EuroMUN 2015 - Restoring Stability – Pursuing Peace, Security and Human Rights

If you have always dreamed of being a diplomat whilst walking around at these huge United Nations Conferences, listening to powerful speakers and drafting up resolutions that would engage the entire world; attending a Model United Nations (MUN) conference is the thing for you to do.

Not that I want to be a diplomat, but I was interested in how such a conference would work, and besides I was being asked to replace a friend of mine that was registered for it. And so I went. During 4 days of 9 till 6 I was representing the delegate of India in the United Nations Environment Programme. As this was my first MUN, I was not familiar with the procedures, but that came along while the topics were elaborated and debated.

The first topic was Social and Ecological Impacts of Climate Change in the view of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the second topic (a little more accessible in my opinion): Removal of Rainforest for economic interest. As it is a simulated United Nations Summit, the procedure is very similar to the ‘real’ conference. First, the topic is discussed by the whole committee (around 30 people normally), followed by the forming of alliances and groups which all work on the so-called ‘working papers’ in which clauses are written down that follow the opinion of these alliances. Often, countries with the same interest work together so that they have to make as little compromise as possible regarding their country’s position on the topic (e. g. BRICS, African Union). Afterwards, these working papers are presented to the whole committee and discussed and debated on. In unmoderated Caucusses, the different alliances and countries come together to discuss whether it is possible to merge the working papers into one to three draft resolutions. More debates follow on these draft resolutions, and the legal officer reviews the draft to see whether it meets the UN requirements. Afterwards, amendments can be requested to further adapt the draft resolution(s) to the standpoint of the different alliances, and to ensure that a majority of the committee agrees on what is stated in the paper. Finally, the committee votes upon the draft resolution, and when the (two-third) majority agrees, it becomes a resolution and the topic is finished. This resolution represents all that has been debated on in the committee, and can be seen as the outcome, or result of the conference.

It was very interesting to see how such a conference was organized: dress codes, prepared lunches, official committee pictures, delegate placards, speaker’s time limits, diplomacy rules, punishments for late comers etc. I was surprised by the amount of diplomacy with which most delegates addresses the issues (“Dear honourable chairs, fellow delegates, the delegate of Malaysia is concerned about …”) but that also made the conference more ‘real’. As at the real summits, there are a lot of issues to be addressed (and almost always too little time) so that gives some problems:
A lot of talking, little action. A lot of agreements, little consensus. A lot of frameworks, little commitment…

There are several other MUNs in the whole world, but also in Europe like OxMUN (Oxford), HamMUN (Hamburg) and IIMUN (Istanbul). You have to be enrolled in a university (or high school) in order to take part, often there are trainings and mock sessions to prepare you for the conference. You learn a lot about social, environmental, political and economic issues at these conferences, in addition to getting to know people from all over the world, see major cities, improve your public speaking skills and have in insight in the methods of the United Nations.

If you are interested in when and where the next MUN is taking place, have a look at this website: reform.un.org