On Nov. 12, the Model United Nations (MUN) club attended the Dallas Area Model United Nations conference at North Hills Preparatory. This was their first conference of the year and for many of the students their first conference overall. Seniors Mindy Dai and Chloe Oani and junior Kamran Kazmi all won Honorable Delegate awards in their respective committees.

“Model UN is a club where students take roles as nations in the UN for conferences where they compete,” junior Frances Wu said. “The conference we went to was a ton of fun. There were a lot of people there and it was a good experience to see how the conferences work.”

Each student represents a different country in the various committees such as the World Health Organization (WHO), Human Rights Council (HRC) or Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Every committee is given one or two topics of debate and all the delegates must come together to discuss how this issue affects their countries and what they must do to collaborate and resolve it.

“I was a delegate for Angola in the African Union (AU),” Kazmi said. “Our issue was African integration. We had to cooperate with all the other countries as there is a lot of conflict between them and work together to find a solution.”

Prior to the conference, students must do research and know the stance of their country on the given issue, in order to be able to discuss with other delegates how these topics should be addressed and establish a compromise. Each delegate is given the opportunity to speak in front of others to share how their county believes the issue should be resolved.

“I looked up the overall topic which were overpopulation and Brexit,” Dai said. “I just got an

overview of those topics and then I tried to look up individual facts of how my country corresponds with these issues.”

The committees were also assigned a random last minute obstacle that they had to address in a short period of time.

“I liked it when they came in with a crisis 20 minutes before we were supposed to come out of the committee,” Wu said. “We had to solve a refugee crisis. It was fun. Everyone was panicking.”

Towards the end of the conference, after the delegates have spent hours debating the issues given, the delegates work together to write resolutions, in where they take the information they gained from the whole day to come up with a final solution they can vote on.

“My favorite part was writing the resolution at the end,” Kazmi said. “Everyone was coming together and finally we had an outline of what we can do to solve the problems.”

In the future, the MUN club will attend larger conferences where they will be able to interact with even more countries. It will also let them discuss real-world issues in even greater detail.

“[In the future] I want to be the United States of America in the Security Council (SC),” Kazmi said. “Security is a big issue these days, you know with border security and cyber security and things like that.”

MUN is not only a good way for students to stay informed about the global issues that face our world and get involved, but for many students they can see a future career path in politics or other jobs that MUN prepares them for.

“I have always been interested in politics,” Dai said.  “I’m interested in getting a degree in public policy. I’ve been interested with diplomacy and how countries maneuver with each other.”

Overall, MUN is an experience that helps students to learn more about the world and the various issues that different countries face. The students may be the delegates of today, but they are the leaders of tomorrow.

“The conferences are fun and you get to meet a ton of new people,” Wu said. “[MUN] takes a lot of work but it’s pretty rewarding in the end.”