Onyinye Nwezi, LLM Computer and Communications student at Queen Mary, 2008-2009, entered the 2009 ITU Cybersecurity and ICT Applications Essay Competition and was selected as one of the winners. She won a paid three-month Consultancy Contract in Geneva at the UN agency for telecoms from November to January. .
The purpose of the 2009 ITU Cybersecurity and ICT Applications Essay Competition was to increase awareness of cyber security and the potential of ICT Applications, and give young people, especially from developing countries, exposure to main issues related to these topics and to ITU's ongoing work in this area.
Onyinye comments on her winning essay entitled: ‘Personal information online/telephone/internet: responding to user concerns',
‘I've always wanted to understand how telecommunication is regulated globally - and the relationship between telephone and the Internet. I thought that doing an internship with ITU would be a good way to gain practical experience.’
‘I was also auditing for topical issues in communications for my LLM dissertation. I decided that ITU, being the UN organ responsible for the regulation of standards and in communications, would have one or two projects to give me an insight on what to write on. So, when I saw the call for applicants to participate in the essay competition, I knew this would afford me the opportunity I was looking for.’
Onyinye will be returning to Queen Mary in January to start her PhD. She hopes that knowledge gained through her UN Consultancy Contract will inspire her PhD research, ‘I am especially interested in how the ITU will respond to the legal issues involved in mobile money transfer. This is a new project that is being launched by most African countries now.’
She says, ‘However, I couldn't have achieved this without the assistance I received from my teachers at Queen Mary who operated an 'open door' policy and let me tap from their wealth of experiences.’
Read about the LLM in Computer and Communications Law at Queen Mary.