99 - I am the very model of a modern model-UN-country 🌏
Hey there, !
99th post - so close to the big 100! Please help me fill this out if you can :)
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Here’s a story of when I realised the power of diversity, how it could triumph at a model UN, and the thrill of the game:
1.
I think it was in year 9 or 10 when the model UN came up at high school. I thought it would be a fun experience to join in for (obviously, with the added benefit of missing school for an extremely nerdy endeavour), and I signed up for it. I didn’t know what I was expecting - there wasn’t a lot about what I should bring, or anything to practice…I didn’t even know there was a ‘scoring’ system to see if you could get to the next ‘round’ of model UN.
I also hadn’t watched this episode of Community yet…
But it was a competition, and you had to be able to argue, think of amendments, speak cogently and negotiate with other countries. Definitely not up my alley, but not not up my alley, right? :D
It was held in a medium sized conference room - a ton of high-school students in uniform trudging into a series of tables put in a conference / board-room type set-up (like a big rectangle of tables). My partner and I were assigned France - part of the Security Council, and wielding considerable power because of our veto power~!
Nearly everyone had brought a thesaurus / dictionary. I instantly felt underprepared - I didn’t know we had to bring something like that…why would we need to? Is language that hard? I only found out why later on…
2.
From what I remember, the resolution for the first round was determining what should be done about Taiwan (i.e. should it be independent of China? Or should it be recognised by the UN?).
We were taught a very regimented way to speak on topics, answer questions, clarify other countries arguments / responses and send messages to each other (through the staff, written on scraps of paper).
There was also an outside area where you could ‘negotiate’ with other countries on supporting your amendments, getting more time to speak, etc. I have no idea whether it accurately reflected the real UN, but sure?
3.
Listening to the amendments as they came through sounded stupid to me. A lot of them were either ‘let’s recognise Taiwan as a completely independent state’ (which predictably had China’s hackles up) or alternately try and say that Taiwan could be a state of China. There was a distinct lack of actually thinking through the topic and trying to work out the geopolitics of the decision, the political aspirations of each country, and whether these were actually solutions or just…debating.
I didn’t realise that not everyone was versed in Chinese politics from an early age (like this young Asian-Australian boy was…). Hours of watching HK news and TVB soaps had finally paid off in my hour of need!
Wielding the heady power of being part of the Security Council, I gathered a bunch of people in the negotiation room and explain to them what a Special Administrative Region (S.A.R.) is - just like Hong Kong. One country, two systems. You had to gather signatures from different countries for the amendment to have effect - and I got about 10 of the countries to sign up within 5 minutes. We submitted this amendment and everyone else was just like ‘oh, yeah, sure that could work’.
I was able to look like a damn hero because I actually thought of a solution that made sense and had a real-world example behind it.
Obviously, the high schoolers who were China didn’t really understand the political machinations and history behind why Hong Kong was an S.A.R. but it didn’t matter because apparently I scored well and got to the next round - which was in a week’s time.
WHAT AN ACHIEVEMENT! From total beginner to smashing the first round coming up with a great solution good job Vince!
4.
The second round was a resolution about the definition of terrorism. I again didn’t bring a dictionary / thesaurus because I didn’t see a need to (idiot), but without them I couldn’t come up with anything coherent in terms of the definition. I just didn’t understand what to do! I was Austria and just floundered the entire round because I was like “what does it matter? who cares? I’m not powerful any more :(” and spent most of my time backstabbing one of my teammates who was representing Brazil by submitting one of his amendments as my own (sorry Josh!).
Politics is ruthless, kids.
Chat soon :)
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