Model United Nations

Last week, fifteen McDaniel students traveled to Boston to participate in the 61st Harvard National Model United Nations.

Bilal and I holding Suriname’s flag at opening ceremonies.

The conference started on Thursday evening with opening ceremonies. As far back as almost everyone in attendance could remember, HNMUN had been held in the Boston Park Plaza hotel; however, the hotel was under construction, so this year it was held in the Copley Marriott. This made opening ceremonies strange as the Park Plaza had overhanging balconies and traditionally teams would race to get their flags displayed there. This year, the second they unlocked the doors, our delegation raced for the front row of chairs. From there, we proudly displayed our flags and chanted our countries’ names over and over: Suriname! Saint Vincent and the Grenadines!

That night, we had our first committee meetings. I was in the Historical General Assembly representing Suriname. I had a friend in the same committee representing St. Vincent. Before the meeting was called to order, we went around and introduced ourselves to other people in the committee. Since it was a general assembly, all 192 countries in the UN were able to have a seat; as such, there were about 140 in attendance. My least favourite thing about UN is the size of the committees, but this was better than last year when I was in Social, Cultural, and Humanitarian, as there, countries were allowed two representatives per country, meaning over 300 students were there.

Bilal on Parker’s shoulders–Suriname pride!

In HNMUN, the goal is to get a draft resolution passed. Firstly, committees pick a topic. Then, working papers are presented–papers drafted by various countries that present ideas and perhaps specific goals. These are debated and discussed. Following this, draft resolutions are presented–papers written in resolution format that have very specific goals and ideas. Amendments can be proposed to these, but at the end, they are voted on and require a majority to be passed.

Before the conference, we receive information on two topics per assembly that we’ll be discussing. While I was advocating for discussing decolonization and democracy, our committee voted and decided to work on millennium development goals. It’s technically possible for a committee to go through both topics, but highly unlikely in the bigger committees. In the three hours of committee last night, most countries got a chance to speak and broadcast their opinions on the topic. From there, many alliances were formed.

Tim on Trevor’s shoulders getting that St. Vincent flag up!

A fun part about UN is passing notes–several people volunteer to be pages throughout various committees, and to communicate with other countries, you write a note to them and address it for delivery by the pages. This saves people from running around and being distracting in committee. I like it especially because I tend to write better than I speak, so I can formulate my responses better.

While committee didn’t start until 1PM the next day, I was up early and meeting with new allies to work on working papers. It was amazing how quickly alliances had formed. The girl I was initially working with, who represented Yemen, was very distrusting of a lot of other countries. We ended up breaking apart, though, and the group I ended up working with included Spain, Armenia, South Korea, and Bangladesh.

Dr. Neal sitting back and watching the drama.

The topic was uncommon for the UN as many countries had similar goals–we all wanted to have an improving world created by MDGs (millennium development goals.) As such, though I was representing a country from South America, the only other South American country I ended up working closely with was Paraguay.

My group created a google doc and asked all of the people we worked with to add their ideas and thoughts to it in whatever language they wanted. From there, Spain, Armenia and I did most of the work in gathering ideas that we all had in common, making them specific, and turning them into more formal language to create a working paper. I was ecstatic about this as I was able to make the specific goals I wanted very clear while quietly ignoring things that I didn’t support. However, while the three of us had done all of the work, we soon realised that we’d gotten ourselves into the middle of a very power hungry group.

One of the General Assemblies meeting.

The dais–the committee chairs and moderator–said that we could only have four working papers presented, which was a disappointment to me as last year eight had been allowed. Ten working papers were submitted, leading to a frantic search for allies to merge with over dinner on Friday. I worked extensively on the merger between our working paper and that of the Republic of the Congo, Uruguay, Gambia, and some other countries. When we went up to present our paper, however, Spain, Armenia and I, who had written basically our entire working paper, weren’t even offered the opportunity to speak.

I was frustrated that my efforts were going unrecognised, so I decided to play the field a little. My overall goal was to represent Suriname’s interests, so I decided to try and get my few lines about education into as many draft resolutions as possible. I went to the countries representing the various working papers and was completely open about my intentions. It was surprisingly easy to get my thoughts into almost all of the draft resolutions that were presented to the committee.

Cole in committee.

The topic was, in the end, too broad in my opinion, as we passed the first resolution that we voted on. Last year my committee discussed the rights of the migrant worker, which was much more controversial, and some resolutions countries couldn’t vote for as they went completely against their views. This year, there was no reason for countries to really vote against resolutions, which made it less exciting. But it was still great to walk away with a resolution passed knowing that the weekend’s work had actually gone towards something, even if I hadn’t written a good chunk of the resolution as I had our initial working paper.

Political Science students attending the trip can also receive 2 internship credits. I didn’t take them last year, but since I dropped a class, I was able to take them this year, which was exciting since I actually get some recognition on my transcript for participating. It was my second time attending the conference, but McDaniel’s 43rd. I was really lucky to get on the team last year as a freshman, but it was probably harder to get on this year as they cut the team due to budgeting. MUN was truly the highlight of my year last time, and I was kind of worried that this time couldn’t be as good. However, the conference didn’t let me down.

Part of our delegation at opening ceremonies.