, where more than 2,000 high-school delegates and more than 30 directors from schools and colleges around the world were in attendance. President Emeritus Frank Pobutkiewicz, and senior members Julie Drapala, Sumantro Das, Tyler Switkay and Daniel Freehling were also present.

– made several cosmetic changes,

– added a weekly poll,

– removed some redundancies, and

– updated ancient information.

We plan to add more features as they become available (like conference and travel team photos, an improved member’s section, promotional videos, and more!) but until then, explore the new site, enjoy the new features, and let us know what you think!

Featured articles include:

“The Failure of Immigration Reform Under the Bush Administration”
by Elizabeth Pierson, CAS ’12

“Cultural Diplomacy, Soft Power, and the Museum”
by Lester Ang, CAS ’10

“President Obama’s ‘Unclenched Fist’ Policy in Syria”
by Phillip Brougham, CAS ’12

“Corn is not the Answer”
by Sam Leone, CAS ’13

>>> Pick up your copy today at the IR department office or at various locations across campus. <<<

This is a rare opportunity for those who are younger than 21 to enter the Pub, but you must be over 18 to enter.
$5 for tickets (hurry and buy them ASAP; we’ve sold out in the past pretty quickly!)

Tickets will be sold at:
The next IAA weekly meeting at 7:30pm in Photonics 203 on Wednesday April 21st.
AND
The information desk on the 2nd fl. of the GSU, where you can pay using BU Convenience Points.
AND
The door.

Reasons to come:
1. AWESOME MCs
2. You can FINALLY put your knowledge of random trivia to use!
3. Prizes!
4. This will be one of the last IAA events of the year so come hang out with your favorite seniors!
5. The Famous Malcolm will be gracing us with his bar-tending skills!
6. $5 for: Fun, food, and facts!

So buy a ticket, bring your friends, put on your thinking caps, and we’ll see you at Quiz Night at the BU Pub!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=108840945821399

China has recently dominated the headlines of various blogs online and a few legitimate news sources due to its recent controversy with Google regarding censorship. Before that, China was in the spotlight due to Intellectual Property Rights violations, before that, China made the news due to tainted food and children’s products being exported, and before that, everyone was talking about the rampant corruption that is widespread in China. In addition to all this, China is being pressured by the international community to reevaluate the Yuan, autonomize Tibet, and figure out what their deal is with Taiwan.

Join us this Wednesday, the 31st of March 2010, at 7.30pm in PHO 203, as we discuss the Chinese Business Environment, and how the various factors of Chinese foreign policy fit into this concept with a focus on the most recent case of Google China. Our favorite BUIAA senior member, Arjun Gupta, will be commandeering the debate, a prospect which seems exciting and quite honestly, just a little bit scary.

————————————————————————————

BACKGROUND:

Google adhered to the Internet censorship policies of China, enforced by means of filters colloquially known as “The Great Firewall of China” until March 2010. Google.cn search results were filtered so as not to bring up any results concerning the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, sites supporting the independence movements of Tibet and Taiwan, the Falun Gong movement, and other information perceived to be harmful to the People’s Republic of China. Google argued that it could play a role more useful to the cause of free speech by participating in China’s IT industry than by refusing to comply and being denied admission to the Mainland Chinese market. “While removing search results is inconsistent with Google’s mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission,” a statement said.

In October 2005, Blogger and access to the Google Cache were made available in Mainland China after a Chinese-language interface was developed; however, in December 2005, some Mainland Chinese users of Blogger reported that their access to the site was once again restricted.

In January 2006, Google launched google.cn and confirmed its intent to filter certain keywords given to it by the government of the China. The restrictions apply to thousands of terms and websites. Google has claimed that some censorship is necessary in order to keep the Chinese government from blocking Google entirely, as occurred in 2002. The company claims it does not plan to give the government information about users who search for blocked content, and will inform users that content has been restricted if they attempt to search for it. Searchers may encounter a message, which states: “In accordance with local laws and policies, some of the results have not been displayed.” As of 2009, Google is the only major China-based search engine to explicitly inform the user when search results are blocked or hidden.

Some Chinese Internet users have been critical of Google for assisting the Chinese government in repressing its own citizens, particularly those dissenting against the government and advocating for human rights.

Google has been denounced and called hypocritical by Reporters Without Borders for agreeing to China’s demands while simultaneously fighting the United States government’s requests for similar information.

On February 14, 2006, protesters organized in a “mass breakup with Google” whereby users agreed to boycott Google on Valentine’s Day to show their disapproval of the Google China policy.

In March 2009, China blocked access to Google’s YouTube site; access to other Google online services was denied to users on an ad hoc basis.

In June 2009, Google was ordered by the Chinese government to block various overseas websites, including some with sexually explicit content. Google was criticized by the China Illegal Information Reporting Center (CIIRC) for allowing search results that included content that was sexual in nature, claiming the company was a dissemination channel for a “huge amount of porn and lewd content”.

On January 12, 2010, in response to an apparent hacking of Google’s servers in an attempt to access information about Chinese dissidents, Google announced that “we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.”

On March 22, 2010, after talks with Chinese authorities failed to reach an agreement, Google began redirecting all google.cn traffic to google.com.hk (Google Hong Kong), thereby bypassing Chinese regulators and allowing uncensored Simplified Chinese search results. As a special entity recognized by international treaty, Hong Kong is vested with independent judicial power and not subject to most Chinese laws, including those requiring the restriction of free flow of information and censorship of internet materials.

In Germany, Google censors certain Nazi websites. In the US, Google censors sites containing child pornography. In China, Google censors human rights groups, like Human Rights Watch, but many other things as well, like “Taiwan independence”, names of current and past presidents, names of locations, historical events and so on. Due to the broad scope of censorship in China, the list of queries hitting on censored results is huge, and often unrelated to sensitive issues.

Google was the last to commit to Chinese censorship requests, and they’re fairly consistent in disclosing censorship.

Google prints a disclaimer at the end of search results in most cases, though this wasn’t always the case before early 2006. The disclaimer may read, “In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed N result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org,” or “In response to a legal complaint we received, we have removed one or more messages. If you wish, you may read the legal complaint,” or (a translation from Chinese) “In compliance with local laws and policies, some search results are not showing.”

MSN shows a “Some of the results have been removed” disclaimer in China when search results are censored. Yahoo does not (or not always) disclose censorship, though they did at one time with the message “We have already helped you filter out excess web pages” or “according to relevant laws and regulations, a portion of results may not appear,” according to reports from Human Rights Watch.

In general, Google says that it’s their “policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so.” In regards to China, Google argued that filtering their results clearly compromises their mission, but that failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world’s population compromises their mission more severely.

Others, like Bill Gates (according to Times Online), supported Google’s position by arguing that state censorship is “no reason for technology companies not to do business in China”, adding that “access to the outside world is preventing more censorship.”

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/22/china.google.reax/index.html

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-03-02-n19.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20001212-245.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/24/google-china-sergey-brin-censorship

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1973410,00.html

As the semester winds up and we bury our heads in our work, an island not far from our coast is consumed by much graver realities. On January 12, 2010, a massive earthquake shook Haiti, destroying much of its capital, Port-au-Prince. As one of the least developed and poorest countries in the world, Haiti faces a slew of crises on a daily basis and as such, is ill-equipped to handle such a monumental catastrophe. The death toll rises each day as Port-au-Prince descends into further chaos.

Fortunately, the tremendous disaster in Haiti has spurred the international community to action. The effectiveness of this action, however, for the time being is under question. How do you feel the situation in Haiti is transpiring? Join us Wednesday, January 20th, in Photonics 203 to discuss the actions taken by the United States, OAS, and MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.

Cheers!
Your BU IAA E-board

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The BarMUN Secretariat is pleased to announce that BarMUN III staff applications are now open! BarMUN, BUIAA’s collegiate Model UN conference, is a fully-integrated crisis conference, and a great way to get involved with BUIAA. This year, we are also proud to add BarMUN: Historical to our conference. BarMUN: Historical is the first completely integrated historical track at any conference. It is set in the year 1694 and will run parallel to an eight committee modern simulation. Though the two tracks will not be interacting with each other, the addition of BarMUN: Historical gives both delegates and staff the chance to know their past and define their futures. You don’t need any Model UN experience to participate, and everyone is encouraged to apply. To do so, click the link below.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG1WSXpQb1VnUkVMNWFMdDQ0b3JTOVE6MA

The history of the DRC conflict is heavily rooted in the events of the Belgian withdrawal from the country in 1960. The withdrawal of Belgian power in the DRC led to a power vacuum. This power vacuum persisted until 1965 (due in large part to cold war driven assassinations), when Mobutu Sese Seko took power and consolidated his rule of the DRC with an iron fist. Mobutu established what can only be described as a cleptocracy, using loans from international organizations such as the IMF to embezzle millions of dollars from the government. Mobutu also extracted a vast amount of wealth from the eastern Congo, an area with vast mineral resources. This vast mineral wealth is still a driving factor in the conflict to this day.

To the east, Rwandan refugee Paul Kagame took up a high position in the Ugandan Army after Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA) overthrew Milton Obote in Uganda in 1986. Kagame would go on to use the infrastructure of the Ugandan National Army to create a Rwandan rebel force that would become to be known as the RPF. The RPF invaded Rwanda in 1990, leading to an instability that eventually erupted into the 1994 genocide. It was during the genocide that the RPF took control in Rwanda. The RPF forced those responsible for the genocide into Southwestern Rwanda, where they escaped into the eastern Congo by way of the French established “Turquoise Zone.” The genocidaires reconsolidated around the city of Goma, and most have remained in the Congo to this very day.

It was at this time that the Uganda/DRC/Rwanda powder keg exploded. Rwanda and Uganda supported Laurent Kabila and the AFDL, a rebel group that formed in the eastern Congo and slowly pushed to Kinshasa, overthrowing Mobutu in 1997. This became known as the First Congolese War. Soon after he consolidated power, Kabila turned on his supporters in Uganda and Rwanda, and began backing the rebel groups formed from ex-genocidaries (the ALiR, which became the FDLR). Kabila was killed in 2001, and his son Joseph Kabila assumed power. Joseph Kabila followed a similar policy to that of his father, fighting against Rwanda and the Rwandan backed RCD rebel group, while funding the FDLR. In 2003, the DRC established a transitional government, and in 2006 Kabila was elected president. Tensions in the area have since started to subside with the 2009 Joint-Military operation between Rwanda and the DRC, as the mission saw the opening of diplomatic relations and the removal of Laurent Nkunda and his infamous CNDP rebel group. Although this is a promising sign, recent altercations between MONUC and FARDC (The Congolese Army) have complicated matters significantly.

FARDC has been accused of killing civilians in the Kivu region, and Medecins Sans Frontieres has claimed that FARDC used MSF clinics as bait to lure civilians in the area into a trap. Following this development, MONUC pulled its support from the FARDC regiments accused of these attacks. FARDC has criticized MONUC for its move, and shortly after MONUC decided to cease it suspension of support. The future of the mission still remains extremely uncertain. MONUC’s mandate is set expire December 31^st 2009, and as of yet no move has been made to renew it. Should MONUC renew its mandate? What will happen if it doesn’t? Come join us in better understanding this topic and debating future moves this Wednesday, December 9th, at 7:30 PM in SMG 304!

Further information:

Key Players:

Congolese Government (FARDC): FARDC is a government army plagued by corruption and self-interest. The soldiers of FARDC enjoy looting and women much more than they enjoy anything else. The soldiers may come ready and willing to help the cause of peace and stability, but eventually crumble into the corrupt and self-serving system of the army. They fight only so that they can loot further, and continue to live life as if it is one big party. It is hard to say what the future of a force so plagued by corruption will be, but it is certain that only two things will be able to help to stem the negative impact of FARDC corruption: FARDC reform, or an increased presence of MONUC forces.

MONUC- The UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC has been victim of many bureaucratic time constraints that have weakened its ability to accomplish things on the ground. Corruption also runs deep in some of the units, as many soldiers have been accused of selling weapons and ammunition to the rebel groups in the eastern Congo. This hurts the reputation of the mission as a whole, even though many of the soldiers are truly trying to help maintain peace in the region. With a tarnished reputation, MONUC has had significant difficulties gaining the trust of the civilians in the region, making their mission that much more difficult. Further constrained by UN bureaucracy, MONUC has been struggling to create a force formidable enough to actually help maintain security. Without more support from the UN, a decrease in corruption and the trust of the local populations, MONUC will continue to struggle to obtain its objectives.

Useful Acronyms/Glossary:

AFDL- The “Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo.” The group led by Laurent Kabila that overthrew Mobutu.

ALiR- The “Army for the Liberation of Rwanda” was a rebel group formed primarily out of genocidaires from the Rwandan Genocide. In 2000, it merged with a Kinshasa-based Hutu group to form the FDLR.

CNDP- The “National Congress for the Defense of the People” (CNDP) was formed in 2006 by Laurent Nkunda. Supporters of ethnic Tutsi in the Kivu region, the CNDP fought against FARDC, FDLR and MONUC Forces. The group continued its campaign in the Kivus until 2009, when Laurent Nkunda was arrested by Rwandan forces at the beginning of a joint military operation between the DRC and Rwanda aimed at eradicating the FDLR.

FARDC- The Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

FDLR- The “Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda” formed in 2000. The group contains within it former genocidaires and is opposed to any Tutsi control in the region. Originally supported by Joseph Kabilia to help him fight against the Rwandan-backed RCD, the group continued its armed struggle after the Second Congo War ended.

MONUC- The United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the UN effort towards peacekeeping in the DRC during the Second Congo War.  MONUC forces were originally only observers in the conflict, instituted at the Lusaka Accords, but began to have a troop presence in 2000.  There are now approximately 18,000 MONUC forces in the region, and they have faced criticism for corruption and abuse of power.

Articles:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8337610.stm

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL3123409._CH_.2400

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8347503.stm

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-11/14/content_12454163.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8339693.stm