Three research assistants of the Navarra Center for International Development were recently invited to participate in the United Nations Model of the Universidad de Navarra as experts on several topics discussed in the event.

The United Nations Model Universidad de Navarra is an event hosted by the Universidad de Navarra that prepares Spanish students for the world recognized WorldMUN, organized by Harvard. The Model intends to simulate the United Nations debate across its bodies to debate the current world issues. It will be held in Seoul on March 15th of 2015.

This year some of the NCID research assistants attended the event as speakers to talk about regions that they are coming from in order to give an insight into the big picture and problems that these parts of the worlds are suffering.

Sergio Daga, of Bolivian nationality, has worked for the Heritage Foundation researching development in Latin America. The title of his talk was “Peace, Democracy and Freedom in Latin America”, where he explained the paradox of the LATAM: high growth and poverty reduction combined with high levels of violence. One important conclusion he presented is that many countries are still transitioning, but the countries with weak institutions are the most vulnerable ones to fall in populist authoritarian regimes.

Godfrey Madigu, also a research assistant, comes from Kenya. He spoke about how to boost business in African countries, where some of the world fastest growing economies were registered in 2013-2015. He presented to his audience that national governments and international actors are playing the key role in accomplishing growth in the business sector. He added that some of measures that could help improve the business climate include more aid, debt cancel, and property right enforcement.

The final research assistant to present was Vitaly Pershin, speaking about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The roots of the conflict are deep and have many underlying historical, cultural and geopolitical roots. In order to understand the broader picture of the conflict, he instructed the audience on the historical of Ukraine during the 19th and 20th centuries, where present tensions between nationalism and Russian Ukrainians began to grow. Among the closing arguments of the talk was that in order to end the conflict, all parties will have to compromise, given the longstanding roots of the conflict. Otherwise, the conflict stands to grow in the coming years, with international consequences sure to come.