...and I thought grad school was tough on my brain!

Hi all out there in the world. I finally arrived to DC and began my internship 2 days ago at Brookings working on the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement. It is hard to believe that it has only been two days since they have had me jump right in and I already feel like a part of the team with deadlines looming. After presenting me with a list of about 60 ongoing initiatives, we boiled down my projects this summer to the following handful:

1/3 of my time will be devoted to Colombia. I will be helping to go over a draft report on the role of local authorities in the provision of services for the internally displaced, in preparation for an event with Colombian municipal authorities on improving their response and compliance with policies related to IDPs. I will also be helping with some of the research on a study of the role of Colombian IDPs in the peace process.

1/3 of my time will be devoted to special projects, including some research to support a guidebook for Mediators of Peace Agreements on how best to incorporate IDP needs into these formal agreements and into the process. I have already jumped right into analyzing every peace agreement since 1989 to look for references to the internally displaced and to determine which are good examples for future agreements. I will also be contributing later to an analysis of the role of local NGOs in IDP protection, the Nexus between migration and displacement, and prehaps a bit on corporate philanthropy and humanitarian response. Totally up my alley - I love this place!

1/3 whatever comes up! And this could be a million things at this point!! Next week I will be attenging a meeting with the Sudanese government and IDP groups, and another event on Afghan displacement and there are a billion other things happening since this year is the 10th anniversary of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

All I can say is that I am thrilled to be back in DC where there is so much of interest and where I am perhaps realizing that policy work can be extremely stimulating. I went to a lunch borwn bag today with the entire foreign policy staff and heard about their ongoing work on Afghanistan, Ukraine, NATO, the opening of the Arctic, Doha and other craziness.

So far what has amazed me is the amount of time I have to sit and work on one thing, to analyze one issue at length without having to constantly multi-task. Not sure which I prefer yet... seems I may have a bit of A.D.D! Gotta go focus some more - see you later!

Sue