First conference 2019: London International MUN

written by Celine

On the weekend of the 22nd to 24th February we were finally there: The be.boosted delegation of 2019 would go to an international Model UN conference and apply what we had learnt over the past weeks and months in those many online calls and three offline weekends…

The sun was shining at the beginning of the conference, just like us!

What we did: The whole conference lasted from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. If you have no idea what MUN is (many of us certainly had never heard of it, let alone done it before coming to LIMUN): It is basically a simulation of various committees which you would find in the actual United Nations, too (there were some exceptions, such as Crisis committees, or a fun committee where delegates represented superheroes). Usually, each delegate represents a country in a committee, and one has to find ways to enhance one’s own interests, while also gathering other states’ support through forming alliances and the such. I was representing Japan in the Social and Humanitarian Committee (SOCHUM) and our topic was “Ensuring basic rights of expression, assembly and associtation for LGBTQ+ people”. During that short, but intense period of time from Friday to Sunday we held debates, had discussions, negotiations, writing sessions for working papers and draft resolutions, amendments for draft resolutions, and finally, we voted for a draft resolution.

Not to miss at any MUN experiences are the socials – at LIMUN this was a fancy Black Tie Ball.

How I felt: Overall, the LIMUN conference was a very good and valuable experience for me. I experienced all kinds of moods: I felt excited, courageous and happy, but also nervous, disappointed and frustrated. My mood seemed to vary with the various things that happened throughout in the committee.
Naturally throughout the conference, there were quite a few ups and downs. Right in the beginning, I was eager to get started, to debate, to hold speeches and so on. However, I quickly realized, with a committee of about 50 people, speaking time is very limited and naturally one’s capacity of influencing the discussion. Before I got the chance to speak, the chair moved to allowing other motions – and so I did not get the chance, like many others, to state my country’s position before we moved into the more concrete topics. That was on Friday evening, when I felt a little overwhelmed – I thought: How am I ever going to change anything in this committee? There are just too many people and there is too little I can do!
But this completely changed when we got to the full day on Saturday. As debate progressed, and we started to work on our first working papers, I got the chance to influence the agenda and started to work more closely with other delegates. There were quite a few delegates with whom I got along really well, and so we naturally started working together.
One moment that stood out particularly for me was this: After a while, two main blocs had formed, and for various reasons, we moved back to the General Speaker’s list – where one of my allies, Turkey, was in a top position. What she did then was amazing: She passed me a note, saying that she would like to yield her speaking time to me. I was impressed and honoured – what a kind and strategic move! With that heads-up, I had a couple of speeches time to prepare for what I wanted to say… she then stood up when it was her turn, and yielded her complete speaking time to me! It was such a rewarding moment – after the work that we had done together, seeing the trust that she has put in me really warmed my heart 🙂

What I learnt – Three main take-aways

1. Things don’t go as you planned them – deal with it. In these committee situations which are moderated by chairs, there will always be times when things do not go as you wanted them to. For example, the chair might close the General Speaker’s list just before it is your turn, a topic that you want to see debated does not motion through, or a merger of different working papers might not work as you see it fit. In these situations, I learned that it is often better to not get frustrated about it, but rather just to go with the flow. If people want to debate something else and there seems to be no way of persuading them otherwise – that’s fine. One just needs to look ahead and see how the situation can be handled, without getting upset or frustrated by it.
   
2. It needs to click with the people. MUN is obviously a role play of the United Nations – so naturally, countries from certain geographics regions, or with similar interests, will find together. But even if your country might be more aligned – policywise – with certain countries than with others, if working together does not work on a personal level with the delegates, then going with the other ones might be the better route. I had the great privilege to find amazing delegates who were really willing to cooperate and we simply clicked on a personal level, so from the start on we were a great team.
3. Pushing through is so worth it. Conference days are long, and after the first few sessions, we all got pretty tired. But in the end, it really paid off to continue being proactive and a driving force in the committee. I found that people really seemed to appreciate the work that I was doing, and that they also wanted to work with me. I learnt that even when things do not go my way, keeping up that damn placard will eventually still pay off 🙂

Finally, all the work that we had put in even got rewarded, in the form of LIMUN’s diplomacy awards. Those are given out by the chairs of each committee, to delegates which they deemed to be excelling at their jobs. Our delegation, being a large one with over 22 delegates, won the “Best Large Delegation Award”. This has been an encouraing external recognition, because it means that the values that we stand for, of inclusive and responsible leadership, are echoed in the wider MUN community.

The Next Step
LIMUN was only the beginning. The ultimate challenge and milestone has been Harvard WorldMUN conference in Madrid. This conference has been longer (5 days instead of 2), more intense because of larger committees and more experienced/ambitious people, and also different in its own way, because we would be together with double delegates, rather than by ourselves.
So only two and a half weeks later following LIMUN, it was finally time for WorldMUN...

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AUTHOR Celine

This post was taken from Celine's Corner, a place where she wants to collect and share ideas, thoughts and experiences from her life as a student, as traveller, and be.boosted-fellow. Go check it out!