By Spokesman Newsroom
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts (Thursday 15th June 2023)- The St. Kitts-Nevis delegation participating in the 111th International Labour Organization (ILO) Conference being held in Geneva, Switzerlandhosted at the United Nations Headquarters-has gotten media interaction via a social media platform that reaches millions of young viewers, generally ages 17 to 28.
Government Advisor Geneva Liaison Ruben Escalante-Hasbun during an interview informed that Global Citizen is an [NonGovernmental] organization “that was founded 20 years ago by three guys who were at the age 23 in Australia and the idea was how to leverage the voices of young people into forcing politicians and the private sector to create change And it’s been growing and right now we are I want to say one of the largest advocacy organizations globally.” He spoke about the approach of having influential and wellknown entertainers being messengers. “We usually use what is called like a ‘Pop and Policy Approach’.
So, you will always see very sound political analysis, but at the same time it will come together with like Beyonce or Rihanna or Lady Gaga or Metallica or any of the big names because that is basically how we get young people Involved, you know, I mean if you follow It’s not the same kind of attention that you will get if you read a tweet by the Secretary General of the UN than that coming from your favorite pop star. So, it’s not about the message only but also about the messenger.” According to EscalanteHasbun: “And one of the big things that we do is we try to make sure that young people in the global South get engaged.
We are very very committed with a small island developing states we have been working a lot with members in the – LOCAL NEWS – 3 Caribbean and also the Pacific Islands and we hope to continue to be able to do that. And here what we are doing is basically that is deconstructing all the technical difficulties of a UN [United Nations] summit and we are breaking it down to our public.” The Global Citizen official highlighted the role of the focus of the organization at the ILO event.
“It’s been always part of the staple things that we do so it’s always about taking things that are really complicated like financial support for members for countries or climate financing or the reform of the International Monetary Fund,and one of the reasons why a lot of people don’t want to engage with that is because number oneit sounds boring and number two, even when they are interested, it’s way too technical and they just don’t get it. So, you need to be able to find a way that you explain that to young people in a way that they get the gist of it in one minute and that they understand that it’s about them, right?
That is affects them, it affects the access they will have to opportunities ….like climate change in the Caribbean right like the hurricane season and everything. Everybody’s aware that it’s affecting them at the personal level but when you try to explain concepts such as loss and damage or what is going to happen at COP 28 or what is happening here that’s when you tend to lose people because everything gets drowned in terminology terms and procedure whereas you should be focusing on giving the people access and highlighting their results.” Notably, the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP28.
It is slated to held from November 30th until December 12th at the Expo City, Dubai. Escalante-Hasbun went to say:”…that is what we are doing with social justice. Social justice is a very ethereal concept. It can be defined in many ways but at the end it comes down to I think access to opportunities equality to Access resources and the ability to express your own voice but at the end of the day what you need to make sure is once this summit ends that countries and the private sector and employers and also everybody involved are going to be doing something about it and you need to stop you need to establish metrics that you can measure this against.
Some of the metrics are already included in the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) for 2030 , and some of them are not, and that is going to be a challenge. I know that ILO is trying to launch a coalition for social justice and that is basically the big call to action of this summit but it will be about not only who makes part of the coalition but also what are going to be the targets that are going to be working against that can be measurable and that can be understood by people in simple terms.” Delegation Head for Team SKN Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Employment and Labour Denise Daniel was put in the Global Citizen media spotlight quizzed on the topic on the importance of social justice.
The other representatives for the delegation are Workers Representative Precious Mills of the St. Kitts-Nevis Trades and Labour Union, Labour Officer Jeneve Mills as well as the Chamber of Industry and Commerce Executive Director Kevin Taylor.
Asked about the social media platforms used by the Global Citizens and its outreach, Ruben Escalante-Hasbun replied: “ So at the very beginning when the NGO was founded we will do only Twitter and we were really effective about Twitter we will Launch what we call Twitter storms. So, back in the day, we would target one politician like the Prime Minister of Norway and then she will receive like hundreds of thousands of tweets from our audience until she will react Now social media has changed a little bit.
So, we are doing still Twitter but we kind of like follow the tendencies of young people. So, now it’s more about ticktock. It’s more about Instagram but The difference is that TikTok and Instagram are visually based so you need to make sure that the video is appealing enough that they are going to stay and watch it; otherwise people just keep swiping and you need to make sure that you grab people’s attention What is the engagement level So the engagement is it depends on the issue it depends on whether we have something that is geolocated or if it’s global but if you add up all our following across social media, it adds up to 11 million people Now we would love for it to be like truly global, but we are still trying to get People to sign up to our app in Southeast
Asia and India in Africa as well. “ I mean you can follow all the actions that you have on our app So we have the global citizen app Okay and there you can basically access all the videos and then all the actions and by action we Mean we have a lot of petitions that you can sign. We have a lot of tweet templates that you can send and Normally but eat by each action that you take on the platform you get a point and In different markets those points can be redeemed for sustainable products or for coffees or for some of the big prices are for example Coldplay tickets.
We work in coordination with Coldplay and then they will give us like an Allotted number of tickets that we can give to people that have taken enough actions or they can come to our festivals and be there a sort of word for all the actions they have taken for all the year.” “ So, it’s really engaging. It has been designed to capture young people’s energy and attention in a way that actually makes them empowered that they know that they can do something about these things that they care,” he added.
When asked to share a message to the young people in terms of the importance of getting involved on matters and topics of the world, Escalante-Hasbun commented: “ I will say it is about you it doesn’t really matter how boring things may sound just remember that it is about you and one of the prerogatives of being a citizen and a global citizen is that you get to care and that you get to do something about it and organizations such as ours together with many other organizations are presenting options for young people to get engaged and to know more Including along the path along the yeah on the issue of social justice Which for us is essential to get to the elimination of extreme poverty to climate action and to equity.” Interested individuals are encouraged to Join the movement at Global Citizen by downloading the Global Citizen app, and follow Global Citizen on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and Twitter. Front Page Photo:Delegation Head forTeam St.
Kitts-Nevis Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Employment and Labour Denise Daniel (left) and Government Advisor Geneva Liaison Ruben Escalante-Hasbun of Global Citizen pose for a photo at the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland following a media spotlight on the importance of social justice (Photo: by Precious Mills) – POLITICS –
be eligible for financial compensation. The current embassy will not be affected by the new laws, which have bipartisan support. Moscow currently holds the lease for a patch of land, acquired in 2008, some 400 metres (0.25 miles) from Canberra’s Parliament House.
It has been laying the foundations for a new embassy building, but construction has proceeded slowly. As relations between Australia and Russia soured in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, the former moved to rescind permission for the new building.
A previous attempt to cancel the lease was thrown out by the federal court last month, prompting the new legislation. 15
The laws took less than five minutes to be introduced, and passed through the House of Representatives. “We don’t expect Russia is in a position to talk about international law, given their rejection of it so consistently and so brazenly with their invasion of Ukraine,” said Mr Albanese, who condemned Russia’s “illegal and immoral” invasion of Ukraine.
Former UK diplomat Alex Bristow of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told AFP that Russia has some of the “largest, most capable, most aggressive, and least constrained intelligence services” in the world. “Given the proximity, it could be a form of electronic surveillance operating out of the embassy,” he added.
