Last July, I participated in a MUN conference called SMUN (Susung Model United Nations). The conference was hosted by Susung High School in Daugu but most of the chairs and staffs were from other schools in other cities. Although it was the first SMUN conference, about 300 middle school and high school students took part in it. The delegates had to discuss the agendas, write resolutions, pass the resolutions and make amendments in two days. Although the schedule was somewhat hectic, I believe it was a very enjoyable and meaningful experience for me.
But, what I felt when I arrived at the school on the first day wasn't a sort of excitement or thrill. It was rather a mixture of nervousness and depression, actually. There were two reasons why. About one or two weeks before the conference, I participated in a debate competition held in my school and lost to the seniors who were in the third grade. That was mainly because I and my team members were pretty much overwhelmed by the aggressiveness of the opposing team. Putting logic and organization of the arguments aside, they were full of confidence that our team, consisting of three freshmen, was no match for them. I was facing the same reality again. Since it was obvious that I was the youngest delegate in my committee, I wasn't sure I could debate actively without being overwhelmed by other delegates much older than me. Also, it was the very first time I took part in a real MUN conference. I've joined the KIMUN workshop hosted by Kyunghee University last May but what I did there was a 'mock MUN' which was somewhat different from real MUN. While thinking about the two things, I opened the door of conference room and went into the room.
I was the delegate of Brazil in GA (the General Assembly) which was one of the English committees. The two agendas of GA was, a) establishing global cooperation for sustainable development, and b) developing aiding mechanisms for Least Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs). As soon as I entered the room, the chairs called roll call and the conference started. The delegates did three-hour bout of debate on the agenda a. Some delegates argued that we needed to educate young people of developing countries to help the countries develop sustainably. Others insisted that we should control the carbon emission of the developed countries. I, as the delegate of Brazil, argued we should reform the Kyoto Protocol which was becoming useless because of low participation rate of developed countries.
After having lunch, we started a debate on the 2nd ageda. Truth be told, I was a little bit embarassed when the chairs proposed to move into the next agenda because I thought that the delegates would debate one agenda a day. There was almost nothing I prepared for the 2nd agenda so I had to deliver impromptu speeches for the last 3 hours of the first day. Delegates proposed various aid mechanisms to deal with the problems of LEDCs such as hunger, illiteracy, disease, civil war and so on. The two mechanisms I suggested were tobin tax and ecotourism. After delivering my first speech about tobin tax, I received so many notes and POIs from other delegates requesting more explanations about the taxation system. It seemed that since they weren't familliar with the term, tobin tax, it was a little bit difficult for them to understand the concept and expected effects of the system. As the result, I had to deliver speeches related to it over and over that day. At that time, I wasn't happy about it. But now, looking back, I think proposing enforcement of tobin tax and answering the questions of other delegates gave me a lot of opportunities to share my opinions with other delegates and persuade them.
We spent almost half of the second day's conference finishing writing resolutions. I wrote a resolution on the agenda a with some other delegates but didn't write one on the agenda b because I couldn't find anyone to write it together. My group went through some trials and errors while writing it but I thought we did pretty well. After finishing the work, the resolutions were introduced and delegates started criticizing their opponents' resolutions. Our team's resolution got numerous criticisms from our opponents. Although I couldn't find them while writing it, there were a lot of defects in the resolution. At the end, our resolution failed and the resolution of the opponent passed with almost unanimous vote. But I wasn't that disappointed because I knew our group did our best.
During the closing ceremony, I won a prize. It was great but I learned something greater than the prize in the SMUN: the skills to persuade others, negotiate with others and cooperate with others. I also learned that during debate it is important to be aggressive like a hunting eagle. It was truly an awesome experience which gave me a lot of knowledge and lessons. I hope I can do better in the next MUN conference by reflecting on my mistakes in this conference.
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