Before this year ends, on behalf of the FLIA Board and the rest of the FLIA team, I want to sincerely thank you for your kind support in 2016. It has truly been a great year for FLIA and I am very grateful and proud of the achievements we have made towards the vision that all of our members share.
I wish to express my deepest gratitude to FLIA team. In 2016, we moved one step closer to our vision, which is to build a global network for students, scholars, and practitioners to promote academic scholarship, public discourse, and the development of a global mindset at the intersection of law and international affairs. We also work to facilitate and create better strategies for developing countries’ governments, enterprises, and other organizations, in order to face global challenges, and to offer reliable educational resources and opportunities for young people, in order to help them become well-rounded and productive global citizens.
We could not have come so far without our partnership and cooperation with the Coalition for Peace and Ethics, the Business and Human Rights Catalyst of the Alliance Manchester Business School of Manchester University, the Torino World Affairs Institute of the University of Turin, the Research Center for Chinese Rule of Law of East China University of Political Science and Law, the Penn State Research and Career Development Network for Law and International Affairs, the University Center for Global Studies of Penn State University, the Penn State International Arbitration Group, the Chinese Initiative on International Law, and many others from some of the greatest universities and institutions in the world. We are honored by the cooperation opportunities with the United Nations Forum on Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law. We are inspired and encouraged by our partners and people with all kinds of backgrounds and ideas, but meanwhile we all share a similar belief, which is to develop global awareness and build an informed world.
Most importantly, we are deeply grateful for the support of our members and followers from all over the world. We are committed to serving our members, especially our ambitious young people. We have hosted six interns over the course of the summer and the fall semester, all of whom were seeking to start a professional path in the area of law and international affairs, and to obtain more practical knowledge and experience by working with FLIA’s global team and world-class scholars.
We also organized four series of international conferences, including a side event at the United Nations Forum on Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law. We participated in the Forum from its inception by reaching out to 42 institutions and nearly 1000 stakeholders to identify possible topics for the first Session of the Forum and assigned delegations to attend the Forum.
We published a book that will help young Chinese students better understand the legal education and law schools in the United States. We finished several research projects and commentaries, including a research project “A Study on the ‘Go Out’ Policy System for Chinese Social Organizations,” which was sponsored by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of People’s Republic of China. Among the received 422 proposals, FLIA was the only foreign non-governmental organization to be awarded this prestigious project.
There will be many new programs and research projects, and upcoming events in 2017. We hope you will continue to support us. We also welcome people to join us in our global team. We are young, passionate, and committed. Like we have been saying, we look forward to growing up with the world, and with every global citizen to see a more peaceful and intelligent global community.
I wish you peace, health and happiness in 2017.
With deep appreciation,
Shaoming Zhu
Founder & President, Foundation for Law and International Affairs