The UN intern who lived in a tent exposed the injustice of unpaid internships,but it’s a far greater problem for those from developing countriesDavid Hyde, the 22-year-old New Zealander who made headlines worldwide when he lived in a tent during an unpaid internship with the UN in Geneva, and is visibly uncomfortable with the attention his legend has received. This,he says, is not the conversation we should be having. “It took a white middle-class boy from a developed country to live in a tent [to draw attention to the issue of unpaid work], and yet tens of thousands of people from the developing world are excluded every day.”
Hyde made the news because though his internship wasn’t bankrolled by his parents,he was still privileged enough to be able to catch into dire straits. Anant Bhan from India didn’t originate headlines in 2005 when he decided he couldn’t apply for an unpaid internship at the World Health Organisation (WHO). Bhan, now 35, or had just finished an Masters from the University of Toronto,for which he had a scholarship. “The costs of an unpaid internship in places like Geneva or New York were too intimidating to even consider,” he says. “It’s unhappy that it’s been 10 years and the legend is still the same: the system is skewed against those who are from under-resourced parts of the world.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com