Global Labs

The Global Labs project aims to connect students from Geneva and beyond with the International Geneva ecosystem, to foster innovative policy ideas. Through an exchange with professionals and by co-writing a policy brief, each Global Lab strives to strengthen students’ set of hard skills (e.g. policy writing), soft skills (e.g. public speaking), and personal networks, while providing key multilateral fora with youth’s inputs.

The topic of the fourth edition of the Global Labs was “Food Systems Transformation”, because: What we eat, how it is grown and how it ends up on our plates not only has an impact on our health. They shape livelihoods, ecosystems and the future of our planet. In a dynamic one-day workshop, local students collaborated with four experts from International Geneva and beyond. The policy brief summarising the innovative ideas can be read below.

The focus of our third edition (December 2023-April 2024) was centered on International Trade within the framework of the circular economy. Recent crises have brought to light vulnerabilities within global supply chains, prompting discussions on the resilience of the international trading system. In response, policymakers and industry leaders are exploring strategies to address supply chain fragility, with the circular economy emerging as a promising avenue. Given that achieving a circular economy demands global collaboration, international trade will play a pivotal role in driving this transformative shift.

During our second edition (March-May 2022), we focused on communicable diseases and pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (PPR). In this context, foraus brought together local students with experts from the International Geneva to ideate recommendations needed to answer the following question during a one-day workshop: what measures should the international community, and Switzerland in particular, adopt to strengthen prevention of future infectious diseases crises and halt their rise by 2030? The second edition of Global lab concluded by the presentation of a jointly written project brief to Swiss authorities and relevant global health stakeholders in Geneva in May 2023.

In 2021, our first edition focused on the topic of noncommunicable diseases and related risk factors such as unhealthy diets, tobacco use, air pollution, or physical inactivity ended in May 2022. After an exchange with professionals from the WHO’s NCD Department, civil society (NCD Alliance), academia (University of Geneva), and the private sector (Price Waterhouse Cooper Switzerland), participants formulated policy recommendations to address NCD risk factors in the future.

Methodology: For this project, we used visioning, and backcasting, two participatory foresight methodologies to crowdsource participants’ ideas.