A
student attempt to mimic the activities of the real
United Nations. Typically this includes preparing
resolutions for the interests of countries and arguing for them. It is divided into several commitees, such as the
Disarmament Committee, the General
Assembly,
ECOSOC, etc. The big problem is that the students have no
idea what the real interests of the
nations they are supposed to represent are, which makes for some very
interesting resolutions. I will now quote my little
trip to
Holland.
I was privileged enough to be part of such a gathering in January, 1999, at The Hague (den Haag) in Holland. Unfortunately, our school sucked so much we were picked to represent Comoros. Incidentally, Comoros is the world's second largest producer of vanilla, but not much else. They are also entangled in a little incident with French mercenaries, where they took over one of their four islands.
Anyways, by the end of the first day, we already experienced some very amusing incidents. For a smaller gathering, such stupitiy would have been alright. However, this MUN (Model United Nations) had over 3000 delegates. Maybe it should have at least some kind of intelligent argument. It didn't. Amusing incidents include:
- Syria, Israel and Palestine created a peace resolution, without even mentioning the Gaza Strip and the the presence of Israeli military police, instead concentrating on the insistance of peace "for the sake of it".
- Two delegates attempted to "motion to requisition for a new chair" and were ejected from the assembly, by the chair.
- China and the USA co-sponsored a resolution to share all technology, including (laugh) military technology.
I myself also managed to piss the chair off for authoring and sponsoring a resolution (sponsored by Libya and Iraq, hehe) that called for "concentration of efforts on disarmament on regular assualt weapons instead of land mines", quoting the Diana legacy as the cause of all the attention on mines. People quickly called me unemotional and cruel. I gave statistics on war casualties caused by guns and compared them to land-mines in Third World countries.
It was in vain. Our resolution was defeated by a vote of (as I remember) 3 - 157.
Oh well, so much for that. I proceeded to spend the next two days in a foggy haze in the streets of Amsterdam, frequenting the coffeehouses and wandering into the red light district once in a while. As I recall, the sex museum was very very enlightening.
All in all, it was a fascinating experience.