Introduction: In this project each student was assigned a country and committee. Their task was to research their country and participate in a model United Nations conference discussing the topic of their committee in hopes of finding peaceful resolutions to some of the world largest conflicts.
My country: The country I was assigned to was, Russia and my committee was, UNICEF 2. UNICEF stands for United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund. Since this was a two day conference we had two different topics that we would discuss, one per day. The first topic was, "War-Torn Children Refugees". The second topic was, "Rape and Child Abuse".
Articles: A huge part of this project was the research. Apart from the typical facts and statistics about a country such as there economy type, annual GDP, education system, etc. we also had to find, read and annotate ten different articles related to both our country and committee. This helped us find real stories on what's actually happening and the role our country is playing. Down below is a link to my favorite article. Putin Orders start of Syrian Withdrawal, Saying Goals are Achieved.
I found this article very helpful and interesting because it included many useful facts on where Russia stands present day. It gave many numbers on the amount of internally displaced children in Russia and the amount of humanitarian aid needed to help. It was honestly really difficult for me to find articles on UNICEF and because Russia is helping the Ukrainian refugees but the Ukraine wasn't any of the countries mentioned in my committee so I couldn't focus too much on that. I decided to just keep digging on the topic of Russia's forces in Syria until I come upon this article. Something interesting was that without Russia's air forces the Syrian government would most likely be lost right now.
At first I really thought that Russia had nothing to do with it and I was really lost. It took me a long time to actually start writing my position paper but once I started finding more of a standing point the writing process got easier. Between my three drafts what I tried to do was include as many statistics and facts that could support my stance on the situation. This included the, "Convention of the Rights of the Child 198", Russia's Learning Centers for Refugees, and more. The two most helpful pieces of critique I got were to make sure I make clear on who Russia is focused on and why, Kevan gave me this advice. The second piece is was to add the importance of the actions the UN is taking, Peter gave me this advice. The pieces of critique helped me because it told me what to continue researching and it provided the "why" to all my facts. I am most proud of the section where I included Russia's system on it's Learning Center for Refugees. I really think it provided a good solution on resettling child refugees.
Between my first and final draft I made some overall corrections on the statistics and numbers, I also had to shorten it a bit because when I first read it the amount of time it took me to read it was over a minute. The two best pieces of critique I got where to not include the fact that Russia is targeting rebel groups in Syria since there is a lot of controversy on that and too also read with a slower pace. The helped a lot because I was to mention the air strikes in Syria I could get a lot of fingers pointed at me and reading slower make it easier for everyone to understand and keep up with what I'm saying. If I were to do anything all over again it might it would be to have for research on child rape in refugee camps since I honestly didn't have much to go on.
My Experience: I think throughout the conference I took a leadership role in creating one of the resolution and that's definitely what I'm most proud of. I felt like for a moment the conversation wasn't going anywhere and when I proposed a system inside the refugee camps almost every single country agreed with my plan, it was just something nice to see. As for my committee I am proud of how we were able to balance a level of professionalism and fun. It was really exciting and interesting while also keeping it realistic and I just thought the experience was really nice overall. Next year I would say to make sure everyone does their MUN country packet research. That honestly helped me so much and I know so many people slacked on it.
Key Moment: During the conference I think a key moment we had was when we voted on resolutions because at first it felt a bit competitive but then we just all started supporting each other and voted on both resolutions to pass instead of just one.