BLOG: A first day of the UN model PragueMUN 2013

Have you ever wondered how it must be like to be an important diplomat? How does it feel when you have a big responsibility lying on your shoulders and a fate of your country is in your hands? Nowadays a young people from all over the world have the chance to find out. The Prague Model of the United Nations has been started and we bring you a report from the first day written by Iryna Yurkiv, a member of the administrative staff:

The highly anticipated PragueMUN 2013 kicked off with the opening ceremony that was composed of a presentation of Prague, a speech from the Secretary General of the PragueMUN and speeches from honorable moderators. Mr. Radim Sršeň had a speech on behalf of the Czech United Nations Association, Department of UN at Ministry of Foreign Affairs was represented by Mr. Ivan Pintér and the UN information Centre Prague by Mrs. Barbora Krutáková. The model United Nations was highlighted by these speakers as an “exciting and UNique exercise” that influence all aspects of our everyday lives.

The Security General pointed out many valuable skills delegates develop through participation in Model United Nations conferences, especially critical thinking and communication skills. Model United Nations was described as an open platform that enables students to reflect, evaluate and negotiate as well as allowing delegates to stand up for their national foreign policies and defend their states positions in front of others.

Throughout the opening ceremony the present state of the world was described as “insecure, unequal, unjust and intolerant”. Multiple solutions were presented by speakers at the opening ceremony as to how we can solve the challenges we face today. Through this conference we hope that the leaders of tomorrow will have the opportunity to solve these challenges.

First Talks

After the opening ceremony, I was invited to observe the training session of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The atmosphere in the room was quite tense and nerve racking at first, however, the chair Lucas Kornexl and the co-chair Phillip Renningen made everyone feel very welcome by allowing each delegate to present themselves as well as their country. The chair then went over the rules of procedure and presented the so-called “Party Animal Award” that the most outstanding delegate will receive at the end of the conference.

 Since it was solely a training session and there was a lot of time to “kill”, the motion of UN allowing the United States to build a “death star” in space was passed as a funny ice breaking activity. Many nations were concerned about the financial aspects of building this weapon, whereas others were more concerned about the ethical implications of building a weapon of this type.

Russia, in particular, saw this as a “unique weapon of mass destruction” that might cause a “potential return of Cold War”. Although it was a vibrant debate and a lot of ice was broken, by the end of the session many delegates were eager to have lunch and to relax after a morning full of stimulating discussion.

Things in Motion

There was a time for a lunch after the training session. At the restaurant I was delighted to see delegates getting to know each other, discussing issues of global importance as well as continuing discussions over topics that arose during the training session. It was also a great pleasure to see that many delegates from the same committee stick together during lunch and make partnerships with countries that supported their views.

The participants simply have put their diplomatic mask on in the Monday morning and they are not going to put it off until Wednesday evening. We will be observing the whole process of debates and negotiating in the committees for all three days. Hopefully we will get you closer to the atmosphere in the University of Economics at least through our articles.