The General Assembly (MUNOM 2011)

In November this year a twelve students from years seven and eight of our school attended the Eighth Annual Conference of the Model United Nations of Munich. At a “MUN” you play UNO, but not the card game – in fact it is the United Nations Organization (UNO). Our school had the chance to represent two delegations, France and the Philippines. Accompanied by Mr. Meyer and Mr. Strasser most of us delegates were accommodated at local host families.

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Weeks before the event hours of preparation had to be passed to gain enough information to be able to represent these states. We needed to know everything about our countries, the problems there and topics like human trafficking or the crisis in Palestine. We had to prepare resolutions and policy statements on some of these global issues. The motto of this year’s conference was “Separatism, nation-building and threats to international security”.

This huge event took place in the European School of Munich and in the building “Events over Munich”. The delegates were assigned to five GAs, so-called General Assemblies, where they had to advance the views of their states. On the first two days the delegates were committed with lobbying, which means they were looking for other states to cooperate with to develop resolutions. After lobbying, debating of displayed resolutions started. Every given resolution was debated in small GAs (some resolutions were debated for nearly two hours) and at the end of the discussion, they had to pass a voting procedure. On the last day the best resolutions of every sub- GA was presented in the plenary General Assembly of about 350 people, where one of the resolutions was debated for about three hours. One of the most exciting experiences of the whole week was giving a speech in ENGLISH in front of 350 fellow students.

After this challenge we had to leave the unforgettable conference and say “Goodbye Munich, see you next year - hopefully!”

Edin Kustura