MUN

From 5th through 7th of March, 2010, we had a COMUN conference. Around 500 MUN delegates of delegations came for this conference from Pakistan(LAS and KAS), India and other 33 local international schools.

So the first day, with the topic of the role of agriculture in sustainable development, we had a debate. This was my first year and I was not so sure what I had to do. But, I tried to be a risk taker which I learned in the previous year during MYP, and put myself in the speaker's list.
I was representing Zimbabwe and I had to talk about the situation in Zimbabwe related to the topic. Zimbabwe is, in fact, struggling with the financial difficulties as it struggles with the unsustainable fiscal deficit, an overvalued official exchange rate, hyperinflation with the inflation rate of 11.2 million % and bare store shelves. Besides, the involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1998 through 2002 made it harder as it drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the economy. As 66% of the labor force is occupied in agriculture, it provides employment and livelihood to 70% of the population. This was what I had to point out and asked for increase in investment in agriculture. I regard myself as not a good public speaker, but I felt proud that I actually took the risk and spoke up in front of other 120 delegates. After that, while we were coming up with the resolution, I tried my best to participate and add something would benefit my country; it was pretty hard to stand and speak up only for my country since pretty many other countries were co-submitting.

On the second day, we continued the first topic where we were supposed to finish it on the first day but we failed due to the time constraint. So we had about one to two hour long debate and vote for the resolution. The resolution I was cosubmitting was accepted by the Second Comittee.
So We moved on to the next topic, the economic and social hardship during the rehabilitation of the victims of human trafficking. It was really hard for me to speak up for my country's problem since the government of Zimbabwe has not reported how well they are reducing the number of people who are trafficked even though it's a very serious problem in Zimbabwe. So with a limited research, I couldn't participate so much that day.

On the last day, the conference was in the Water's Edge. We were meant to be voting for the resolution, but nothing else. However, as the chairs wanted everyone to get involved, they came up with the 'emergency' topic. The president of the General Assembly handed out this news article saying that Taiwanese attacked the Chinese marine and they are about to start the war. We had to come up with our countries' stance and debate about it. It was in an abrupt, but fun.
Once we were done, we continued voting on the resolutions we came up for the last two days. All the resolution I was co-submitting was accepted by the General Assembly.
We had the last closing ceremony and the best delegate awards and finally everything was over.


A few months of preparing to be the MUN delegate and three days of conference mean a lot to me. This was my first MUN; I set my goal to participate a lot and contribute making a resloution so that it'd benefit my country and I think I have achieved most parts of my goal since I did participate, not much, but still did some and spoke out for my country while writing up the resolutions. It was fun and meaningful. I wish I could do it next year if I have some times for it( but I think it'll be a bit busy next year so I don't think I can't join next year... but who knows?)