Well… conferences come and conferences go. It is with a heavy heart and a bitter taste upon my tongue that I conclude this one. I had chosen to attend the PACEM in Maribus XXXII conference with the theme ‘Women, Youth and the Sea’ which had been held from the 5th to the 8th of November. It turned out to be a conference of inspirational highs and crushing lows.

It was formidable. A conference staged over four days with a rather impressive set of speakers and initially graced by none other than the President of Malta himself, Edward Fenech Adami… perhaps to have been taken as a warning of the political interests vested within the conference and its modules. On the whole the affair was rather well organized with an impressive line-up of speakers with very diverse backgrounds.

It is a shame that the student organization KSU did such a poor job of its entrusted role as promoter for the event. As it was, only the Geography department of the faculty of Arts received any word, the majority of materials remaining uselessly in the KSU’s office.

On the whole it is to be said that the conference went really well and a lot of interesting perspectives were touched upon. It also should be said that I met a few positive individuals.

No… my main grievance concerns a particular module which held my primary interest, the Youth Ocean Parliament. I fell into the trap of taking it seriously from the get-go, signing up for it the moment that I got the impression that Maltese university students’ participation was unreservedly welcome.

I had chosen to do that which I would normally do in such circumstances. I opened up, contributed and offered a tiny but crucial fragment of my viewpoint embodied in a proposed paradigm-shift on illegal immigration.

The opposition was clear from the start. I was told that I would need to tie my proposal to the ocean. I did this, but overnight it was also decided that the proposals would not be directly considered. Instead participants were offered a choice of five general topics to discuss and come up with proposals about. It came as no surprise to myself that my proposal in particular would not fit within any of them.

In spite of this major blow I sought to contribute to the topic of ocean governance, expressing more ideas with the other participants, themselves cheated of their chance to truly express their proposals in a formal environment - relegated to mere posters - were they lucky enough to have been informed earlier. In spite of my misgivings I accepted to co-chair this meeting, probably offered as a means of further ensuring that I did not make my views heard - though I hadn’t seen it that way at the time, taking on the role to the best that my dampened spirit would allow me to… though I fear that I am not the most adept at hiding my feelings.

I had hoped that a night of sleep would make me feel better about the whole affair, but the truth is that I felt all the more crushed. It was only out of respect for my co-participants that I attended the morning session… but could not bring myself to remain for photos of the Youth Ocean Parliament… which I increasingly saw to be a farce and did not wish to lend legitimacy to through my continued presence.

Yes… I regret my participation, though I recognize good individuals at all levels of its organization. Perhaps time will prove me mistaken but today it seems to me that the entire affair had been one of political convenience. I feel that if this is a foretaste of the future of the Youth Ocean Parliament then it is best that it not be formed at all. After all, what is a youth parliament other than an admission of a lack of youth representation in the ‘real’ parliament? Is the realm of youth and women in the ocean alone?

Furthermore, insult to injury came in the form of a speaker of African descent, who spent a fair amount of time lamenting over precisely the topic of illegal immigration. A brilliant speech by an intelligent speaker. Perhaps if I had been born a different race then I too might have stood a chance at having my voice heard on such a topic. As it stands, such was clearly not what was desired by the forces that be and everybody remains the poorer for it… hence the heavy weight that encumbers my spirit at this time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.