“A Career Limiting Response” for International Development Students

Note: Follow up from Queens International Development Conference, 2009

For the past six years students from multi-disciplinary backgrounds including engineering, commerce, international development studies, amongst others have successfully hosted Queens International Development Conference (Queens IDC). This year’s conference, Change: A Thousand Things Done Differently” held on March 12-13th was no exception. Seasoned speakers and panellists from various institutions across Canada’s East coast presented on topics ranging from the foreign aid, to human trafficking, technology and development, water issues, women and development and more.

Queens IDC with its mission to “inspire individuals to live socially responsible lifestyles; discover multiple perspectives of development issues, enabling individuals to derive their own views; and create awareness of the many issues surrounding international development”, invited two distinct keynote speakers who have devoted a significant amount of their lives to international development work. Keeping the conference’s vision in mind, the goal of the keynote speakers and every panellists for that matter was to give students inspiration about international development service/work as solid foundation of knowledge and experiences that student can draw from as they pre-empt their roles as future leaders international services.

In spite of the amazing success of the conference there seem to be few unnoticeable “glitches.” Not only were the two keynote speakers life-time bureaucrats, but they both represented high policy level employments with apparently less experiences when it comes to grassroots engagements. The first speaker painted the typical picture of Africa’s rift without really explaining why almost all of the policies adopted by the international community to “help” Africa have failed. He rather blamed African leaders as the main blocks to “putting the puzzles” together for Africa.

The second keynote speaker gave a general overview and changes in development policies highlighting selected macro-projects. Whilst these kinds of presentation usually benefit the significance of historical contexts and relations to international development work, this speaker left the hall filled eager-to-learn students with much dissatisfaction as he failed to answer the last question posed by a student. What is your opinion of Canada’s role in international development and what can be done better the student asked. This is a “career limiting response so I can’t answer your question.”

Bedazzled! This response is incongruous to the notion of free and democratic Canada where accountability, sustainability and transparency of significance. Queen’s IDC, despite is grass-root state; is a microcosm of how Canada is expected to make a difference internationally; even as Canada assumes it role in the G8 summit, it is important to openly dialogue its agenda for action. So, what does the second speaker’s response tell the students, our future leaders? If we are supposed to be educating students about contributing to international development, how is it that our government is not open to providing education and direction for these aspiring future leaders?