Internship at the ECLAC, UN

Dept. of Latin American Studies

Si Yeong Park

From 1^st September, 2009 to 28^th February, 2010

At the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, United Nations

I had originally intended to join ECLAC ad-hoc Internship Program supported by MOFAT (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Korea) as a way to participate directly with Latin American issues, in order to understand how ECLAC could become more involved in planning the national policies of the huge and heterogeneous region. And my desire to experience ECLAC was perfect choice to improve not only myself also my extent of knowledge of the region.

ECLAC (the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), which is headquartered in Santiago of Chile, is one of the five regional commissions of United Nations. It was founded with the purpose of contributing to the economic development of Latin America, coordinating actions directed toward this end, and reinforcing economic ties among countries and with other nations of the world. The promotion of the region’s social development was later included among its primary objectives. Moreover it has 8 ECLAC sub-regional headquarters in America continent with 61 years of history.

As an intern with ECLAC, I am working in the Division of Production, Productivity and Management, especially Agriculture Unit. The Division collaborates with and responds to the demands of public and private organizations involved with policies regarding production, productivity and enterprise development. These are: United Nations organizations and other international bodies; public agencies at local, national and regional levels; private sector and civil society associations and, donor institutions. Decision-makers and associated technical staff as well as academic researchers, professional consultants and students in the topics covered by the Division are important users and collaborators.

The most key word and recent trend in ECLAC since world economy crisis has been “Innovation” for sustainable development throughout the strong partnerships of all collaborators. Many valuable conferences, discussions and investigations are holding all the year round in order to achieve this goal of ECLAC. Furthermore, there are great efforts to build a new development model for Latin American region where is full of heterogeneous unsolved problems.

My major task in ECLAC is to investigate about subjects which I am interested in as almost other investigators and interns do. Thanks to full support of my Unit director and supervisor, I did a survey for “Chilean consumers’ preference towards Asian agro-processed foods since FTAs (Free Trade Agreements) booming”. They fully discussed and advised me in order to take the lead in exact view in my investigation not only during my survey also all process in paper. In this period I could learn much about what factors should have good investigators to give more chance to know the people and to offer unbiased perception about issues.

It left 2 months more internship here actually. In this period, I would like to expand more personal relationship with scholars, investigators and foreign interns apart from learning about ECLAC’s “Innovation” concept for sustainable development in the region. I believe that sharing each various point of view for the same issue would help me to grow up as a Latin American regional expert in the future.