Y7 Summit 2020: Diary of the UK Delegation

DAY 1- MOHAMED ABDELRHMAN

The first day of the week was the first day in which most of the delegates got to know one another. We started the day with 3 brief 15-minute meetings with other delegates from countries and tracks that we had not yet had the chance to meet! It was just a strategy by the organisers for us to meet some more of the amazing delegates throughout the cohort.

After a short break, we came to the communiques which we had read previously in preparation for the day. Going through each communique, the other delegations had the chance to pose questions and challenge some of the statements that they thought could be improved, or that a track may have not considered. It was a very useful session as having a fresh pair of eyes (or 24 fresh pairs in this case) brought things to light that we may not have previously considered problematic. If there were things that we could justify, we would challenge with a response. However, there were a lot of comments that we took on board and we went away, overnight, to try and think of some solutions to the challenges posed and create a finalised document that could be passed. This led us to day 2.

DAY 2- JAMES FORSEY

Day 2 of the summit has just come to a close and I feel like I am now settling into the format of how this week is going to be run. The organisers have done an incredible job in adapting to the circumstances and have gotten by with very few technical glitches which is a real credit to them. 

Today was the second day of the private summit.  The day started with a reflection on the feedback we received from the 32 delegates on day 1, this was for me back with my Energy track. Having spent some time with the wider delegation on day 1 giving and receiving feedback, returning back to the energy track group really made it clear how we had formed really strong bonds over the past few months. It was a nice relief to be back with familiar faces and discuss the changes that we felt were appropriate to make. 

We debated some of the wording and elements of our draft communique that had received feedback and agreed on how we would approach adapting the document. There were a number of changes made in our two hour session. We were then sent back into our main group with all 32 delegates and Sergio, our Italian delegate, did the honour of presenting our changes back to the group. 

It was a great relief to have our communique pass with unanimous votes and make it into the final document in its entirety! 

The peace & security track had a harder time, they did not receive unanimous votes and as a result their communiques in their entirety did not pass through completely. The contention was however over the wording of one of the recommendations in the two page document. It was really interesting to see this process unfold and further negotiation was required within their tracks to iron out these changes. Thankfully an agreement was reached between the parties and the document made it through. 

Day 3 tomorrow marks the first day of the public summit with Mohamed kicking us off on the global connectivity and trade track and I am excited to see how the format translates into the public summit!

DAY 3- ZOE MARTIN

Today marked the first day of the official summit where the public were able to become audience members. The day started with a welcome from the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy’s chairman and Cisco’s SVP of Corporate affairs, Tae Yoo. This was then followed by a compilation of all Youth Delegates from G7 countries video introductions, featuring @tomforseyfilms animation that he created for the UK – an amazing opportunity to get to know fellow delegates in a virtual setting. This was then followed by a brief message from the Canadian Ambassador to the U.S., Kirstin Hillman. 

A highlight of the day was the fireside chat with Shamma Al Mazrui, the Minister of Youth from UAE. Her leadership journey was inspiring, and really demonstrated that youth can play just as an important role in government affairs as any other. What made this interaction so special for the youth delegates, was that she was the youngest government minister in the world - being appointed by Prime Minister Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in February 2016, just age 22. Again, an amazing opportunity to see youth leadership at the highest levels. 

To finish off the first day of the summit, we saw our UK delegate Mohammed open the first track presentation, Global Connectivity and Trade, and what a great job he did. Mohammed’s knowledge for the subject and excellent presentation skills led the way for the other speakers. The Q&A that followed, showed the delegates passion for the subject through confident and eloquent answering. 

A great first day of the official summit!

DAY 4- VIRGINIA STUART-TAYLOR

Day 4 of the summit kept us busy, with three of the four different tracks formally presenting the proposals they’d worked so hard to negotiate. There were over 300 people in the audience today, so a good dose of pressure for the 24 delegates presenting! 

Our UK delegate James did a brilliant job starting off the day by leading the Energy track’s presentation, and the Q&A afterwards demonstrated just how much expertise on climate change and energy is pooled within that track of 8 delegates. It was inspiring to hear the detailed explanations behind their recommendations and I thought it was a perfect showcase of how young people can lead, and demonstrated that expertise doesn’t necessarily require age and decades of experience. 

The second presentation was given by the Peace & Security track, in which I’ve been working and negotiating for the last 2 months. Having finalised our communiqué just yesterday (after a tense last-minute negotiation on a single call-to-action, as James alluded to in his diary from Tuesday!) we’d rushed into action on developing our presentation. I presented our proposals on Disaster Mitigation (learning lessons from Covid-19 ahead of future non-traditional crises) & on Democratic Resilience (with policies on election integrity, mis- and dis-information, and coercive economic diplomacy, among others) and found the Q&A a stretching intellectual exercise - and it was great to deepen the discussion with a really engaged audience.

Third was the Education & Jobs presentation led by UK delegate Zoe, who defined her track’s scope and very eloquently responded to questions on their policies, even making links across the different tracks, showing her understanding of the interlinkages between the divers policy areas. We were all blown away by Zoe’s presenting skills - she’s clearly a natural!

YPFP also planned a host of guest speakers for us today: the Italian Ambassador to the US Armando Varricchio; Japan’s G7 Sherpa, Mr Kenji Kanasugi, Senior Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs; Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer; U.S. Institute of Peace’s Nancy Lindborg; and Omar Al Olama, Minister of Artificial Intelligence from the UAE.

All three tracks found it an intense but rewarding day after months of hard work with our counterparts, who’ve become good friends by now, after so many hours of weekend Zoom meetings! The only shame is that we couldn’t all celebrate together afterwards, as we would have done if we’d been meeting in person in Washington DC as originally planned.