Age gaps and gender

One interesting distinction to note concerns age.

Official UN representatives speaking at the conference, usually career diplomats or lawyers, tend to be well over the age of 50 by my assessment.

Representatives of specific bureaus of other international organizations are often much younger: the 30-50 is much better represented.

Among NGO delegates, there is much greater variety. Some larger groups (especially Jewish organizations, by my observations) bring large numbers of very young (usually undergraduate-age) "foot soldiers." But even smaller delegations often appear as tandems of one or more older and more experienced activists and one or two members in their twenties or early thirties. Probably a result of limited funding coupled with the desire to initiate younger members into international networking habits.

Many journalists also look like they are around 30.

Elderly figures are often presented in honorific roles (e.g. Stephane Hessel's appearance on the first day), younger people, when invited to speak, are often "voices" called upon to illustrate specific cases of oppression (e.g. Ahmed Batebi).

It would be interesting to learn more about the age dynamics: e.g. established cross-cutting networks of interaction between officials/NGOniks from the same generation, generational differences in patterns of dialog/debate.

I do not, however, notice any striking gender disparities, although my (completley unsystematic) impression is that in older/younger tandems, the younger member tends to be female, and the older one male. Leaving aside hormonal interpretations, this may be a result of the changing gender structure of NGO involvement, or perhaps of gendered hierarchies within these organizations. To be studied.