At the International Media Centre on Thursday, the G8 Research Group is hard at work. The actual summit only caps off a year’s worth of research for the team.
This group of students, researchers, and a professor defy any straightforward explanation - not a club, not a course, not an NGO, and not a media organization.
The students here, about three computer-filled tables worth, are only a small portion of the number students who actually participate at home. The organization functions as a meritocracy: only the best researchers come to the summit. Over 100 students at U of T participate in the G8RG, during the year, and last year there were over two hundred applicants.
Their most famous task - that gets them quoted in the Washington Post and Financial Times - is to measure and report on how well the G8 nations comply with what they agree to at each summit during the rest of the year. Two reports per year, each one a tonne of work, take up the time of most group members.
Joanna's unit, Civil Society and Expanded Dialogue, is responsible for understanding the relationship both between the G8 and civil society (organised interest groups in society) and between the G8 and developing countries invited to the summit: China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico.
Finally the G8RG's journalism unit keeps track of news stories, and writes in-depth features about the member states' involvement with the prominent international and domestic issues.
While inside the media centre they work constantly. All of them have to produce reports they are either submitting or working on everyday - most of them work from 9 a.m. each morning until midnight. The commute from the bigger city of Rostock to Kulungsborn, where the media centre is-a ride about one and a half hours long.
I wonder if it is all worthwhile.
Hélo’se Apestéguy-Reux, analyst of France and African developments within the G8, certainly thinks it is. She says being at “the summit is eye-opening.” It “is a good chance to see what the behind-the-scenes is like.”
The G8 summit is a rare opportunity to walk from head of government’s speech to another. Hélo’se likes observing the leaders: “Different leaders have different styles of speaking and it’s easier to see that in person.”
Sarah Yun, researching Canada's role in the G8 and a part of the Civil Society Unit, thinks that the G8RG is a unique opportunity for an undergraduate. "There are no other students here other than Oxford and U of T. The Oxford team just joined on this year."
Furthermore, as an undergrad mid-way through her degree she has already had the distinct experience of being interviewed at this summit as an expert, “Janet Chow, Brian Kolenda and I just came back from an interview with journalists from Mozambique and Uganda who were looking for experts on G8 compliance on African Development commitments.”
Sarah says that the discussion of controversy about the G8 can sometimes be skewed: “A lot of talk about the G8 is whether you are for or against. The work of the G8RG is to study the compliance whether these leaders do what they promise they will do and I think that’s a more important question. The average compliance rate among all eight countries is 47% this year.”
Fellow researcher Catherine Kunz, following all financial aspects of the G8, is skeptical about whether G8 leaders always have the ability to comply with what they promise: “They come up with all these fantastic commitments and promises but the parliamentary system does not provide them the authority to make those kind of commitments with certainty.”
In the end, the G8RG creates valuable resources and information for all parties interested in the G8. Hélo’se believes that even opponents of the G8 could find these resources useful, “Some people from civil society will use the website for information on the G8, on which they can base their arguments against it.”
