Since 40 years ago, the UN COPUOS has fulfilled the task of monitoring and providing an open forum for space activities. Personally, for me the UN system is best described by Secretary-General emeritus Kofi Annan as ''the UN offers the best hope of a stable world and a broadly equitable world order, based on generally accepted rules''. COPUOS - the Committee for Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is the world's foremost playground on Space Policy issues and their impact on our societies. Consisting of 69 members, it is one of the largest committees of the UN. For this reason, I valued the opportunity to be able to present youth views on some of the most topical and pressing issues dealing with the myriad of natural disasters that we have experienced in the Asia Pacific region. To add to the original expectations I had on how the COPUOS Secretariat and Delegations would receive my statement, I was particularly impressed to see how supportive they were of our views, activities and how many paid special attention to announce SGAC and our work in the past year in their statements at the start of the session.
If you are not familiar with the workings of the UNCOPUOS - there is some very good information on its history and progress available here: http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/COPUOS/cop_overview.html
SGAC has a permanent observer status at the COPUOS. This means, that SGAC can give periodic updates to the Committee and express views of youth in space policy areas. I had the honor to make a technical presentation on the topic of 'Youth Views on capacity building for community based disaster management in context of the recent disasters in the Asia Pacific region'. You can find the day's journal (for 16 June 2008 - when the presentation took place) here (http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/COPUOS/index.html) and a copy of my presentation and statement both on the SGAC website as well as the UNOOSA website.
- Presentation: SGACand OOSA website
- Statement: SGAC website
Thank you to all NPoCs, members and advocates who helped in improving this statement. As there were already several presentations that were going into details of how space agencies were tackling the issues of un-uniform distribution, processing and availability of timely data along with what frameworks are already in place, there was not much room to give them a 'one-stop' solution. However, our role is to see where we fit and in and if there is a lee-way, find our niche in the matter at hand. In terms of endorsements and support, several very respected and well known policy experts such as C. Arevalo-Yepes (Chairman, UNCOPUOS), A. Lee, M. Othman, G. Brachet, S. Camacho, R. Radhakrishnan (Director VSSC, ISRO), M Heppener (IAF).
What could be next?
The importance of SGAC's work and its awareness is increasing at COPUOS. It is very encouraging to see that people who are the main decision makers are interested and welcome the views of young people. It is now time for us to take a more active role, becoming partners in helping them get some insight into what matters to young professionals in space. This would take NPoCs collaborating with other youth organizations within their countries and formulating recommendations after careful consideration and research so that the delegates (who tend to be either from space agencies or from ministries of foreign affairs) can take these and implement them. For anyone who wishes to come along and present at UN COPUOS (or write to delegates) research on the committee's views and discussions on a particular matter is of utmost importance as there is no need to 'reinvent the wheel' every time.
Also, COPUOS is a great time to meet with other people from SGAC - which is always a fantastic experience. The UN Building at the Vienna International Centre is fascinating too - a virtual tour is here. We had a good delegation with several representatives from multiple regions. SGAC organized a gathering along with ISU and you can see some familiar faces here.
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