UArctic Congress 2018 highlights presented to Senior Arctic Officials
UArctic Vice-President Organization Outi Snellman presented the UArctic Congress 2018 at the meeting of the Senior Arctic Officials of the Arctic Council on November 1, 2018. In her presentation, Ms Snellman focused on the UArctic Congress 2018 Declaration as a message from the circumpolar higher education community to the governments and all the partners.
In the discussion that followed, the representative of Saami Council Gunn-Britt Retter commended UArctic on putting the indigenous peoples and gender issues up front: “UArctic just did it. No question. Now the Arctic Council can just do it.”
In his summary remark on the Congress agenda item, the SAO Chair Aleksi Härkönen stated that “mainstreaming gender issues is exactly what we have been discussing and that can be supported through UArctic. The networks will have gender issues in their programs for years to come in the ways that they are discussed; not raised as a separate item, but addressed in conjunction with education and other activities. We should highlight this as a model to follow.”
The Senior Arctic Officials meeting was held at University of Lapland, in Rovaniemi, Finland, November 1-2.